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
Oversight, assessment of risk and management: please don’t shoot the regulators
Do you recognize the name Oswald Grübel? Mr. Grübel was until recently CEO of the Swiss Banking Group UBS. Continue reading
Liability risk is major issue
Frank Dunne, Chairman of Watson, Farley & Williams, a major London maritime law firm, has warned that “a lot of owners pay lip service to environmental issues. The industry needs to change, or it will face serious consequences”. Continue reading
Running the risk
So this week, I’m in Hamburg for the bi-annual shipbuilding and ship machinery behemoth that is SMM and have been kindly asked by Jochen Deerberg to speak at his new environmental conference that runs parallel to the exhibition. Continue reading
The trial lawyers’ payday comes to the Bayou
As an American lawyer, my heart rate naturally goes up when I think about large-scale litigation. My professional pride also swells to see that our legendary legal ingenuity is not a thing of the past. Continue reading
The ISM code comes into its own
The many victims of maritime paperwork fatigue may, in the wake of Deepwater Horizon, soon have even more to bewail. Continue reading
Planning for next time: Matching resources with reality
Nostalgia, as the saying goes, isn’t what it used to be. Reminiscence is kinder; when we look back, in the mellow afterglow of selective memory, it often seems that everything either went according to plan or, at any rate, went just as we said it would. Hindsight is more rigourous. It means examining, understanding and learning from experience. Continue reading
Getting serious about risk management?
The Gulf of Mexico postmortems are landing with explosive force, even if the well has not yet been sealed. At what Churchill liked to call the root of the matter, there wasan inability to appreciate and apply a safety or risk management system to the drilling and operation of at least some exploratory and production wells on the U. S. outer continental shelf. Continue reading
A troubled political legacy
One of the oldest sayings in the US Congress is: “There is no such thing as a good regulatory outcome”. Continue reading
Thinking constructively about oil spill prevention
Since April 20, the oil and tanker industries have been confronted with the realization that the rules of risk management, and the framework of maritime liability, are being altered in many ways. Continue reading
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