February 2011: LNG Fuel Forecasts, Manning Costs and Piracy

February 2011 on the archived crewing blog combined fuel and regulation forecasts, workforce research and sobering piracy news. This page summarises the main items.

LNG as a ship fuel

On 22 February the blog reposted a report quoting the classification society Det Norske Veritas. It said that liquefied natural gas will become the dominant fuel for merchant ships within forty years, because environmental pressure forces owners towards cleaner fuel. Under rules from the International Maritime Organization, ships must cut sulphur oxide emissions, a pollutant linked to acid rain, to 0.5 percent by 2020 from 4.5 percent at the time. The headline suggested that LNG-powered ships would already be on the way by 2020.

Oil prices and manning costs

The same day, a short commentary asked what rising oil prices and futures meant for shipowners and their manning costs. It pointed to unrest in North Africa and the Middle East and news from Libya pushing the cost per barrel upwards, and observed that ship managers and operators would feel the knock-on effect, as airlines would.

Seafarer supply

A report from Deloitte, summarised from Lloyd’s List, offered more evidence of the challenge of securing skilled crews. The survey, “Challenge to the industry: securing skilled crews in today’s marketplace”, followed the BIMCO/ISF Manpower Update 2010 and looked at the business risk to shipping companies of attracting and keeping qualified officers. The blog posted it under both of its categories.

Piracy

On 14 February the blog highlighted a BBC Radio 4 item reporting that Somali pirates had killed two of their hostages, Filipino crew members, for the first time, according to the European naval force. The pirates were said to have acted in late January in retaliation for a failed rescue attempt. The blog called on world leaders to respond.

Company notes

A note on 3 February congratulated colleagues for passing another ISO 9001:2008 surveillance audit by LRQA.
The blog reported the promotion of two chief officers to master mariner, both of whom took command within the fleet.
Several short posts advertised officer vacancies on container ships, which are not reproduced here.

What the February items have in common

Taken together, the month’s posts show how fuel rules, oil prices, labour supply and security all feed into crewing. Cleaner fuels such as LNG will need engineers trained to handle new systems. Higher oil prices raise operating costs, putting pressure on every other budget line, including crew. Shortages of qualified officers push wages and recruitment effort up. And piracy raises the stakes for crew welfare, especially for nationalities that supply a large share of seafarers, such as the Philippines.