The M/V Rena as observed from a morning overflight on January 24. Photo: LOC

The Master and Second Officer of the cargo vessel Rena today pleaded guilty to 10 out of the 11 charges laid by Maritime New Zealand (MNZ) against the men following an investigation into the ship’s grounding on the Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga on 5 October.

MNZ charged the Master and the ship’s Second Officer (Navigation) with a number of offences following the ship’s grounding.

Charges included:

• Section 65 of the Maritime Transport Act (MTA) 1994, “for operating a vessel in a manner causing unnecessary danger or risk”
• Section 338 (1B) and (15B) of the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) relating to the “discharge of harmful substances from ships or offshore installations”
•  S117(e) & 66 of the Crimes Act, alleging they “willfully attempted to pervert the course of justice” by altering ship’s documents subsequent to the grounding

The Master faces four charges under the Crimes Act, and the Second Officer three charges.  Each charge carries a maximum penalty of seven years’ imprisonment.

Today, appearing in the Tauranga District Court, the Master entered guilty pleas to all six charges laid against him.

The Second Officer pleaded guilty to the MTA charge and all three Crimes Act charges, but entered no plea to the RMA charge. If necessary a two day hearing will take place on the 22 and 23 May to hear legal argument regarding the RMA charge.

Sentencing for both men will take place in the Tauranga District Court on 25 May.

Bollinger Shipyards

The U.S. says that Bollinger “misrepresented” hull strength in a proposal to convert existing 110-Ft Patrol Boats (WPBs) into 123-Ft WPBs.  The eight vessels ordered were later determined unseaworthy after an investigation into the catastrophic hull failure of the first cutter delivered, the MATAGORDA, revealed the design flaw.

The statement expresses Bollinger’s dissapointment with the DOJ, and its willingness to cooperate in order to put this matter behind them.  It also stresses that Bollinger is a hard earned family run business with a proven track record of successful deliveries to the USCG.  Read below for the full statement.

Statement by Bollinger Shipyards – August 17, 2011

Since its founding, Bollinger Shipyards has operated on the principle that “quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.”  Three generations of the Bollinger family have earned a spotless record for honest and fair dealing with every customer, including the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, our largest client.  Since 1984, Bollinger has built every patrol boat the Coast Guard has purchased; to date some 122 have been delivered.

We are disappointed with the Department of Justice’s decision to file a complaint related to work completed in 2006.  Throughout this process, Bollinger has been open and cooperative with the government, and we remain committed to providing the government all necessary information and assistance to bring this matter to a close.  Bollinger has tried to find a way to resolve this matter short of litigation, but we are fully prepared to defend our good name aggressively in a court of law.

As we have for the last 65 years, Bollinger will continue to deliver the highest quality and contract-compliant products to the United States Coast Guard and to each and every customer.

Pictured: The USCGC MATAGORDA prior to its hull lengthening. Via Wikipedia

Carnival’s lawsuit, filed April 20 in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, claims that the company lost revenue due to the spill that erupted from BP’s Macondo well. Carnival is seeking an unspecified amount of compensatory and economic damages, Reuters said.

The suit accuses all of the defendants of negligence, while alleging that Cameron International manufactured a defective blowout preventer.

Additionally, Carnival accused Halliburton, Transocean and BP of covering up facts about the spill. Halliburton made the cement that was used to seal the well, while Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon rig destroyed in an explosion that triggered the spill.

(c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc., Full story at Reuters

Photo via Photobucket

On Wednesday, BP filed suit against Transocean, which owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon drilling vessel, and Cameron International Corp. (CAM), which manufactured a critical safety device called a blowout preventor that was intended to shut down BP’s well in an emergency. The claims are part of litigation filed in federal court in New Orleans related to the disaster that began last April.

The BP complaint said Transocean is responsible for failures of safety devices and control procedures and is seeking at least $40 billion in damages.

Transocean said Thursday that BP agreed to assume full responsibility for any “loss, expense, claim, fine, penalty or liability” for pollution or contamination, in its drilling contract.

At stake in the broader litigation is who owes the federal and local governments billions of dollars in compensation for the 4.9 million barrels of oil that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico after the BP well exploded and the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank.

(c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Ibrahim, 39, of Somalia, pled guilty on September 8, 2010 to conspiracy to commit piracy under the law of nations and conspiracy to use a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence. He received the maximum penalty of five years in prison for the piracy conspiracy charge and the maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for the firearm conspiracy charge.

U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. and James W. McJunkin, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, announced the sentence after Ibrahim’s appearance before the Honorable Paul L. Friedman in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

This represents the first conviction in the District of Columbia for a piracy related offense.

The act of piracy against the M/V CEC Future began on or about November 7, 2008. According to a statement of facts presented to the court, Ibrahim and other Somalis were armed with AK 47s, a rocket-propelled grenade, and handguns when they attacked and seized the vessel. The ship is owned by Clipper Group, a Danish company, and contained cargo belonging to a Texas-based company, McDermott International, Inc.

The pirates approached the merchant ship in high-speed boats and fired their weapons at the vessel in order to accomplish the takeover. They held the vessel, cargo, and 13 crew members for ransom and forced the crew to anchor in waters off the Somalia coast. During the takeover, additional pirates boarded the vessel, and the pirates threatened the crew and controlled their movements with their weapons. The pirates stole money, food, and supplies from the ship.

The vessel finally was released on January 16, 2009, after Clipper Group delivered $1.7 million in ransom to the pirates.

“Modern-day pirates are nothing like the swashbuckling heroes in Hollywood movies,” said U.S. Attorney Machen. “Today’s pirates are ruthless criminals who hold ships and their crews hostage with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. Twenty-five years in prison is a just punishment for this attack that threatened international commerce and human life.”

“The FBI is charged with investigating attacks against U.S. citizens and U.S. interests, wherever in the world they occur,” said Assistant Director McJunkin.”Today’s sentencing demonstrates that the FBI is capable of conducting our investigations around the world through the help of our foreign law enforcement partners. This should serve as a warning to those who seek to attack American interests overseas regardless of your ideology or intent—you will be identified, located, and brought to justice.”

The CEO of Clipper Group, Per Gullestrup, attended today’s sentencing. In a letter to Judge Friedman, he told the court of the importance of bringing pirates to justice and said that he was grateful that the case against Ibrahim was pursued in the United States legal system.

In November 2010, Ibrahim was sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment in the Eastern District of Virginia following a guilty plea to charges stemming from an April 10, 2010, pirate attack on a U.S. Navy vessel, the USS Ashland, also in the Gulf of Aden. The sentence from the District of Columbia is to run concurrently with the sentence from Virginia.

In announcing today’s sentencing, U.S. Attorney Machen and Assistant Director McJunkin praised the work of the FBI’s Washington Field Office and the Joint Terrorism Task Force. They also commended Assistant U.S. Attorney Brenda J. Johnson from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, National Security Section, and Trial Attorney Jennifer E. Levy from the Counterterrorism Section of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, who prosecuted the case.

VIA U.S. Department of Justice

Click here to view the embedded video.

Late Monday, U.S. District Court Judge H. Russel Holland rejected a request by a retired university professor to file a “friend of the court” brief in the governments’ decades-old case against Exxon. The judge noted that the case has been closed since 1991, when the governments and Exxon reached an agreement. However, Holland also acknowledged that the case appeared unresolved. He asked the governments and Exxon to resolve the 2006 claim and any other pending issues.

As part of the 1991 agreement, Exxon paid $900 million in civil damages and agreed to pay as much as $100 million in additional funds to cover environmental damage caused by the spill that wasn’t initially known.

In 2006, the federal and Alaska governments invoked the “reopener clause” in the settlement and billed Exxon for $92 million to cover the cost of removing larger-than-expected amounts of crude oil that remained on beaches near Valdez in Prince William Sound. The governments said at the time that the results of pending scientific studies might change the amount the governments would ultimately request.

Richard Steiner, a retired marine conservation professor at the University of Alaska, unsuccessfully filed a motion to reopen the case, then asked the court for permission to file a “friend of the court” brief, in an effort to get Exxon to pay the $92 million in environmental mitigation claims, plus interest.

Steiner, who has studied killer whales and other Alaska marine wildlife, said in an interview that several species of whales, birds and other wildlife have not recovered from the Valdez oil spill, the nation’s second-largest oil spill after BP PLC’s (BP, BP.LN) Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.

Steiner said he was concerned that the government’s delay in collecting agreed payments to fix environmental damage in Alaska suggested that it may act similarly on any agreement it might reach with BP to cover the cost of environmental damage in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The pit in my stomach over all this is, what’s going to happen in the Gulf of Mexico and any future damage done?” Steiner said. Steiner was referring to the April 2010 explosion on a Gulf of Mexico rig that resulted in the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Alaska officials are focused on completing scientific studies, perhaps by next year, to build a strong case for obtaining environmental restoration money from Exxon, said Bill McAllister, a spokesman for state Attorney General John Burns.

“When we finally demand the money from Exxon, we want to have a strong scientific basis for the remedial work that we propose to do,” McAllister said in an interview. He added that the governments have been in ongoing negotiations with Exxon on the matter.

Telephone calls to Exxon and the U.S. Department of Justice weren’t immediately returned.

Both the federal and state governments opposed Steiner’s request to file a brief, saying they were handling their claim.

Exxon also opposed Steiner’s request, arguing that it has no further obligations under its agreement with the federal and state governments.

Judge Holland, who has presided over the Exxon Valdez case for two decades, said the governments and Exxon appeared to be making progress on negotiations over additional payment to cover the cost of environmental cleanup. However, he said there was a “public perception that the matter has been unresolved for far too long,” and he urged the governments and Exxon to resolve the claim and report back to the court on the status of those talks by Sept. 15.

“The court urges the governments and their trustees to proceed with all possible speed to complete studies that are underway and any necessary evaluation which they may require,” the judge wrote in the ruling.

-By Cassandra Sweet, Dow Jones Newswires

Photo: Prince William Sound

Muse pled guilty on May 18, 2010, to two felony counts of hijacking maritime vessels, two felony counts of kidnapping, and two felony counts of hostage taking.

According to a report from the New York Post, federal Judge Loretta Preska was teary eyed and choked up when she imposed the maximum sentence on Muse.

Details on the case can be found HERE.

(Photo: AOL News

The suit said Kevin Lacy, a former Chevron official BP hired in 2007 to ” improve and standardize its drilling policies and protocols,” agreed to resign in December 2009 because he felt BP “was not adequately committed to improving its safety protocols in offshore drilling to the level of its industry peers.”

An explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and causing the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Pension funds in Ohio and New York are the lead plaintiffs in the class-action suit filed on behalf of investors in BP. They claim the company, which had a record of other safety mishaps before the spill, misled investors when it said it had adequate safety plans in place as a result of previous safety issues.

A BP spokesman declined to comment. The company is facing a host of other lawsuits and an ongoing criminal investigation by the Justice Department. It has set aside $20 billion to pay liability claims.

The 182-page suit offers evidence that the Ohio attorney general’s office said shows BP executives made “misstatements” about safety precautions that “lowered the company’s risk profile and inflated its stock.”

After the rig sunk, BP’s stock price dropped precipitously.

Lacy was not the only official to leave BP’s Gulf of Mexico operations in late 2009, according to the lawsuit.

Citing a confidential witness, the suit says an internal reorganization before the spill led to cutbacks and layoffs that “hit their height” in 2009.

Other senior engineers in the Gulf were transferred around late 2009, meaning that when the Deepwater Horizon incident occurred, four out of five BP senior drilling officials in the region “had only been in their posts for a few months” the suit said.

In Washington, the legal filing prompted Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) to renew his call for legislation that would remove a $75 million cap on liability for oil companies following a spill. Menendez said he was optimistic that he could reach a compromise with other lawmakers on the issue.

-By Ryan Tracy, Dow Jones Newswires

The Somali Parliament on this week rejected legislation designed to combat piracy. The bill, introduced last week by government officials, seeks to criminalize piracy and improve internal mechanisms for trying alleged offenders. Lawmakers expressed reservations about the bill, including concerns about its necessity and that the proposed sentencing provisions are inconsistent with Islamic teachings. The bill was returned to a committee for amendment within five days. Continue reading…

[Via Maritime Executive LinkedIn Group

The verdict came Wednesday after a two-week federal trial in a Miami court room where Carnival contended that the Mermaid propulsion system installed by Rolls Royals was defective, suffered breakdowns and had to be serviced more often than advertised.

Read more at HERE.