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Sanctions compliance in shipping has never run on a single rulebook. The U.S., UK, and EU maintain separate designations, separate prohibitions, and separate licensing mechanisms, even when their policy objectives align. Operators have managed that by working to the strictest applicable restriction and treating the regimes as broadly convergent. October has made the differences commercially sharp, and it has produced numbers that measure them. On 19 October, U.S. Energy Secre

[Amended 10/14/2026] A tug is assisting a loaded barge into a berth. The tug’s master misjudges the approach, the barge strikes the dock, and there is damage to the barge, the dock, and the cargo. Who pays turns on the governing law, the form of contract, and how the parties allocated risk before the job started. International towage has settled on an allocation that the U.S. Supreme Court declared void as a matter of public policy in 1955 and has never retreated from. What U

[Amended 10/26/16] [On 23 October the administration proposed extending the suspension of port fees on China-linked vessels by a further two months, pushing the expiry from 10 November into January 2027. They are now taking comments.] On 10 November 2025, the United States and China each suspended the port fee regimes they had imposed on one another’s shipping. The suspension runs twelve months. It expires on 10 November 2026, which is roughly five weeks from now, and there i

A voyage charter gives the charterer a fixed period to load and discharge. Use less and the owner may owe despatch. Use more and the charterer owes demurrage. Between those two outcomes sits a calculation that is arithmetically simple and legally treacherous, and most disputes turn on which hours counted rather than on how the addition was done. The Laytime Definitions for Charter Parties 2013 define laytime as the period of time agreed between the parties during which the ow