How convenience killed the Ivorians

Three and a half years ago the world awoke to news that an oil tanker carrying 77,000 tons of oil was listing dangerously off the Spanish Coast.

The ship, named the Prestige, was a single hulled tanker which quickly broke up in the rough seas and spilled its cargo of oil all along the Spanish coastline severely impacting on local wildlife, beaches and the fishing industry.

In the uproar that followed, the captain was arrested, released on bail, condemned by some and lionised by others and the Spanish people footed the bill for the clean up of what is now referred to as the largest environmental disaster in the country’s history.

What did we learn from this disaster? Unfortunately, for those now dead, dying and ill in Cote d’Ivoire from a toxic spill, not a lot.

The Prestige was operated by a Greek company, had been hired by a Russian oil company based in Switzerland, was flying the flag of the Bahamas and was owned by a company registered in Liberia. Despite a European Parliamentary inquiry the beneficial owners of the Prestige still remain anonymous.

Fast forward to September 2006 when toxic waste from the Probo Koala, a Greek operated ship, flying a Panamanian flag of convenience and leased by a company based in the Netherlands is dumped along the coast in Cote d’Ivoire by a local company leaving eight dead and thousands ill.

While authorities rightly accuse the Ivorian waste company of negligence, and Dutch authorities investigate alleged breeches of law, we ignore at our peril the international structures which allow ships like the Probo Koala and Prestige to operate under regulations far less stringent those applied to most ships on the open seas.

Both the Prestige and the Probo Koala were flying Bahamian ‘flags of convenience’. A flag of convenience is a term coined by the International Workers Transport Federation (ITF) who have been campaigning for over 50 years to get these flags banned. The term is given to a ship that ‘flies the flag of a country other than the country of ownership.’

Why is this a problem? Ships on the open sea are subject to the regulations imposed by the flags they fly. Flags of convenience registries don’t require the same safely and environmental standards towards crew and vessels that regular registries do. This puts the crew and ship in greater danger, but allows the owners of the ship to cut corners that otherwise might cost them millions of dollars.

But even more dangerous is the fact that shipping registries such as Panama, Cyprus and Liberia don’t even require a warm body to register the vessel. Instead, a corporation can be named as the owner of the ship, allowing the beneficial owners of the vessels to remain completely anonymous.

Without any stretch of the imagination, it is reasonable to suspect that terrorist and organised criminal groups are owners of ships that plough the seas right now, able to remain comfortably anonymous behind a flag of convenience.

Even without these added dangers, the consequences of ships operating under less stringent rules and regulations are all too clear. But until this all too convenient way of doing business is subject to greater scrutiny, we are likely to see many more incidents like the Probo Koala and Prestige.