Part-Time Terminals in the Barge market Welcome to my first blog. I will be commenting on all things connected with shipping and trading with particular focus on oil tankers and barges. This first blog is about the ARA barge market, and if you’re not interested in barges please look in later for other articles – you can follow me on twitter @philstalley where I will let you know when I add another blog or you can get notified by email on the right hand side of this article.
Writing my paper for the European Oil Barge Conference I picked up the TTB rules and it reminded me of discussions I had earlier this year about terminals without 24-hour operations. If a barge arrives at such a terminal after 1pm on Saturday, none of the time until 0700hrs Monday will count as laytime. The exception to this rule is where the free loading and discharging time has already been used up, at say the loadport, then time at the terminal without 24-hour operations starts on arrival.
This raises two problems:
Problem one – how is a terminal without 24-hour operations defined? Is there a list of these somewhere or does it depend on the terminal owner deciding what the working hours are? Can a terminal operate for 167 hours per week, but close between 0100hrs and 0200hrs on a Sunday to qualify for this concession? If so it would seem unfair for a terminal to avoid demurrage for up to 42 hours from Saturday to Monday, maybe more if there is a public holiday, for the sake of one hour of closing.
Problem two – you have chartered a barge for a voyage and your supplier has delayed the barge at the loadport for so long that all the free time is used up. You arrive at the discharge port which is a non-24 hour terminal and have to wait until Monday morning to berth. You have sold at the discharge port on the basis of TTB rules – who suffers the cost of the delay whilst waiting from Saturday until Monday? You are obliged to pay the owner of the barge for this time; can you pass the cost of this delay to your seller at the loadport or your buyer at the disport?
If you have any views on these points please feel free to join the debate. For what it’s worth my opinion is that there should be a definition of a non-24 hour terminal and in any event if the terminal is open during the excluded period then the time should count.
On the second problem unless you have a good clause in your sales contract I think the cost stays with the charterer.
One more thing – is it time we scrapped this idea of part-time terminals? Surely the cost of keeping an expensive piece of kit waiting for 42 hours is worth paying a bit of overtime to get the barge loaded/discharged and on her way?
Tell me what you think.
My paper for the European Oil Barge Conference is “Suggested procedures for nominations, time bars and dispute resolution” where I will be giving my opinion on the problems I see in these areas. The conference is in Rotterdam 9th/10th May and I look forward to seeing you there if you are going.