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The International Group of P&I Clubs finalized its reinsurance arrangements for the 2026/27 policy year, effective from noon on 20 February 2026. Four of the five vessel categories got a rate reduction. One did not. Fully cellular container ships went up 15 percent, to $1.0237 per gross ton. Persistent oil tankers fell 8 percent, dry cargo fell 5 percent, passenger vessels fell 8.5 percent, and clean tankers were held flat. For a container operator, that is a cost increase ar

A hoist motor on a ship-to-shore crane burns out. A compressor in a refrigerated warehouse seizes on a Friday night. A transformer feeding a bulk conveyor system arcs and fails. In each case the equipment is destroyed, the operation stops, and the commercial property policy does not respond. Not because of a limit, a deductible, or a coverage dispute, but because the property form excludes the cause of loss by design. Equipment breakdown coverage fills that gap. It is inexpen

Six months into the conflict, the marine insurance market has a number. David Osler, law and marine insurance editor at Lloyd's List, puts war risk claims arising from the fighting at roughly $2 billion across more than 70 filings. On his assessment it is exceeded, over the past decade, only by the payouts arising from the containership that brought down the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in 2024. The International Maritime Organization has recorded more than 72 attack

Most maritime companies in the United States are privately held. Family towing operations, regional barge lines, terminal companies, shipyards, forwarders, and single-vessel owners. No public shareholders, no securities filings, and frequently no formal board beyond the people who own the business. The common assumption in that setting is that directors and officers liability insurance is something public companies buy to satisfy investors. It is not. Private company leadersh

For a terminal operator, warehouse, or forwarder, revenue can stop overnight while costs carry on. Rent, equipment leases, payroll, and financing do not pause because a fire closed your facility or a windstorm took the roof off. Business interruption coverage exists to bridge exactly that gap, and for an operation with high fixed costs it is frequently the difference between a difficult year and a closed business. It is also the coverage most often bought at the base level an

A tank barge on the Lower Mississippi carrying 30,000 barrels of product is, in insurance terms, a modest asset. The hull value is a fraction of a deepsea tanker. The crew is small. The trade is domestic and familiar. The pollution exposure attached to it is not modest, it is not limited to the value of the barge, and under a set of circumstances that are considerably easier to trigger than most operators assume, it is not limited at all. This article covers how the Oil Pollu

Somewhere in your hull policy there is a figure. It was probably set when the vessel was acquired, adjusted once or twice since, and has not been examined closely in years. That number is not an administrative detail. It determines what you are paid if the vessel is lost, whether a casualty counts as a total loss at all, whether you are forced to repair a boat that is not worth repairing, and how much cover you can lawfully buy elsewhere. It is one of the few genuinely strate

A container ship catches fire in the Arabian Sea. Your cargo is in a hold that never burned, on a vessel you do not own, in a casualty you had nothing to do with. Weeks later you receive a demand for 54 percent of the value of your goods before anyone will release them. That is not a mistake and it is not extortion. It is general average, one of the oldest surviving principles in commercial law, and the demand is enforceable. For cargo interests it is the single most surprisi

The International WorkBoat Show returns to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans December 2-4. More than 1,000 exhibitors, upwards of 13,000 attendees, and the one US trade event where the inland, harbor towing, and offshore support segments all show up in the same building. Nord Young will be there. Not exhibiting this year, just walking the floor. The conference program has not been fully published yet, so this is a preview of the exhibit floor rather than a

[Chattogram Coastal Road Photo by Samina Khondkar - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=148921351] On the morning of August 14, workers at the Ferdous Steel yard in Sitakunda, Bangladesh, were cutting an opening in the bottom of a ballast tank aboard a beached LNG carrier. Hydrogen sulphide escaped. Two men died where they stood. Seven more died in hospital. Among the dead was Motiur Rahaman, aged 17. Another was Abdul Alim Sujon, a safety

On August 17, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted the federal permit authorizing construction of the Louisiana International Terminal at Violet in St. Bernard Parish, on the Lower Mississippi River downriver from New Orleans. The permit clears the last major regulatory hurdle for what Port NOLA describes as the only new greenfield container port currently under development in the United States. Construction is expected to take five years. The projected investment is roug

On July 19, 2024, a deckhand named among the five crew aboard the towing vessel Miss Peggy drowned in the galley of his own boat after it was struck from behind and rolled over in the Houston Ship Channel. Four of his shipmates got out. He did not. The National Transportation Safety Board released its investigation report on August 6, 2026. It runs 92 pages, and the finding at the center of it is one that every safety manager in the industry should read carefully, because it