I was interested to learn that a group of companies under the umbrella of LEAP are looking at a standard format for Barge Receipts and Timesheets. This is a good thing and I commented on this in Asdem’s Oil Barge Newsletter No.3 although it may take some time to get adopted at all terminals.
I think the barge business is moving closer to the seagoing tanker business in that the oil companies and traders appear to be demanding more detailed data which will end up looking more like tanker timesheets than the traditional ‘lighter’ look barge timesheets.
I have heard of a number of disputes around current timesheets and I wonder whether the proposed replacement will eliminate those arguments.
An argument I have come across recently is the use of ‘Estimated’ times which often appear on timesheets. I suspect in the past the estimated times have not altered much from the actual times but I have seen an interesting set of timesheets where the ‘Estimated’ time of departure at the loading terminal was after the arrival time at the discharge terminal.
Obviously this sparked an argument over demurrage but it is clear to me that the barge can’t be in two places at once!
This case highlighted the problem because the loading and discharging terminals were so close to one another. The integrity of the ‘Estimated’ time may not have been called into question had the barge loaded in Rotterdam and discharged in Amsterdam.
Where do we go from here? Should we ignore ‘Estimated’ times altogether? If so what times do we used instead? Would it help to use AIS which tracks the whereabouts of most barges? Is AIS accurate enough for this purpose?
Let me know what you think of this problem. Have you had a similar experience? Have you had other problems with barge timesheets? Please add your comments here.
2 thoughts on “Where is that Barge?”
Phil – I think that it's only a matter of time in this market as well as other liquidly traded markets for AIS to be a source of evidence to resolve disputes if not, beyond that, the primary source of data for demurrage calculations and other matters in the first place. I see a strong parallel to the use of RFID in North America to provide backing and primary data for supporting demurrage claims and product invoicing for the railcar market. This is a huge emerging issue for crude in the US but has been in use for other products (agricultural commodities in particular as well as ethanol) for quite some time. Obviously the technology is different (transponders using satellites versus radio frequency, etc as well as a much more fine-tuned requirement for locations in the rail space), but the concept is similar and I think that companies have figured out that the volumes easily justify the expense. I would imagine that the waterborne market is not far behind.
As a shameless plug, I'll mention that the application of some of these 'lessons learned' from the railcar market to the barge market is one of the topics of our next LEAP conference on Sept 30 and Oct 1st in NYC. It will have a much more North American tilt to it given the location, but I do think that much of the content is relevant internationally. I encourage all of your readers to attend…More info at http://www.energyleap.org.
All European Barges already have AIS transponders. There are any number of AIS service providers out there who can supply the data on the web or as a data feed.
Not only can this be used as an aid to dispute resolution, it can also be used to ensure that a barge can makes its laycan.