by Christopher Hannan | Apr 25, 2017
Following up on its landmark 2014 decision in Coffin v. Blessey Marine Servs., Inc., 771 F.3d 276 (5th Cir. 2014), previously reported here on Striding the Quarterdeck, which concerned the applicability to tankerman of the seaman exclusion to the overtime wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (29 U.S.C. §§201-21, “FLSA”), the Fifth Circuit has held in Halle v. Galliano Marine Serv., L.L.C., — F.3d —, 2017 WL 1399697 (5th Cir. Apr. 19, 2017) that remotely operated vehicle (ROV) technicians aboard offshore oilfield support vessels are not seaman for purposes of the FLSA, and thus are entitled to overtime pay as provided in the FLSA. Unlike the result in Coffin, in which tankerman (crew members responsible/trained for loading/unloading of liquid cargoes from tank barges) were held to be FLSA seaman and thus exempt from from the overtime coverage of the FLSA, the ROV technicians in Halle were held to be non-seaman and thus entitled to overtime. (more…)
by Christopher Hannan | Apr 4, 2017
Once your comrades have rowed you beyond those creatures I cannot advise you of the best course to take. I will tell you the choice, but you must decide. One leads to sheer cliffs, against which green-eyed Amphitrite hurls her vast roaring breakers, the blessed gods call them the Wandering Rocks. Not even birds can pass between them unscathed, not even the timorous rock-doves that bring ambrosia to Father Zeus. The slippery rock always takes one, and Zeus must send another to complete their number. Crews that reach the rocks can never escape, instead ships’ timbers and human corpses are tossed by the waves or in gushers of cruel fire.
-Homer, Odyssey Book XII, trans. A.S. Kline (more…)
by Christopher Hannan | Mar 16, 2017
In a sweeping move that has been widely and vociferously praised by supporters and passionately decried by opponents, the Customs and Border Patrol Agency (CBP) on the second-to-last day of the Obama administration’s tenure, issued a “General Notice” in its weekly “Customs Bulletins and Decisions” publication (dated January 18, 2017) proposing the in globo revocation of prior CBP (and/or its predecessor entities’) rulings – some specified in the Notice, others merely generally referenced – issued over the last nearly forty years concerning the coastwise carriage of oilfield equipment/materials (i.e. from U.S. ports to coastwise points on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS)) by foreign-flagged, non-Jones Act/non-coastwise eligible vessels in the Gulf of Mexico oilfield. This proposed change, which hinges on whether such equipment/materials qualify as “vessel equipment” under applicable regulations and prior CBP rulings, would affect what has developed over the years into a niche fleet of specialized foreign flag vessels used in the Gulf of Mexico for deepsea and subsea construction and maintenance projects – i.e. pipelay vessels, heavy-lift vessels, and IRM (inspection/repair/maintenance) vessels used for construction/decommissioning of offshore facilities, laying/maintenance of pipelines, and similar deep-water projects. (more…)
by Christopher Hannan | Mar 6, 2017
Following on this week’s series regarding the new batch of four USCG-BSEE MOUs, this post will discuss the fourth, concerning safety systems.
Perhaps one of the most confounding and critical areas of overlap between the USCG and BSEE has been in the competing/complementary Safety and Environmental Management System (SEMS) regulations issued by BSEE at 30 C.F.R. Subchapter B, Subpart S and the USCG’s general vessel safety regulations throughout 46 C.F.R. and – more particularly – the Safety Management System regulations issued at 33 C.F.R. Subchapter F, which apply to many vessels operating on the OCS (pursuant to 46 U.S.C. §§3201 et seq.). Whether a vessel operator might have to comply with both BSEE’s SEMS regulations and/or the USCG’s separate (potentially conflicting) safety regulations and/or SMS requirements has always presented a potential compliance conundrum. In fact, the USCG has even formally suggested (via a notice of proposed rulemaking) simply adopting BSEE’s SEMS regulations for all “vessels engaged in OCS activities” in an effort to avoid this conundrum. (more…)
by Christopher Hannan | Mar 3, 2017
Following on this week’s series regarding the new batch of four USCG-BSEE MOUs, this post will discuss the third, concerning incident reporting.
Hand in glove with the civil penalties and SEMS/SMS MOUs (the latter to be discussed in the last post in this series) – each of which focuses on specifically divvying up the shared regulatory spaces between the USCG and BSEE – the agencies have made an effort in the third of the January 2017 MOUs to formalize the in-the-field application of these newly divvied-up responsibilities by formalizing each agency’s incident investigation responsibilities. (more…)
