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A fire swept through the engine room of a tanker owned by Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA on Monday while it was anchored at Amuay Bay near the country's largest refinery, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.The extent of the damage to the Panama-flagged Aframax tanker Proteo was not immediately clear. But it highlighted the poor state of much of the fleet belonging to PDV Marina, PDVSA's shipping subsidiary, at a time when U.S. sanctions are complicating its ability to lease vessels from third parties.Even before this fire, the Proteo had been inoperative, one of the sources said."The vessel is currently inoperative.

Natural gas is quickly becoming the “fuel of choice” for the maritime industry, not only for its potential in reducing environmentally hazardous gas emissions, but also for its reduced cost when compared to other fossil fuel-based alternatives.For natural gas to become a preferred marine fuel, its availability needs to improve, and this fact alone has hindered its growth in some parts of the world. Some of Robert Allan Ltd.'s clients are actively engaged in developing the required infrastructure to make natural gas more readily available.Robert Allan Ltd.

On April 30 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a notice, requesting public comments, on a proposed “incidental harassment authorization” (IHA).  An IHA is a legal and enforceable document presenting the terms and conditions with which a company must adhere in order to protect wildlife.  In this case, the draft IHA was for Vineyard Wind, the wind energy company ready to start construction on an 800 MW offshore wind farm in the Atlantic, covering about 675 square kilometers, starting 14 miles from the coastline of Martha’s Vineyard.

Maritime Reporter & Engineering News recently visited the Blount Boats facility in Warren, Rhode Island. The year 2019 might be the ‘year of the woman’ in the eyes of the IMO, but the two women at the head of Blount Boats – Julie & Marcia Blount (pictured) – have been a driving force in the U.S. boatbuilding market for decades, building on the business that their father Luther Blount built starting in 1949. As 2019 is Blount Boat’s 70th anniversary, a full story on the yard, it’s history and evolution will appear in the October 2019 edition of Maritime Reporter & Engineering News, our own 80th Anniversary edition following our founding in 1939.

Vessel owners rarely carry cargo for their own account.  More commonly by far, a vessel owner will charter its vessel to another party to carry their (or their sub-charterer’s) cargo.  The contracts can vary widely – from voyage charters or contracts of affreightment to time charters to negotiable bills of lading (not to mention the more complex arrangements that one often sees for container cargos).  But in most instances, vessel owners are in the business of transporting cargo on behalf of others and, all going well, of being paid to do so.  This article is about one mechanism the vessel owner may use to ensure that it gets paid: the maritime lien against cargo.