Lloyd's List: The Shipping Podcast Lloyd's List

There is a growing body of opinion across shipping that is routinely referring to nuclear, alongside carbon capture technology, as the only real options on the table that will allow shipping to fully decarbonise by 2050.

Has the previously fringe option of nuclear powered ships now become sufficiently mainstream for the industry to genuinely consider leapfrogging ammonia and hydrogen as a more pragmatic solution?

Featuring
Myrto Tripathi, chief executive of the NGO Voices of Nuclear
Mikal Bøe, chairman and CEO of Core Power
Matthieu de Tugny, president, Marine & Offshore, Bureau Veritas

Pragmatism seems to be the new buzzword sweeping through the shipping executive lexicon.

What that means though requires a bit of decoding.

Those of you who have been schlepping round the conference circuit at Posidonia in Athens this week will have no doubt noticed that it comes up quite a lot when talking about decisions that have not been made.

A lot has happened in the past few years, we need to factor in energy security as well as energy transition. The technology is there, the regulation is coming, but realistically the fuel supply is not. We need to focus on efficiency this decade, and, by the way 2050 net zero now seems pretty unlikely now. We need to be pragmatic.

Is this outbreak of pragmatism a genuine shift towards a more realistic conversation? Is it a resetting after the greenwashed ambitions that never really had any substance? Or are we starting to feel the ESG backlash playing out and pulling back on the difficult substance of what lies ahead in terms of the energy transition?

There has certainly been a shift.

Given that this push for pragmatism is coming, not from the environmental laggards, but from many of the most progressive voices who previously argued with conviction for ambition when it came to shipping’s energy transition and all that entails, the podcast this week reports from Posidonia.

Joining Lloyd’s List editor-in-chief Richard Meade around Athens this week to discuss what this all means:

Jan Dieleman, President of Cargill Ocean Transportation

Knut Ørbeck-Nilssen, CEO of DNV – Maritime

Matthieu de Tugny. President, Marine & Offshore, Bureau Veritas.

Bud Darr, Executive Vice President, Maritime Policy and Government Affairs, MSC Group

Christopher J. Wiernicki, CEO of ABS

This episode of the Lloyd's List Podcast was brought to you by Wirana - visit https://www.wirana.com/ for more information

Shipowners are not having to woo bankers right now. They don’t need to. If anything it’s the bankers’ turn to buy the drinks at Posidonia this year and start talking up ways to deploy capital, because shipowners are paying down loans while they can and bank loan deal flows have slowed to a trickle.

So there is limited appetite right now to engage with green finance which, for now, comes with little incentive beyond its availability in a market awash with options.

But that is a situation that is going to change much quicker than many realise and there is a strong argument that the industry should start talking about that shift sooner rather than later.

Capital has already started to become more selective around sustainability criteria and that trend is only set to continue in one direction. Ultimately, it is a trend that will change how shipping operates and arguably determine the future direction of the industry.



Discussing the implications of green finance in shipping on the podcast this week are:

Nina Ahlstrand, global head of sustainable finance DNB Markets

Anastassia Tcherneva, head of shipping clients at ABN Amro Bank

Alexander Saverys, chief executive of Euronav and CMB

Michael Parker, global industry head of shipping & logistics at Citi and chair of the Poseidon Principles

This episode of the Lloyd’s List podcast was brought to you by Lloyd’s Register — visit www.lr.org/en for more information.

THE US refrained from imposing new sanctions on Iran’s shipping sector for most of last year and was said to be lax in its enforcement of existing sanctions as it was eyeing a prisoner exchange deal with Tehran that took place over the summer.

That appears to have changed after October 7. Iran’s backing of regional proxies like Hamas, who perpetrated the October 7 massacre, and the Houthis, who have been terrorising the Red Sea, have led the US government and congress to renew their interest in Iran’s oil and shipping sectors.

On April 24, US President Joe Biden signed into law a national security spending package that included substantial changes to the administration’s authorities to impose sanctions and to investigate violations.

One of the big-ticket items for shipping is the Stop Harbouring Iranian Petroleum Act, AKA the Ship Act, which instructs the president to impose sanctions on foreign ports, refineries, vessels and shipping companies that knowingly process or carry Iranian oil and products, expanding sanctions risk for maritime supply chain actors.

The broader legislation also included provision expanding sanctions threat to Chinese financial institutions that process “significant financial transactions” involving Iranian oil or drones, and extended the statute of limitations for sanctions of violations from five to 10 years.

However, whether these any measures will have an impact will hinge to a large extent — surprise — on enforcement.

In this week’s podcast, our guests Brian Maloney, partner in Seward & Kissel’s litigation and investigation group, and Claire Jungman, chief of staff at advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, will walk through the nuances of the new bill, how it fits in with the existing alphabet soup of US sanctions authorities, and how it could impact maritime supply chains, especially in China, to where most of Iran’s oil is exported.

This episode of the Lloyd's List podcast was brought to you by Lloyd's Register - visit https://www.lr.org/en/ for more information.

“You have to be a cold bitch or an easy lay”.

Those words of advice were given nearly 50 years ago by the boss of a London-based shipping company to a young woman starting out her maritime career.

That young woman went on to become one of the three founders of Women’s International Shipping and Trading Association, known as Wista.

The story was recounted at a Wista event in London back in 2019 to celebrate the progress made across the industry in diversity and inclusion.

Since then, May 18 has been assigned as the International Day for Women in Maritime by the International Maritime Organisation.

Women represent a large pool of talent that’s been overlooked, according to Karine Langlois from the IMO.

“Even just with my own observation, being at IMO for well over a decade now, the parity in the delegations that come to the IMO meetings have far more women in them,” she said.

“We used sometimes to see and even for more technical meetings, we used to see men-only delegations, and now you see sometimes even entire delegations represented by women, so that is definitely a positive change even for us here at the IMO.”

Anna Robinson, partner at London law firm Watson Farley & Williams said women are well represented in maritime law, and diversity differs when comparing offshore and onshore roles.

“When you look at the targets, which the International Chamber of Shipping advocates, they're very conservative, which I think highlights the scale of the problem,” she said.

“In three years, they're looking at 12%, in 20 years, we're still only looking at 25% (of the workforce).

“I think it's right that they are realistic targets. And I think it's right to recognise there is no silver bullet. This is a long term issue. But the important point is that it needs to stay on the agenda for change. It can't just be a fashionable topic, across three or five years, we've got to keep the conversation going, which is why it's brilliant that we're having this discussion today.”

This episode of the Lloyd's List podcast was brought to you by Lloyd's Register - visit https://www.lr.org/en/ for more information.


BATTING centres are an iconic part of Japan's baseball-loving culture and found everywhere in the country as entertainment facilities.

For Takaya Soga, the president and chief executive of NYK Line, the past year has felt like being in one of these venues every day, tirelessly swinging at an endless stream of baseballs coming his way.

Like most top decision-makers in our industry today, he feels his energy is being consumed by dealing with a constant stream of emergencies, with the rest spent puzzling out an increasingly elusive future.

And one of the key questions the shipping veteran faces: is his company, which aims to become a frontrunner in the green transition, betting too much on that path amid all the uncertainties surrounding decarbonisation?