Why NLNG Vessels Prefer Foreign Ship Registry – Ilori

By Kenneth Jukpor

Engr. Emmanuel Ilori is the Second Vice President of the Association of Marine Engineers and Surveyors (AMES). He also recently served as the Chairman of a Committee tasked with implementing and monitoring reforms on the nation’s ship registry. In this exclusive interview with MMS Plus, he speaks on a wide range of pertinent maritime issues.

Excerpts:

 

The recent explosion of FPSO Trinity Spirit has been described as a result of regulatory negligence. What could the regulators have done to avert that disaster?

Under the Port State Control, if the vessel is substandard and becomes a safety hazard, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) as the Port State Control agency could detain the vessel.

However, the question to ask is whether the vessel reported to the ports. This is an issue currently because some vessels don’t actually come to the ports even though they operate offshore or in the exclusive economic zone of a nation. This discussion is ongoing at the International Maritime Organization (IMO), but NIMASA also needs to engage the international community on this category of vessels because the agency may not be able to visit all the vessels in these areas. There should be standards to ensure that they don’t constitute safety hazards in the Nigerian maritime domain.

Looking further at the environmental hazards from the FPSO Trinity Spirit explosion, there are insinuations that the oil head may continue to pump out crude oil if it hasn’t been capped. Whose responsibility is it to close the well head to prevent further environmental problems?

We are really not aware of that happening. This is still at the level of speculation. I’m saying this because if the oil well was still pumping out oil, we would have seen significant pollution in that area by now. Until an investigation and under-water study has been done we can’t say that the oil-well head hasn’t been capped.

Having said that, if the oil well hasn’t been capped properly, it means questions also have to be asked about the state of other redundant oil wells across the nation. Nevertheless, we need to be careful how we analyze issues if we aren’t certain that it hasn’t been capped. The onus of capping is on the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) now Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Agency (NMDPRA).  NIMASA is only responsible for the maritime environment in that FPSO’s operation.

NIMASA claims that it declared the FPSO Trinity Spirit unfit to practice in Nigeria since 2017, but the vessel continued to stay and transact business as it was said to have received a Certificate of No Objection to go ahead with its operations. What’s your take on this?

We should investigate NMDPRA to know how the vessel got that certificate because it is issued by DPR, now NMDPRA. Don’t forget that it is NMDPRA that does the core inspections on the vessel and they stay offshore with the operators.

NIMASA should have visited the vessel under the port state regime and if they say they did, they have powers to arrest the vessel if it is under the port state regime.

There are two regulations as far as marine vessels are concerned; Flag State regulations and Port State regulations. Port State Control was introduced when Flag States were becoming irresponsible particularly with the flag of convenience.

Nigeria also has to diligently scrutinize vessels from the Flag States to ensure they don’t allow their ships to get to a dilapidated state on our waters and do nothing about it. These are questions and arguments the nation has to put forward at the international level.

Having headed the NIMASA Committee on ship registry reforms a few years ago, can you rate the state of affairs with regards to the Nigerian ship registry at the moment?

Well, there is very little we can do as a committee at this point because we studied the ship registry as a group and came up with recommendations. It’s up to NIMASA to agree to implement those recommendations or not.

The previous administration set up an Implementation and Monitoring Committee and the same committee was saddled with the onus. However, NIMASA has had a change of administration since that time and it is possible that the current administration doesn’t see the need for that committee. It’s their decision to choose how to do the implementation and whether it should be done at all.

If you want to know if the situation has changed since that period, it would be more appropriate to get someone else to make the assessment. I’m not an internal person in NIMASA so I can’t tell how far they have gone. Nevertheless, as an operator I can’t say things have improved. The best I can say is that the development in the ship registry is work in progress.

Also, I think that if significant progress has been made in the area of ship registry, Nigeria would have marketed these improvements at the last IMO Council election. NIMASA would have been able to say that the nation’s ship registry has improved in one year or two years and show the results which should be more ship registrations. Since then, have NLNG vessels begun to register with NIMASA? These are some of the things we advocated for in that ship registry committee. We stressed that if the ship registry improves we would have gotten the NLNG to transfer their vessels to the Nigerian flag. It is unfortunate that this switch hasn’t happened and this could be an indication of the state of the nation’s ship registry.

 

Could the vessel which brought contaminated Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) into Nigeria be subjected to punitive measures for that action?

The activity of that vessel is purely a commercial one. It is believed that someone should have tested the oil before the vessel left the port of origin and someone else should have done another round of testing when the products were discharged in Nigeria. The issue is obviously a quality control problem and there is no direct pollution of the marine environment or direct threat of maritime hazards at the moment.

It would have been a different scenario if the vessel was operating as a bunker or the vessel had an incident such as collision and oil spillage. The product was contained in the vessel and they were able to discharge the cargo safely. I don’t see a problem with the vessel here. It’s only where as a result of the vessel’s operation one finds infractions that it becomes a challenge of the Port State.

Illegal fishing and poaching have become a major limitation to industrial fishing activities in Nigeria as unapproved large foreign trawlers exploit the aquatic resources of the country. How can the nation correct this anomaly?

This problem about fishing is a threat to Nigeria’s food security. From the maritime dimension, it’s a very serious issue. There is a department for Fisheries in the Ministry of Agriculture; they ought to be directly responsible for leading the discourse to solve this problem. They should be concerned about regulating poaching activities on Nigerian waters. Other countries have strong fishing monitoring activities but in Nigeria this regulation is weak.

NIMASA’s concern would be the safety aspect of the vessel, those onboard the vessel and its operations on the waters. At the IMO level there has also been a robust discourse on regulating fishing. IMO has introduced the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Fishing Vessel Personnel, which entered into force on 29 September 2012. It sets the certification and minimum training requirements for crews of seagoing fishing vessels of 24 metres in length and above. Fishing vessels, while in the port of another nation, are subject to Port State control to verify that persons serving on board are certified.

What happens at the moment in Nigeria is that foreigners bring in huge vessels to fish on Nigerian waters without regulation or approvals and they end up selling the fishes to Nigeria at exorbitant prices.

One would expect with the NIMASA’s C4i centre, Nigerian Navy’s Falcon Eye and Nigerian Ports Authority’s (NPA) C3i; the surveillance of Nigerian waters would be so robust that such illegal fishing activities would be quickly spotted and such vessels could be impounded?

Yes, the equipment can help the respective agencies but the issue here is to ask what the Depart of Fisheries in the Ministry of Agriculture is doing about this problem. We shouldn’t blame NIMASA because it can only do its part in terms of standards of the fishing crafts, people who work there and their safety. The control of the fishing activities is for the Ministry of Agriculture.

The problem is more appalling when one considers how much Nigeria spends importing fishes, yet we have people who poach our fishes and sell to us.