As a pre-condition of being permitted to berth and load and/or discharge at a terminal, Masters are often required to sign a Condition of Use (COU) document. Often these documents are biased against shipowners and contain terms that exonerate the terminal from any liability regarding potential vessel damage.

INTERTANKO have produced these guidelines to raise awareness of the issues around COUs and to help owners/operators and Masters produce fair and balanced contractual terms in order to promote a safety culture in port. The guide begins by outlining contractual issues and liability and insurance cover, before going on to discuss practical considerations and charterparty issues.

Vessels' Practical Guide to Vetting (formerly Seafarers' Guide to Vetting Inspections) is the result of an INTERTANKO Vetting Committee initiative and has been written for all officers and crew on board to enable them to better understand the content and requirements of the SIRE Vessel Inspection Questionnaire (VIQ). The guide concentrates on each chapter of the VIQ individually and provides details of the responsibilities for each question.

Vessels' Practical Guide to Vetting should be used in conjunction with the latest edition of the OCIMF-SIRE VIQ.

This Guide has been developed to provide readers with an overview of the commercial and legal aspects of the carriage of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by sea. Vessel inspections and LNG STS operations are covered in the context of relevant contractual clauses. The book assumes an understanding of oil tanker principles and charterparty terms, but lays out the intricacies of gas chartering to those seeking a deeper understanding of the subject.

This Guide provides practical assistance to commercial teams in the growing LNG shipping markets, at a time when the LNG industry is moving substantially away from its traditional structures and contract matrices. The book deals only with international seaborne carriage of LNG on large vessels. It does not cover small scale LNG or coastal/cabotage movement, nor does it cover floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) or floating LNG production (FLNG) contracts. It is appended with charterparty clauses from ShellLNGTime 1, ShellLNGTime 2 and LNGVOY.

Port State Control (PSC) is the inspection of foreign ships in national ports to verify that the condition of the ship and its equipment complies with the requirements of international regulations, and that the ship is manned and operated in compliance with these rules. Many of the IMO’s most important technical conventions contain provisions for ships to be inspected when they visit foreign ports to ensure that they meet IMO requirements. The responsibility for ships’ standards rests with owners, Class Societies and the Flag State – but Port State Control (PSC) provides a "safety net" to identify substandard ships which experience has shown to be extremely effective.

The first PSC agreement to identify and exclude substandard ships was drafted after the Amoco Cadiz incident in March 1978 and resulted in the Paris Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which came into effect in Europe in 1982. There are now nine regional agreements on Port State Control in effect, which cover Europe and the north Atlantic (Paris MoU); Asia and the Pacific (Tokyo MoU); Latin America (Acuerdo de Viña del Mar); the Caribbean (Caribbean MoU); West and Central Africa (Abuja MoU); the Black Sea region (Black Sea MoU); the Mediterranean (Mediterranean MoU); the Indian Ocean (Indian Ocean MoU); and the Persian Gulf (Riyadh MoU). The United States Coast Guard maintain the tenth PSC regime.

The shipping industry has made considerable progress and continues to do so, but incidents show that there are still ships that slip through the net. It is these ships that PSC targets through sharing of data and improved training of inspectors to strengthen their abilities and better direct their efforts.

INTERTANKO’s Membership has long recognised the value of well-operated and maintained tankers and has developed criteria to ensure its own quality standards. Alongside the Membership criteria, the Association and its Vetting Committee have supported owners through the production of a Guide to the Vetting Process which includes advice on both the PSC and commercial vetting processes for tankers.