NGOs Ask Brazil to Stop Beaching Ships in South Asia

NGO Shipbreaking Platform The NGOs and trade unions have criticized the shipbreaking practices of Transpetro, a part of Brazil-based Petrobras, which sent more than twenty vessels to the beaches of India and Pakistan in the last five years. In an official letter sent on June 2, 2017 to Transpetro, Severino Almeida, president of Brazilian CONTTMAF trade union federation and its member SINDMAR, expressed his serious concerns about Petrobras’ poor end-of-life fleet management. NGO Shipbreaking Platform said that, according to maritime databases, at least six more units owned by Petrobras have already been sold for demolition but are still in Brazilian territorial waters. Four drill platforms were bought in a public auction by the cash-buyer Rota Shipping who exclusively delivers to Turkish yards, while the product tanker LOBATO and the liquefied petroleum gas carrier GUAPORE were sold to Indian breakers. Petrobras is not the only Brazilian company involved in dirty scrapping practices. The Platform said that, in the last two years, the Brazilian mining giant Vale has also sold five ships to shipbreaking beaches in Bangladesh and Pakistan. A committee coordinated by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, with the presence of the Brazilian Navy and Petrobras, is now considering the possibility to include ship recycling in the scope of national regulation NR 34, which sets environmental and safety requirements for ship building and offshore constructions, including repair activities.