Port State Control
The port state control serves the higher-level control of ships, which is carried out in the ports of the signatory states. In addition to the technical condition of the ships, compliance with the Maritime Labor Convention is also checked.
history
The Amoco Transport Company's Amoco Cadiz oil tanker flying the Liberian flag ran aground off Brittany in 1978, broke and around 200,000 tons of crude oil spilled into the sea. This is how Europe's largest oil spill occurred. Research into the causes revealed astonishing gaps in the monitoring of the technical condition of the ships and in the search for the owner of the ship and those responsible for the damage. It was not until four years later that a reaction was received. On France's initiative, with the support of 14 European countries, a superordinate body was set up to enable a qualitative classification of the flag states and the classifications. In Paris, the “Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control” was signed by these states, which was generally known as the Paris MOU or, for short, “Port State Control”. It was u. a. stipulated that the states have to inspect merchant ships under foreign flags in their ports without prior notice. In 2010 this memorandum , commonly referred to as “port state control”, was signed by 27 states. With the entry into force of the Maritime Labor Convention in August 2013, the controls were expanded to include working and living conditions on board.
Annual reports are drawn up in which the “bad” ships that have been banned from ports are listed and the flag states and classifications are also assessed.
Port State Control is divided into nine regional MOU areas, some of which overlap:
- US Coast Guard - United States only (as the only purely national organization)
- Paris MOU - states in Northern and Central Europe as well as Canada and CIS
- Tokyo MOU - states in Southeast Asia, Oceania as well as Chile, Canada and CIS
- Latin America (Viña del Mar) MOU - States in Latin America
- Caribbean MOU - States in the Caribbean
- Mediterranean MOU - states in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa
- Indian Ocean MOU - States in South and East Africa, on the Persian Gulf, on the Indian subcontinent and Australia
- Abuja MOU - states in West Africa and South Africa
- Black Sea MOU - Black Sea states and the CIS
- Riyadh (GCC) MOU - United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait
Port state control in Germany
By the end of 2010, the defined goal was to inspect at least 25 percent of ships flying foreign flags that call at German ports without prior notification. A new inspection regime will apply from the beginning of 2011, which uses a risk-based approach to reward well-managed and inconspicuous ships with fewer port state controls and to inspect abnormal ships more frequently and more thoroughly. The basis for this is, among other things, ship data and results from previous surveys (flag, age and type of ship, flag state , classification society , detentions, number and type of defects). The results of previous port state controls can also be viewed here, as can all incidents and reports that affect the respective ship. The inspections have been carried out in Germany since 1982 by captains and engineers from the ship safety department of the Berufsgenossenschaft Verkehrswirtschaft Post-Logistik Telekommunikation (formerly See-Berufsgenossenschaft ). The port state controllers must complete an intensive training program prior to their approval.
Classifications and arrest
With the help of the THETIS database, flag states are classified and published in the form of lists. The flags with the fewest objections are included in the white list and those with the most objections and the highest risks are included in the black list . In addition, all flag states are listed in an extensive table with the number of ships examined, the number of deficiencies and the number of arrested ships of the respective flag state. The results regarding ship types are also very interesting. The 9,543 inspections on the general cargo carriers in 2007, 2008 and 2009 resulted in an average of around 7% being arrested. Around 5% of the bulkers (3176 inspections), around 2.5% of the container ships (3551 inspections), and 1.7% of the ships inspected were arrested for tankers (1923 inspections) and passenger ships (968 inspections).
Stricter port state controls
The misfortunes of the Italian classification society RINA supervised Erika (1999) and the Prestige (2002), responsible classification society was the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), showed in the Atlantic off the northwest coast of Spain that the existing equipment of the instrument on Port State Control was not enough. It was therefore refined, additional parameters and finally the classification of the shipping companies and operators were added. In addition, a motivation was introduced that classifies ships that have performed very well as “quality ships” that have sailed for at least 24 months without further port state controls. The ships classified as risk ships are subjected to a port state inspection at least every six months in the area of the Paris MoU. In the event of unexpected incidents, the ships can of course also be checked.
See also
swell
- The Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control MOU accessed December 11, 2010
- Annual reports Paris MoU (English) accessed April 27, 2019
- German port state control on deutsche-flagge.de accessed on May 26, 2015
Individual evidence
- ^ Bureau Veritas - Marine Division (Ed.): Port State Control: Inspection Preparation . Self-published, Neuilly-sur-Seine 2009, p. 56-66 .