Daniel Tan News

The Indian Register of Shipping (IRClass) held the first meeting of its Advisory Committee in Singapore. The purpose of the committee, which draws members from Singapore’s leading maritime and offshore companies, is to give expert guidance to IRClass in strengthening its relationship with the Lion Republic’s maritime cluster and across South East Asia. “In our relatively short existence to date, we have gone some way beyond the simple provision of classification services,” he said. “Life begins at 40, they say,” he added. The committee discussed the aims and objectives of IRClass in Singapore and South East Asia, and advised IRClass to focus on educating the markets not only on its classification capability but the range of its portfolio of services.

Grave concerns on safe navigation through Straits of Malacca and Singapore. The Malacca and Singapore Straits is a strategic gateway in world trade and one of the world’s busiest waterways. On any given day, over 140 ships – such very large oil tankers, container ships, bulk carriers and cruise liners, ply through the Straits; not forgetting the smaller crafts like passenger ferries, tugs and barges making frequent cross-Straits voyages in the littoral states of Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. During the past week, acrid haze originating from forest fires in Sumatra, Indonesia has blanketed the region, including the southern Straits, southern peninsular Malaysia and the island of Singapore.

In its press release the SSA said that it understands that the “cappuccino” effect is allegedly due to the presence of entrained air, which may cause the bunker fuel to froth, causing manual measurements to be unreliable. After a period of several days, the froth reportedly subsides, which may result in the apparent “loss” of bunkers. The SSA is of the view, however, that a significant number of reported instances of “frothed” bunker are overly exaggerated and unsubstantiated by hard evidence at the time of loading. The SSA’s Executive Director, Mr Daniel Tan said, “There are stringent regulations in place in Singapore for the delivery of bunkers to ships. All deliveries in the port must follow SS 600 imposed by the MPA and any non-compliance is subject to sanctions by the MPA.

SSA rtespondes to allegations of bunkering irregularities in Singapore. Bunkering is an important industry for Singapore. Consequently, the bunker supplying industry in Singapore is therefore also highly regulated by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) - all Singapore bunker suppliers, bunker tankers and bunker surveyors involved in the bunkering business are required to be licensed by MPA. The Singapore Shipping Association (SSA) therefore takes a very serious view of recent allegations of malpractices by the bunkering industry in Singapore. As a major port of call, Singapore supplies more than 43 million tonnes of bunkers. This is based on more than 37,000 vessel calls at Singapore for bunkers annually.