Data comes after New Zealand environment minister suggests ‘they were in a rush’
David Osler
Friday 21 October 2011
Stricken Costamare -owned boxship Rena took the most easterly course of any vessel entering or leaving Tauranga in the three weeks before it hit a reef in the Bay of Plenty, causing the bunker spill that has outraged public opinion in New Zealand,. Automatic identification system data compiled by Lloyd’s List Intelligence shows that the vessel was steaming consistently at 17 kts for several hours before it ran aground.
The revelations will reopen the debate over what led to the worst maritime pollution incident that New Zealand has seen to date, and whether the ship was deliberately seeking to take a short cut, perhaps under operational pressure.
New Zealand environment minister Nick Smith has suggested that Rena was trying to reach port in something of a hurry. “I can’t confirm that but it appears from the charts that they were in a rush to get to port, went full bore, cut the corner and hit the reef,’’ Mr Smith told TV3’s The Nation programme.
Rena ’s master and the second officer both appeared in Tauranga District Court earlier this week. Reporting restrictions mean that neither of their names can be revealed. They are charged with operating a vessel in a manner causing unnecessary danger or risk, under s.65 of the Maritime Transport Act 1994. The authorities are also reportedly planning further charges against the master under the Resource Management Act 1991, centred on the hundreds of tonnes of fuel oil that are polluting beaches on the North Island.
A spokesman for Costamare , which as owner has responsibility for many aspects of the casualty even though the ship was on charter to Mediterranean Shipping Co , said that it would be inappropriate to comment while the matter was still before the courts.
New Zealand casualty reopens public relations debate
Is shipping its own worst enemy when it comes to marine disasters?
David Osler
Friday 21 October 2011
Spilling oil over a pristine beach is never going to do the shipping industry any public relations favours. But as the Rena casualty continues to make headlines in New Zealand and around the world after more than two weeks in the spotlight, there are some suggestions that the PR side of the disaster could have been better handled.
In particular, charterer Mediterranean Shipping Co has come in for some stick for taking a week or so to get round to making a statement. Nor did its insistence that it was not responsible for the lost containers — while legally correct, of course — go down well with many Kiwis. On the other hand, owner Costamare seems to have performed better, according to specialists in the the field.
One veteran shipping PR man pointed out that Gianluigi Aponte’s MSC — still a private company, despite being number two in the box carrier sector — has something of a reputation for being secretive. “Do you expect anything different from MSC?” he asked rhetorically. “Aponte is a reclusive Swiss-Italian banker. Again it is typical of shipping.”
Cruise lines and publicly listed container lines were generally more upfront than tanker and bulker operators, he said. Even so, getting shipping companies to take the flak for accidents is still a big ask. In addition, MSC has seen a run of major casualties in recent years, which does not make life any easier for them. “MSC is on a hiding to nothing. It has had MSC Napoli , then MSC Chitra , and now this one. That’s three big disasters in a relatively short period of time. That would scare me as a PR man. “It is one thing to go to the media when your client does not have a string of incidents behind it and say ‘accidents will happen’. They seem to happen a bit too often with MSC. “If you had an oil company that had a chartered ship go aground, they wouldn’t turn around and say ‘the oil is nothing to do with us’.”
But another old hand at shipping PR is rather more charitable. He argues: “You could not pick a worse place to have an oil spill then the Bay of Plenty. MSC might have been a bit quicker to express regret. They did themselves a power of good by doing so in the end, but it has been handled reasonably well.”
Pat Adamson of the MTI network is acting for Costamare, which put out a statement on the grounding immediately, and rapidly produced a video of the managing director in suitably apologetic mode, for broadcast on New Zealand television stations. “You will always get an own goal with a major spill,” he said. “You can’t expect to get a positive press, can you? What you can do is to explain that everything that can be done to mitigate the pollution is being done. “The Lloyd’s Open Form was signed almost immediately; the New Zealand authorities were on the vessel within an hour of the vessel going on the reef. So we could see at that point there was no suggestion that the captain was drinking.
“We have provided the appropriate information, but we can understand that people are deeply concerned when their beaches have been polluted and the ship is still on a reef in perilous circumstances. I don’t think you could expect the public relations response to be particularly great, but the owner has stepped up and provided an apology, and has got all the right players in place to mitigate the effects of the pollution.”