BIMCO Signs New LNG And Shipbuilding Supervision Contracts
The twice yearly meeting of BIMCO’s Documentary Committee took place in Hamburg on 19 November. In his first meeting as Chairperson of the Committee, Belgium’s Francis Sarre presided over the adoption of several new contracts and clauses and an update of BIMCO’s extensive suite of bills of lading and waybills.
Two new owner representatives joined the Committee from Canada and Brazil, reflecting the importance of the Americas in BIMCO’s global coverage of documentary matters.
In addition to the adopted contracts and clauses, the Committee also heard and commented on progress reports on a number of ongoing projects and agreed to start work on several new items.
The first of the newly adopted contracts was the LNGVOY Voyage Charter Party for the transportation of liquefied natural gas. This document has been developed together with GIIGNL – the International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers.
It is the first standard form of voyage charter party specifically designed for this specialist trade. LNG has traditionally been transported on long-term time charter parties. In recent years a spot market has emerged and cargoes have been carried on a trip time charter basis.
The objective of LNGVOY is to provide the market with an additional commercial tool for the carriage of single LNG cargoes.
Not the comic book super-hero, but a new contract for the supervision of newbuilding projects by third party ship managers. This SHIPMAN-derived agreement sets out the terms and conditions and scope of services when a third-party manager undertakes supervision tasks on behalf of the buyer.
As most ship managers in the industry are already familiar with the structure and content of SHIPMAN, they should have no difficulty in using this new addition to BIMCO’s suite of ship management related contracts.
BIMCO is in the process of developing a series of standard novation agreements. The first of these to be approved for publication is the Novation Agreements for Time Charters. One of the agreements covers a change of owners and the other a change of time charterers. Work is ongoing to produce a novation agreement that can be used with shipbuilding contracts.
