US President Joe Biden announced last week that he intended to ban Russian-affiliated ships from US, following similar moves made by Canada and European nations.

US President Joe Biden announced last week that he intended to ban Russian-affiliated ships from US, following similar moves made by Canada and European nations. The slowness of the US in imposing the ban when compared to the actions of Canada and European countries was caused by the Biden administration’s decision to undertake an extensive review to ensure that any ban on Russian ships would not seriously impact US supply chains, according to Insurance Marine News. 

Meanwhile, cruise ship operator Havila Kystruten announced on Thursday April 14th that it had cancelled the next sailing of its Norwegian coastal cruise ship Havila Capella (IMO 9865570) due to concerns that its insurance had been invalidated as a result of the EU’s sanctions against Russia, as reported by Insurance Marine News.  

Insurance Invalidated 

Its insurance had been invalidated as a result of the EU’s sanctions against Russia. The ship remained in Bergen, 48 hours after its scheduled departure on an Easter cruise along the Norwegian coast. It was reported that: “new the cruise had been cancelled came after Havila said that it would refinance its operations after the sanctions were expanded to include Russian-owned leasing company GTLK, which is financing the company’s four cruise ships.” 

Havila Kystruten CEO Brent Martini said that “we are disappointed that there was no solution”, noting that “the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has concluded that our liability insurance is not compatible with the sanction provisions. 

“The EU included GTLK in the sanctions, stating that the company was both Russian-owned and had direct ties to the Russian government. They reported that both Vladimir Putin and several influential Russian businessmen were on the board of the company and said the company could be directly contributing to financing the government and its war efforts.” 

Liability Insurance Issue 

The company noted that its hull insurance remains in place, with the liability insurance the only issue. 

In other marine shipping news, about 200 vessels were supplied with contaminated bunker fuel in the Port of Singapore during the latest fuel supply scandal. The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) said that, of these, about 80 ships had reported various issues with their fuel pumps and engines. It was reported that the MPA was notified on 14 March 2022 that several ships had been supplied with high sulphur fuel oil (HSFO) in the Port of Singapore that contained high concentration levels of chlorinated organic compounds (COC).  

Insurance Marine News notes that: “The last major contaminant outbreak was in Houston in 2018 and the lawsuits from that event are still ongoing. Skuld said in an update a couple of weeks ago that it had received an increased number of P&I and hull claims related to HSFO stemmed at Singapore and which were found to be contaminated with chlorinated compounds.” 

Shanghai Supply Chain Shock 

Finally, to conclude this Insurance Marine News summary, AP Moller-Maersk has temporarily stopped bookings to ship refrigerated containers into Shanghai after a strict Covid lockdown entered its fourth week. According to the report: 

“Containers were reported to be piling up at the port of Shanghai, with no lorry drivers available to take them away. Maersk said that it was waiving charges for customers to change the destination of their frozen goods already sailing to Shanghai. China’s ongoing restrictions in Shanghai are at least partly a product of the country putting nearly all of its eggs in the zero-Covid basket. As a result, fewer than half of its elderly residents have been vaccinated against the virus and the threat to the lives of millions is at stake should the omicron variant establish itself as endemic. However the result has been the crippling of supply chains and ships being force to divert elsewhere, which has created a domino effect of congestion.”