Clay Maitland

On a quest for quality in shipping

The cost of compliance

I spoke to Dave Gardy this week on the impact of the new environmental regulations and the cost of compliance. Continue reading

Namepa’s National Maritime Day panel – Part I

As part of Namepa’s National Maritime Day celebrations I recently hosted a panel that covered a host of regulatory requirements from whistle blowing, to the Maritime Labor Convention, to harbor of safe refuge and seafarer welfare. Continue reading

Lessons learned again?

April is said to be the cruelest month. It is memorable for disasters, from the Titanic to Texas City, Deepwater Horizon and so on. Continue reading

Marintec China 2011

As NAMEPA’s (North American Marine Environment Protection Association) founding chairman I was asked to speak at the recent Senior Maritime Forum held in conjunction with Marintec China 2011 in Shanghai. Continue reading

Oversight, assessment of risk and management: Part 3

As we all know the ISM Code was adopted by IMO in 1993. The Code was drafted as a self-contained document. However, its provisions were bought into force internationally when, at the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Conference in 1994, compliance with its provisions became mandatory under a new Chapter IX to the SOLAS Convention. The Code differs from other quality assurance systems in that it is mandatory; it has been amended over the years, and is generally incorporated in OPA ’90. Continue reading

Oversight, assessment of risk and management: Part 2

In my last post I began looking at risk management and would like to elaborate further and see how this applies to shipping, the offshore oil industry, and particularly oil spills? Continue reading

Discovering things old and new, on E/V Nautilus

On an morning in late August, on the Aegean Sea near the Turkish port of Bodrum, a number of us joined the crew of the Exploration Vessel Nautilus in search of ancient shipwrecks. Continue reading

The Magnetic North

The United States has granted Royal Dutch Shell conditional approval of its plan to begin drilling exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea, off the North Slope of Alaska, next summer. Continue reading

What do oil spills, piracy and the Greek crisis have in common?

There are at least three “received truths”, as one of my college professors sarcastically called them, that, in the world of shipping, may be open to challenge. One is that last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion had nothing to do with the rest of the shipping industry, being only about wells and rigs — and not ships Continue reading

Problem wrecks and their cargoes

The past century of commerce and warfare has left a legacy of thousands of sunken vessels along the U.S., Canadian and European coasts. Continue reading

keep looking »