Getting serious about risk management?
The Gulf of Mexico postmortems are landing with explosive force, even if the well has not yet been sealed. At what Churchill liked to call the root of the matter, there wasan inability to appreciate...
View ArticlePlanning for next time: Matching resources with reality
Nostalgia, as the saying goes, isn't what it used to be. Reminiscence is kinder; when we look back, in the mellow afterglow of selective memory, it often seems that everything either went according to...
View ArticleShout a little less
mikethumbI suppose with half a million tons of oil so far ejected into the Gulf of Mexico one is entitled to feel pretty angry with the response. Just as long as it is flowing, nobody will ever have...
View ArticleThe ISM code comes into its own
The many victims of maritime paperwork fatigue may, in the wake of Deepwater Horizon, soon have even more to bewail.
View ArticleThe trial lawyers’ payday comes to the Bayou
As an American lawyer, my heart rate naturally goes up when I think about large-scale litigation. My professional pride also swells to see that our legendary legal ingenuity is not a thing of the past.
View ArticleRunning the risk
So this week, I'm in Hamburg for the bi-annual shipbuilding and ship machinery behemoth that is SMM and have been kindly asked by Jochen Deerberg to speak at his new environmental conference that runs...
View ArticleDon’t burn the toast
The fable of the boy who cried “wolf!” too often seems to be worth revisiting as the wisdom of applied hindsight appears to be increasingly employed by the various learned bodies investigating the...
View ArticleLiability risk is major issue
Frank Dunne, Chairman of Watson, Farley & Williams, a major London maritime law firm, has warned that “a lot of owners pay lip service to environmental issues. The industry needs to change, or it...
View ArticleOversight, assessment of risk and management: please don’t shoot the regulators
Do you recognize the name Oswald Grübel? Mr. Grübel was until recently CEO of the Swiss Banking Group UBS.
View ArticleLessons learned again?
April is said to be the cruelest month. It is memorable for disasters, from the Titanic to Texas City, Deepwater Horizon and so on.
View ArticleThinking constructively about oil spill prevention
Since April 20, the oil and tanker industries have been confronted with the realization that the rules of risk management, and the framework of maritime liability, are being altered in many ways.
View ArticleA troubled political legacy
One of the oldest sayings in the US Congress is: "There is no such thing as a good regulatory outcome".
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