1,000 ships, zero excuses: sharing incident data is key to managing risk

Preserving lessons learned and a refreshed strategy

Mr Weverbergh credits the six-year leadership tenure of Chevron’s Lloyd Bland, who served as both SIGTTO vice president and president, for providing the foundation of the current strategy.

The current leadership comprises Shell’s Carl Henrickson (president) and Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement’s Jeroen Deelen (vice president). On their watch, SIGTTO has adopted four core values: adaptability, focused specifically on responding to rapid technological changes in alternative fuels like hydrogen and ammonia, as well as products like liquid CO2. Partnership, which emphasises closer collaboration with NGOs alongside the relationships already in place with IMO, IACS, OCIMF, SGMF, GIIGNL, Intertanko and others to avoid duplication of effort. Stewardship, which affirms SIGTTO’s core mission of promoting safety and environmental responsibility. And ‘member leadership’ which ensures that technical priorities are driven by those who own and operate the assets, rather than by external political or commercial pressures.

A critical initiative under Mr Weverbergh is the Safety Improvement Cycle, designed to turn industry reporting into actionable best practice. The intensity of this work is reflected in a major operational shift: the frequency of General Purpose Committee meetings has doubled from twice to four times annually, underscoring the sheer volume of technical work currently being processed by the Secretariat. To maintain a "healthy sense of vulnerability" across the 186-member society, every SIGTTO meeting now includes a permanent agenda item for sharing incidents and lessons learned. This is a structural change that ensures near-misses and operational failures are systematically captured and analysed. SIGTTO is also launching a dedicated website for industry safety bulletins to ensure these lessons reach junior officers and terminal staff effectively.

Mr Weverbergh recognises that convincing competitive, PR-conscious members to share failures openly requires trust and complete flexibility regarding anonymity. "There’s a range of options we offer to make sure everybody’s comfortable," Mr Weverbergh noted.  

Members now have three distinct options to ensure maximum psychological safety: incidents can be presented openly at member activities like the General Purposes Committee or specialist panels; the Secretariat can present fully anonymised case studies where the ‘entire story’ is kept anonymous with only lessons learned extracted; or, critically, if members request absolute confidentiality because location, vessel, or operational details would make identification possible, SIGTTO will not mention the incident publicly at all. Instead, it will incorporate the lessons learned directly into future guidance development without any disclosure whatsoever.

Underpinning this technical agenda is a deliberate evolution in how SIGTTO communicates. The Society is adopting audio-visual methods, recently launching a video on its website, and plans to use webinars to ensure safety bulletins reach junior officers and terminal staff more effectively.

From policy neutrality to technical agility

Environmental performance is now a central operational requirement, though SIGTTO maintains a strictly neutral, non-advocacy stance on policy. Mr Weverbergh makes it clear that SIGTTO is not leading on decarbonisation target setting, carbon pricing, or market-based measures; instead, its strategic mission remains anchored in the safety and operational feasibility of implementing those regulations.

He, however, is clear that the transition from Environmental Committee to Environmental Advisory Group represents more than a name change. “It signals a fundamental shift from administrative process to technical agility. The streamlined 16-member Environmental Advisory Group now provides direct technical expertise to the Board, General Purposes Committee, and the Secretariat, offering a flexible forum for members and experts to exchange perspectives on environmental regulations affecting gas shipping and terminal operations.”

SIGTTO’s guidance now emphasises emissions quantification over default values, reflecting the Society’s conviction that precise measurement is both a commercial and environmental imperative. This discipline is supported by compelling evidence. Mr Weverbergh cites a 2025 Rystad Energy study, Well-to-Tank Emissions Assessment 2025 – GHG Emissions Study on the Use of LNG as a Marine Fuel, which posits that ships using cargo as fuel achieve a well-to-wake greenhouse gas value approximately 15% lower than IGF Code ships consuming bunkered LNG as fuel. This reduction stems from avoided upstream transport, transfer, storage and bunkering emissions, as well as improved energy integration across the supply chain.

For operators, this gap between measured performance and default emissions factors represents both a commercial opportunity and a competitive imperative: those who quantify precisely can prove superior environmental performance and may benefit from differentiated default emissions factors under future IMO LCA Guidelines, while those relying on generic estimates may be over-reporting their carbon footprint and missing operational improvements.

"Whatever you measure, you manage," Mr Weverbergh noted. "It’s a matter of understanding what’s going on and then being able to tackle exactly where and what the problem is."

Navigating new fuel risks

As the industry evaluates ammonia as a zero-emissions fuel, Mr Weverbergh, drawing on his experience as a captain who transported ammonia as cargo, urges calculated caution. "The toxicity is very real. It is absolutely a risk that needs to be considered and mitigated," he said. His confidence that the industry will meet the challenge stems from observing that pioneering companies possess deep operational knowledge, "They absolutely know what it is to have ammonia inside the compressor room, which is also an enclosed space, and can therefore take these lessons learned when designing their systems for the engineroom." SIGTTO’s interim guidelines, currently in development, will support this transition by ensuring companies without legacy ammonia experience can benefit from the sector’s accumulated expertise.

This risk-based approach also informs the society’s work on critical equipment and spare parts. A dedicated working group is identifying safety-critical components for dual-fuel systems, ensuring that auxiliary systems, traditionally built for liquid fuel, are robust enough for high-pressure gas operations. "The working group is looking at the entire system holistically and understanding: are we missing out a risk that hasn’t been identified earlier with these new engine systems?" Mr Weverbergh explained. The focus is not necessarily on increasing budgets, but on understanding whether the industry has truly considered the full operational implications of the transition.

Strategic outcomes and the ‘moment of truth’

Mr Weverbergh identified five ‘top events’ that define SIGTTO’s safety case: grounding, collision, fire or explosion in non-cargo areas, loss of containment, and loss of position. These aren’t theoretical categories; they represent the focus of current working groups. For instance, the dedicated group examining safety-critical spare parts ensures that operators understand whether increased usage of components like air compressors in gas fuel systems creates previously unidentified risks. Another group is examining mooring reliability as bunkering operations expand and as new fuel types, such as ammonia, introduce additional operational complexity. There is currently no dedicated working group on mooring reliability; instead, this topic is addressed within the MEG4 publication issued by OCIMF. "However, the LNG industry has traditionally maintained a robust process for analysing mooring and manifold compatibility between assets. This process was developed in detail to ensure efficient and safe mooring for large-scale LNG carriers, and it now serves as a reference for small-scale gas carriers as well."

The moment of truth for the current strategy will be its ability to provide barriers that prevent these incidents or mitigate their outcomes. "If we can demonstrate that we have issued relevant guidance that will help the safe and environmentally responsible operations of the industry," Mr Weverbergh concluded, "then my tenure will have been successful."

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