The International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA) has issued a firm rebuttal of claims made in the US about recently proposed legislation that would shake up the offshore oil and gas and renewable energy industries
IMCA’s statements relate to proposed legislative amendments called the American Offshore Worker Fairness Act, that would dramatically change citizenship crewing requirements for vessels engaged in offshore energy support operations on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of the US.
More than 100 executives from around the US marine industry recently sent a letter to US Senator Bill Cassidy, MD (R-LA), US Representative Garret Graves (R-LA) and US Representative John Garamendi (D-CA) thanking the trio for introducing S 3705/HR 6728, the American Offshore Worker Fairness Act.
The letter claimed that the American Offshore Worker Fairness Act “will provide parity between US-flagged and foreign-flagged vessels operating in US offshore energy activities and ensure US energy creation means US jobs.” The letter was signed by executives including vessel operators, shipyards, suppliers, and their trade associations.
Offshore Marine Service Association (OMSA) president and chief executive Aaron Smith said, “It is clear all those who work in the US maritime industry understand our mariners, shipyard workers, and other professionals are second to none, but they can’t complete with foreign counterparts that are paid second-rate wages.”
OMSA and other bodies in the US claim that the American Offshore Worker Fairness Act will close a loophole in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) intended to promote the hiring of US offshore workers in US offshore energy activities while ensuring workers had access to offshore energy work in foreign waters.
“This loophole – while well-intentioned – has not provided reciprocal access to foreign waters for US mariners or companies but has allowed foreign companies with foreign workers from any nation to work on US offshore energy projects paying wage rates far below those commanded by American mariners,” OMSA claimed.
IMCA said the legislative changes “would undermine a regulatory scheme that has served the offshore energy industry well for decades,” creating a crew citizenship and visa technical trade barrier that would derail offshore infrastructure development and adversely affect the energy security of the US.
“We have seen similar proposals in the past that were rightly defeated after lawmakers were educated by IMCA and its industry partners on the fact,” said IMCA. “IMCA looks forward to lawmakers making a similar judgement this year given the criticality of the emerging offshore wind energy market and return of the oil and gas markets.”
IMCA says HR 6728 would impose burdensome new citizenship-based restrictions on crews of foreign-flag vessels that work on offshore energy projects on the US OCS. These projects provide critical domestic energy resources.
“Vessels use trained crews from all over the world, and these proposed restrictions would effectively break an international regulatory system which has worked well for decades,” said IMCA. “This bill would disrupt critical domestic energy supplies by derailing infrastructure work supporting both the oil and gas sector and the rapidly emerging offshore wind industry.
“The proposed new bureaucratic obstacles for foreign vessel crews would run afoul of long-accepted principles of international law, comity, and reciprocity, and would substantially deter and delay growth of the offshore renewables sector.
“This would effectively shut down any possibility of meeting the targets set by the Biden Administration for offshore wind power and would not yield any security benefits or economic advantages for the US. In fact, it would serve to weaken US energy production at a time of unparalleled global instability.”
The proposed legislation would require and have the following impacts. Firstly, it would require mariners on foreign-flagged vessels to be either US citizens, permanent residents (green card holders), or citizens of the nation of the flag state of the vessel, in contravention of longstanding international principles that regulation and credentialling of crews are matters under the sovereign control of vessels’ flag states.
Secondly, it would limit the number of visas that could be issued to crew of each foreign vessel to 2.5 times of the crew complement, creating problematic new administrative burdens for the US Coast Guard, State Department, and owners of foreign-flag vessels with no identifiable benefits to US interests.
Thirdly, it would require foreign vessels to prove their ownership on an annual basis when less burdensome approaches to compliance are available.
It would also require the US Coast Guard to inspect all such foreign vessels annually to ensure compliance with this law, unnecessarily taxing Coast Guard resources and creating an unfunded mandate without a corresponding homeland security or safety benefit and it would impose an unworkable requirement that all crew members on these vessels carry TWIC cards from the US Department of Homeland Security, despite the lack of any precedent or security need for mandating TWIC cards on foreign-flag vessels in such circumstances.
IMCA said the legislation “is not calibrated to improve the safety, security, or efficiency of the offshore energy sector, rather, it seems tailored to cause maximum operational disruption to both the wind and oil and gas sectors, in a misguided effort to drive critically needed global service providers away from the US market.
“The result of the bill would not be the boom to the US energy or maritime sector that proponents might imagine. Rather, these new regulatory barriers would only have the effect of driving investment, expertise, and projects away from the US, particularly noteworthy in view of President Biden’s goal of increasing the offshore wind sector by 2030 and recent international developments in Eastern Europe.
“In addition, imposing such restrictions on foreign-flag vessels would likely result in direct retaliation from other countries countering with imposing restrictions on US-flag vessels servicing energy projects on the OCS of foreign countries, further decimating the growth and employment of the US offshore fleet.
“There is no loophole to close and key aspects of the current proposal would create a technical trade barrier that would not only fail to enhance safety, security, efficiency, or compliance, but rather would ultimately cripple US energy projects, employment, growth and security, profoundly undermining the energy security of the US,” IMCA concluded.
“However, the industry stands ready to work with Congress and the Coast Guard to discuss practical updates to improve efficiency and compliance with the current system, such as certifications and renewals to ensure existing exemptions are up to date and valid, closer co-operation with the Coast Guard on compliance checks, and supporting additional resources for programme administration.”
Riviera Maritime Media will provide free technical and operational webinars in 2022. Sign up to attend on our events page
© 2023 Riviera Maritime Media Ltd.