An audience from the Dutch shipping community listened to Ian Perrott, chairman of the ST17 subcommittee, and Grant Hunter, who heads up BIMCO’s contracts and clauses work, discuss the main features of SUPPLYTIME 2017 and why the new addition should be more appealing to the offshore sector than earlier versions. The 90 minute discussion centred on the purer knock for knock regime and the removal of many of the previous exceptions; the new, detailed fuel clause; a more comprehensive lay-up provision; and a much clearer clause dealing with suspension and termination.
Although the new SUPPLYTIME has been available only since June this year, the feedback from the industry has been very positive. The contract has already been used a number of times and prospects for a relatively quick take-up by the offshore industry are quite high.
Answering a question about the suitability of the new edition for activities other than offshore support vessel tasks, Grant Hunter said:
a decision was taken early on to maintain SUPPLYTIME as a pure offshore support vessel time charter party. We know that it gets used for a whole range of other activities, but to try to cover every possible use in a single contract would just create a “monster” that would be of little value to anyone. The starting point is a solidly worded, fair and balanced time charter party – after that it’s down to the parties to amend it to suit their needs.
Ian Perrott added:
creating a number of “add-on” annexes for additional tasks could be a helpful solution for practitioners who want to cover additional issues such as heli-deck operations. This was something that BIMCO might want to take a look at in the future.
The SUPPLYTIME seminar in Rotterdam was kindly hosted by marine insurance specialists, M S Amlin. More SUPPLYTIME 2017 public seminars are planned for January 2018 in Aberdeen and Oslo, followed by the USA and Asia. If you are interested in finding out more about the new SUPPLYTIME or any questions about how to get hold of a copy, then contact Grant Hunter.
Veritas Petroleum Services (VPS) publish regular Bunker Alerts based entirely on fuel samples and have kindly permitted BIMCO’s Members to access this information.
The Bunker Alerts are not intended to be an evaluation of overall bunker quality in the port or area concerned, but usually highlight a specific parameter within the fuel which has raised a quality issue.
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