Us Federal Court News

Singapore-based shipping company Unix Line PTE Ltd. pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to a violation of the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships.Unix Line admitted that its crew members onboard the 16,408 gross-ton oceangoing motor tanker Zao Galaxy knowingly failed to record in the vessel’s oil record book the overboard discharge of oily bilge water without the use of required pollution-prevention equipment, during the vessel’s voyage from the Philippines to Richmond, Calif.According to the plea agreement, Unix Line is the operator of the Zao Galaxy, which set sail carrying a cargo of palm oil from the Philippines on January 21, 2019, bound for Richmond. On February 11, 2019, the Zao Galaxy arrived in Richmond, where it underwent a U.S. Coast Guard inspection and examination.

Iran has sold the oil from a tanker released by Gibraltar after weeks in the custody of British Royal Marines and the vessel's owner will decide on its next destination, IRIB news agency quoted an Iranian government spokesman as saying on Monday.Separately, Tehran - embroiled in a spiralling confrontation with Washington over U.S. sanctions meant to strangle Iranian oil exports - announced that it had deployed a naval destroyer with cruise missiles to help secure Iranian ships.The Iranian government spokesman did not identify the recipient of the oil carried by the Adrian Darya tanker. After Gibraltar freed the vessel on Aug. 18, the United States said it would take every action it could to prevent it delivering oil to Syria in contravention of U.S.

Norwegian shipping company DSD Shipping has been fined $2.5m in a US federal court for oil dumping from an aframax. DSD has been sentenced of its convictions in Mobile, Alabama, for obstructing justice, violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships (APPS), tampering with witnesses and conspiring to commit these offenses. Three crew from the 104,000-dwt Stavanger Blossom (built 2007) were also convicted and sentenced to up to six months in jail. $500,000 of the $2.5 million fine is said to have been ordered to be paid to the Dauphin Island Sea Lab Foundation to support marine research and coastal habitat protection in the Gulf of Mexico and Mobile Bay.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently affirmed the 2014 judgment that ION Geophysical Corp. infringed four seminal WesternGeco LLP patents covering streamer steering technology for marine seismic surveys, and that WesternGeco is the rightful owner of the pioneering technology. In 2009, WesternGeco filed suit for patent infringement against ION's DigiFIN streamer steering system in U.S. federal court in Houston, Texas. ION was found to infringe one patent on summary judgment, and a 2012 jury found that ION infringed three more WesternGeco patents and rejected all of ION's invalidity arguments. The trial court affirmed the jury's verdict, awarded WesternGeco supplemental damages and permanently enjoined ION from continuing to infringe with the DigiFIN system.

Dauelsberg GmbH & Co. KG, a German company, was sentenced in U.S. federal court June 3 to pay a total of $750,000 in fines and community service payments for violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships by intentionally discharging 1,780 gallons of oily water into the sea off the coast of Alaska and then presenting false records to the U.S. Coast Guard. Herm. Dauelsberg was also ordered to implement a comprehensive Environmental Compliance Plan and was placed on probation for three years. During the term of probation, Herm. Dauelsberg will be subject to a heightened level of scrutiny, including warrantless searches of its vessels and places of business based upon a reasonable suspicion that it is violating the law. Of the total payment, Herm.

The United States Attorney’s Office, District of Oregon, announced that the Vessel Master of the Adfines East plead guilty to operating a commercial vessel under the influence of alcohol in the Port of Portland. Valeriy Sharykin, 62, a Russian citizen, and captain of a Maltese freighter plead guilty before U.S. Magistrate John V. Acosta. Defendant Sharykin was charged by information with negligent operation of a commercial vessel, a class A misdemeanor. Sharykin was the licensed Vessel Master on the Adfines East, a 602 foot commercial vessel, weighing over 24,000 gross tons and sailing under the flag of Malta. While conducting an official inspection of the vessel on April 8…

Transocean Ltd. (NYSE: RIG) (SIX: RIGN) announced that it has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve certain outstanding civil and potential criminal claims against the company arising from the April 20, 2010, accident involving the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. As part of this resolution, a Transocean subsidiary has agreed to plead guilty to one misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act (CWA) for negligent discharge of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and pay $1.4 billion in fines, recoveries and penalties, excluding interest. This resolution will result in the Department of Justice concluding its criminal investigation of Transocean and settling its claims for civil penalties against the company relating to the spill from BP's Macondo well.

Transocean Files Motion for Summary Judgment in U.S. Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling Inc. (TODDI), a subsidiary of Transocean Ltd., today filed a motion for summary judgment in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana requesting the court to compel BP to honor its contractual obligation to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Transocean for damages associated with BP's failure to contain flow from its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The contract between BP and Transocean for the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig contains industry-standard reciprocal indemnity provisions that apportion risk and quantify liabilities between the two companies.

A U.S. federal court reportedly has granted a one-year injunction barring oil producer group OPEC from fixing prices. Prewitt Enterprises won a civil anti-trust case in an Alabama court, accusing the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) of conspiring to fix oil prices through oil supply agreements. OPEC is for the next year "restrained from entering any agreements among themselves or with third parties to raise, lower, or otherwise determine volumes of production and export of crude oil," a Senior U.S. District Judge ruled March 21. OPEC made successive cuts in production through 1998 and 1999 that pushed crude oil prices to their high level since the Gulf War and lifted gasoline pump prices to record highs.

A Spanish court has ordered police to capture and search two vessels belonging to a Florida firm that recently announced it had found a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean laden with an estimated $500m worth of Colonial-era treasure. The court in the southern port city of Cadiz instructed police to capture the vessels should they leave the British colony of Gibraltar, on Spain's southern tip, and enter Spanish waters. The reports came out late Tuesday night after the court had closed and it was not immediately possible to confirm them. The two ships, "Odyssey Explorer" and "Ocean Alert," belong to Odyssey Marine Exploration and are believed to have been involved in the exploration that led to the discovery of the treasure disputed by Spain. Spain last month filed claims in a U.S.