The View
Lloyd's List's weekly view on the big issues impacting and shaping shipping, providing timely insight and thought-provoking opinion
Will it take a ‘Prestige’ moment to tackle the dark fleet threat?
The dark fleet poses a threat to shipping safety, but it may take a big, messy and very public European disaster to get that threat onto the political radar
Shipping’s decarbonisation policy still requires a strong narrative to fly with all governments
The fact that a majority of governments now back a carbon levy for shipping is not enough. To create a global policy architecture to decarbonise the maritime sector will require a strong story to sell domestically and internationally
America’s next big traffic jam is nigh. Who is to blame?
More than 100 containerships were stuck off east and Gulf coast ports in autumn 2022 amid the supply chain crisis. These ship queues will return if the ILA goes on strike next week — and the blame game will begin
IUMI Berlin: We can be heroes, just for four days
Keeping trade flowing is a moral endeavour, and shipping’s insurers deserve credit
Sounion: shipping gets away with it again
Moral culpability for this casualty rests with the damn fools crazy enough deliberately to set a suezmax on fire. But television audiences might not have seen things like that
Yemen’s twisted firestarters will go it alone
The Houthis like to paint themselves as the legitimate government of Yemen. Legitimate governments do not typically run the risk devastating oil spills
Red Sea transits risk crew lives as well as ships
If anything has to take a hit, let it be a company’s bottom line rather than its seafarers
Shipping is still stymied by economic and environmental uncertainty
As Maersk U-turns on LNG and methanol projects fold, the industry is asking what has changed. This is about the inherent uncertainty and nervousness in an industry that still does not have any confidence in what happens next and is defaulting to lowest cost and optionality as a default
Marine insurers in London must come clean on Ceres I dark fleet disaster
Lloyd’s-backed insurers have failed to answer questions over whether they provided cover for a 25-year-old, hit-and-run tanker, a dark fleet poster child intercepted by Malaysian authorities as it fled the scene of a collision and is now detained
Green hydrogen is a Catch-22 for shipping
Holy grails are wonderful things. But as anyone who has read The Da Vinci Code knows, they can be that little bit hard to find
Congratulations on re-election, Ms von der Leyen. Now cut red tape and push free trade
With the right policies, the EU can stay in the game
Shipping safety has become a casualty of economic sanctions
It was never the intention of economic sanctions to undermine shipping safety, but that has been the result. Politicians are keen to halt the trail of dirty money leaking from dark fleet tankers. But where is their plan to stop clapped out ships leaking noxious cargoes onto European coastlines?
French yoghurt is not a strategic industry. French shipping is
Liberté and fraternité necessarily entail égalité with other EU jurisdictions
Politicians’ stormy love affair with shipbuilding enters new phase
Shipowners, particularly those in the commodity shipping sectors, are being tempted by relatively low prices and the fear of missing out to order new ships. Many of the shipyards benefiting from this spending spree are recipients of some form of state aid
Stop trying to make future fuels not happen
The debate on measures already agreed is not going to be reopened, whatever certain shipowners were telling themselves at Posidonia this week
LOF on life-support: salvors — and owners — need more than this
It is long past time for salvors and underwriters to grasp the truth that they serve the same client, not to mention serving the same overriding cause: protecting life, property and the environment
Wall Street may be overvalued. That doesn’t mean shipping equities are
Industry stocks have been hitting it out of the park for a couple of years. They may just go higher still
Ships should not be attacked on the basis of an owner’s passport
The Houthis have no business launching missiles at ships at all, let alone singling out Mediterranean Shipping Co because one of its shareholders is an Israeli national
The International Group is right. The Russia oil price cap is unenforceable
The onus to sort this mess out rests with the politicians, not marine insurers. Given the inordinate amount of time the US Congress took just to agree Kyiv’s request for more shells, hopes can sadly not be high
Puzzled by Aponte’s Gram Car Carriers deal? Don’t be
After putting together the world’s biggest shipping empire in little over five decades, it’s safe to say this guy knows what he’s doing
Panama Canal: It never pours but it rains
Reduced capacity could soon be the new normal for at least three years in every decade
Troubled water over a bridge
Marine insurance is proving its value after the past week’s spectacular casualty in Baltimore
Russia and China shouldn’t cut a special deal with the Houthis
Most seafarers won’t even know the beneficial ownership of the vessels on which they serve. But they have every reason to be afraid if the Houthis get it wrong
Dark fleet insurance? Not reassuring
It’s 2024 and we still still have vessels ‘owned’ by anonymous brass plate companies, ‘flagged’ with fictitious ‘registries’, ‘IMO numbered’ with digits based on mum’s birthday, ‘classed’ by little-known ROs and ‘insured’ by shaky fixed premium providers. This isn’t progress
Tipping point in the Red Sea
Wording of Conwartime and Voywar clauses are matters BIMCO could usefully revisit before the next crisis
The IMO is speaking softly on greenhouse gases. The time may come to use the big stick
Substantive regulatory measures should be the last resort. But last resorts are sometimes unavoidable
Sanctioning Russia is one thing, making restrictions stick is another
The murder of Alexei Navalny and the second anniversary of the Ukraine invasion have seen measures targeting the Kremlin proliferate. The West should pay more attention to ensuring the ones we have already actually hit home
Yes, governments can tell you what to do
Shipowners sometimes argue that they are merely humble ‘taxi drivers of the sea’. But few professions are as extensively regulated as driving taxis
You don’t have to be mad to invest in shipping. But it helps
Why bother with creative destruction when good old-fashioned destruction will do instead?
Flags of Deceit could take shipping back to the bad old days
Much more of this and Narnia, Utopia, Middle Earth, Freedonia, La-La Land and Big Rock Candy Mountain will be offering their capitals as home ports
The good, the bad and the ugly: the flagging standards of flag states
Flag states have a legal and moral duty to enforce the hard won safety standards that underpin global maritime trade, but the rise of the dark fleet supported by a growing list of opaque, outsourced flag administrations is undermining the rules-based order of global shipping
The week that marked a turning point for shipping in the Red Sea
The impact on the Suez Canal will not be permanent. But it is now effectively closed to those who are risk adverse, and/or allied to Western countries seen as supporting Israel
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