Bureau Veritas To Suggest Safety Rules To French Government

French ship classification society Bureau Veritas will make a number of tanker safety proposals to the French government at a meeting this week. The proposals will help improve tanker surveys and provide early warning of potential structural and safety problems for ships, officials said. Bureau Veritas officials said the group will make three main proposals at the meeting on Feb. 10. The first of these is that all ships over 15 years old should be required to undergo surveys that allow access to all cargo tanks and inspection of ballast tanks. Extra steel thickness requirements would be made. Port inspection reports should also be forwarded to classification societies and a computerized database of vessels' entire structural and repair histories collated, Bureau Veritas will recommend.