PTT, ship owners ink deal

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

31 Jul 2009

PTT will collaborate with the Thai Ship Owners' Association to help Thai vessels comply with the international standards for transporting petrochemicals. The tie-up will boost the opportunity for local shippers to provide more oil and liquefied-gas transportation to PTT and other Thai oil firms. PTT's international trading senior executive vice president, Surong Bulakul, yesterday said the PTT group utilised about 100 ships, most of which most are foreign-owned, to transport its petrochemical products at an overall cost of around Bt10 billion per year. However, Thai shippers gain only 8 per cent of this amount.
The group has until now used only a few Thai vessels as most of the fleet is yet to meet the international safety and environment standards for the transportation of petrochemicals. As part of the collaboration, PTT Marine Group signed a deal with the association yesterday, which will see the association's members adopt the same regulations as the Oil Companies International Marine Forum, of which PPT Marine Group is a member. Both will also jointly help |Thai shippers develop so that |their vessels meet the forum's standards. Surong said the agreement would encourage Thai ship owners to improve their operating standards, which will enable them to gain more business from PTT group and to increase the opportunity to provide services to other oil firms in Thailand. PTT set up PTT Marine Group to examine and evaluate whether Thai vessels are sufficiently qualified to provide a service to the PTT group.

Source: The Nation