Achieve Faster, More Reliable Vetting of Vessels

When an energy producer and trader took over an oil refinery in Texas.  They needed a robust and reliable method of vetting vessels that they charter and those loading cargo from the plant. The international sanctions regime was increasingly complex, and the trend was towards stricter enforcement by OFAC. Vetting became more crucial than ever, but the manual process of checking different databases and news sources was a drain on time and resources. Becoming a US entity,  the sanctions compliance part became a very critical aspect for them. They needed a data provider to help them check for incidents, compliance, ownership and sanctions.”

Their old vetting process was slow and fragmented. Although Lloyd’s List Intelligence (“LLI”) data fed into their internal systems for first-line checks, multiple manual checks then followed.

• The in-house system lacked crucial sanctions data for information.
• Multiple manual checks for hunting for sanctions, incidents and other details from external sources.
• It took 20-23 minutes to vet each vessel was delaying trades.

The company searched for a solution that delivered  detailed vessel insights in a user-friendly way for quick and reliable vetting. They need a platform that  no longer needed to check different sites and data sources  such as  EU sanctioned company lists, external sources, incident data, casualty records and Lloyd’s List news. The information must all feed into an in-house system to provide a full and up-to-date picture to vet and approve trades.

The company opted for LII’s Seasearcher Advanced Risk and Compliance platform to deliveredetailed vessel insights in a user-friendly way for quick and reliable vetting. A dedicated LLI account manager helped PMI with the initial setup and training so the PMI team could quickly start taking advantage of the new system.

LLI platform provided the company with:

• Sanctions data on vessels and entities
• Advanced AIS gap modelling detection including:
  •  AIS manipulation
  •  Dark ship-to-ship transfers
  •  Dark port callings
• Comprehensive voyage event log-in compliance report
• Watchlists to upload and screen vessels, companies and places automatically against their own lists
• Tailoring of risk models according to preferred time window (6, 12, 18, 24 months) and viewing red, amber and green vessels on the platform according to risk preferences
• 7 levels of ownership structure with alerts when a new ownership structure makes a vessel directly or indirectly linked to sanctions

The compliance report provided a single source of truth between vetting and ship managers to seek explanations for AIS gaps or loitering activities. It also aligned vetting and legal teams with detailed investigations into possible risks in one place. This protected the company against the risk and penalties of non-compliance, freed up vetting time to allow for more trades. Time is  money and because of the tie saved, the vetting teams were able to gain 24 hours per month, 6 hours per week and 10 minutes per check.

LLI offers a sophisticated, maritime intelligence product for their clients such Seasearcher online tool for real-time vessel tracking and intelligence. These include the Seasearcher Advanced Risk and Compliance analyzes vessel movements and behaviors, highlighting risks related to illicit activities; and Predictive Fleet Analytics to provide accurate predictions for vessel arrival, departure, berthing times, and estimates of port congestion.

About the Author

Mark Sa