This week’s World Maritime Day Parallel Event, hosted by the Kingdom of Bahrain, saw INTERTANKO’s Managing Director Katharina Stanzel, as a guest of the Kingdom, speak on tanker safety to a distinguished gathering of over 160 attendees of the Bahrain Maritime Festival, with the tanker industry singled out for specific attention ahead of the general safety of ships.
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The seminar focused on the World Maritime Day 2012 theme: ‘IMO: 100 years after the Titanic’, and highlighted the improvements made over the past 100 years to ensure the safety of life at sea.
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Other key speakers included:
HE Shaikh Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed, Bahrain’s Minister of Transportation, who reflected on the Titanic incident and how it served as a wake-up call to the importance of adopting international treaties and standards on safety at sea, and to following up with their application and enforcement.
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Koji Sekimizu, Secretary General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), spoke of an opportunity to reflect on how things have improved since the Titanic sinking in 1912 and how this has helped reinforce a commitment among shipping nations to address maritime safety and prevent reoccurrences. He also highlighted the IMO’s role in proactively addressing today’s pressing safety and environmental concerns, promoting the use of the latest technology.
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Kathi Stanzel demonstrated how tanker design has evolved through forward thinking, experience and regulation towards ever-increasing safety and efficiency. This continuous improvement has meant that incidents involving tankers have declined significantly over recent years, she said, despite continuous increases in fleet size and oil trade. While oil spills have been reduced in line with the number of incidents, the average quantities of oil spilled per incident have also decreased, she added.
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However, she stressed that in addition to IMO, national and local regulations and requirements, the tanker industry has developed and strictly follows its own safety standards and guidelines, compliance with which is verified through inspections and audits carried out by qualified specialists.
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With its mission is to provide leadership to the tanker industry, and its primary goal being to lead the continuous improvement of the tanker industry’s performance in striving to achieve the goals of Zero Fatalities, Zero Pollution and Zero Detentions, “INTERTANKO has clearly demonstrated its commitment to these goals by walking the talk,” concluded Stanzel. “It is this kind of leadership that makes INTERTANKO and its Members one of the most respected international shipping organisations in the world”.
