BIMCO's position has been approved by the BIMCO Board of Directors.
To ensure safety of navigation, coastal states are obliged to provide measures to ships in accordance with the relevant conventions in particular the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which came into force in 1994, and the Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), which entered into force in 1980. Such measures should include adequate hydrographic services, navigational aids, meteorological services and navigational warnings.
Safe and efficient shipping depends on the ability to plan and execute a safe voyage and, in this respect, innocent passage and freedom of navigation are crucial. Furthermore, efficient shipping depends on the possibility to choose the most energy efficient routes to reduce emissions from ships.
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has developed a plan to implement enhanced navigation (e-Navigation) with the aim to improve safety of navigation and to reduce errors by establishing modern and proven tools onboard ships and ashore that are optimised for good decision making. Furthermore, efficient shipping depends on the possibility to choose the most energy efficient routes to reduce emissions from ships while appropriately managing environmental aspects such as underwater radiated noise and risk of whale strikes.
Government use of automatic identification systems (AIS) to track ships for compliance purposes is becoming the norm.
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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