Marine Regulations & Guides

The Guidance for Ship Operators on PSC contains very valuable information on the ILO MLC Convention which addresses matters of shipping companies obligations related to the contractual arrangements, H&S issues, working hours, crew accommodation, manning agencies, seafarers' welfare and catering standards. There should no any difficulties for the majority of shipping companies to get in due compliance with all the requirements of the convention.

Apart from the brief general overview of the PSC inspection of MLC certification, the booklet contains information on the Maritime Labor Certificate and DMLC. The advice provided in the pages of this small yet quite useful leaflet is mainly intended to provide the operators of the vessels with the assistance in avoiding the potential problems that are usually faced in the course of the PSC inspections. It appeared as a result of close and effective co-operation of ISF and ICS, two organizations that are respected and recognized in the world of shipping.

We would recommend this booklet for familiarization to the crew members as well as the staff of the shipping companies ashore as it directly affects their day-to-day activities and will play considerably significant role in making the work more smooth and effective to both seafarer and company.

The content of the present Guide was prepared and officially released by the OCIMF, the world recognized and respected Oil Companies International Marine Forum organization, in order to give the design considerations relating to the marine terminals in connection with the fire protection and associated evacuation of people in case of emergency.

In this document, the term marine terminal will include docks and piers as well as the sea land constructions normally utilized for the crude oil transfer plus transfer of the liquefied gas and different petroleum products. Note that the definition of terminal is limited to that defined by the ISGOTT and does not include pumping arrangements, onshore tanks and other facilities that are not directly located on the loading facilities.

The authors discuss the established good practices that shall be used as the foundation when assessing the aforementioned fire protection and evacuation arrangements at the terminals, including both existing terminals and those proposed for future construction. The guidance provided in the pages of this document are relating to the ISGOTT/Chapters 12, 13 and will therefore be of practical interest to all people in the industry.

The present fourth edition of this OCIMF publication (first published in several decades ago, in 1971 and subsequently revised three times) in order to reflect the industry developments. This release edition does not contain any significant changes to the content of the document relating to the cargo/bunker manifolds as well as any associated equipment on board.

However, the authors of this volume have added a completely new Annex to the main body of the paper, willing to take into consideration the technical requirements that are there in a number of terminals and applicable to the tankers to transfer the cargo vapors to the shore-located facilities. We would also like to underline the fact that those recommendations have been provided with the sole intention to provide the required regulatory guidance to the  operators of the vessels trading to the terminals where the installation of the vapor collection systems is mandatory.

The recommendations are supplementing the IMO-developed uniform safety design standards that are applicable to the shipboard marine vapor recovery systems as well as the USCG-issued regulations addressing the same matter. They shall only be treated as relating to the uniform manifold arrangements and shall not be considered applicable in any other cases.

During so many years of carrying out vetting to the recognized OCIMF guidelines, the questions covering the passage planning, acceptable formats and requirements as well as compliance with those requirements prompted the organization to develop a set of guidelines with the ultimate intention to get answers.

This compact but so informative and useful booklet was prepared by Captain David Salmon having a great practical experience in the field of marine navigation. Every effort was made by the author to keep the contents of the publication to simplified, understandable, and practical actions to ensure that the masters of the vessels and navigators have been given an opportunity to get all required knowledge.

All essential principles of passage planning have been covered and explained. The parallel indexing has been addressed within a separate chapter. Numerous examples for the coastal approach have been included together with the chartlet. The ocean voyages have been paid particular attention. Two closing chapters of the booklet provide supplementary information, such as the bridge checklists and format sample, that will be of practical use on the bridge of any vessel.

The technical guidelines that are contained in this publication released by OCIMF, are intended to represent the mooring technology and practice proven most effective. However, it should be taken into consideration as necessary that the information that is provided in the pages of the this volume may not be practical enough to retrofit literally all possible aspects of this technique to all existing systems.

The attempt as been made by the authors of this volume to unify, significantly update, and refine the existing mooring guidelines while adding some essential information which has been poorly defines or even omitted before. The authors have exercised remarkable care ensuring the optimization of the design performance of all the associated mooring equipment and arrangements.

At the same time, we can see that they have really done their very best to avoid the overlooking such important factors as the ease of handling and also the safety of the involved personnel. As a result, this book represents a recommended minimum of the associated requirements and it will definitely be quite useful to both ship designers and marine surveyors, plus terminal and ship operators. For sure, they are not to inhibit the future innovations of the relevant technological advances in any way...

The present Guide was prepared and released in accordance with the relevant technical requirements of the MARPOL Conventions and associated interpretations with the intention to be used together with them. Please note however that this paper is not dealing with the requirements related to the construction/equipment.

Under the Annex I of the Convention any discharge of oil or oil-containing mixture is prohibited from the oil tankers,  including the mixtures coming from the bilges located in the cargo pump rooms, within a distance of fifty nautical miles from the nearest land. In addition, the flow and concentration, as well as the quantity of the substances discharges anywhere else are also limited.

Obviously, the only way to ensure due compliance with these limitations is to adhere to the oil retention procedures. Those procedures would typically involve the collection and separation of any oily waters appearing as a result of tank cleaning/ballasting operations. These mixtures are to be accumulated in a special tanks to be subsequently disposed of somewhere ashore.

This volume is mainly concerned with these procedures and their application; the information contained in this document will be of great importance and practical use to the crew members as well as to all other personnel involved in the above stated operations.

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