At the 511th Meeting of the Collegiate Board of Directors held on October 20, 2021, ANTAQ (the national waterway transport agency) approved the standard that regulates ship-to-ship transshipment operations. The objective was to eliminate the regulatory gap present in the economic regulation of transshipment, or cargo transfer operations between vessels, specifically for combustible liquid bulk (oil and its derivatives, natural gas, and biofuels). The agency had received several regulatory inquiries seeking clarification on the legislation linked to the authorization of support vessels for this type of operation. The initial proposal considered the need to regulate the transshipment activity by obtaining authorization from ANTAQ in order to avoid possible competition risks. However, when analyzing the impacts that stricter regulation could cause, the Agency’s Collegiate Board recognized that there is currently no regulatory problem that justifies going into specific aspects of regulation, and the intention, initially, will be to monitor and understand the universe of this market to seek regulatory improvement and the subsequent increased performance of the regulatory agency.
Source: Datamar News