<\/p>\n
Insurers will only be willing to cover ships sailing through a proposed corridor to get Ukrainian grain out if there are arrangements for international navy escorts and a clear strategy to deal with sea mines, underwriters and brokers say.<\/p>\n
Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations are expected to sign a deal later this week aimed at resuming the shipping of grain from Ukraine across the Black Sea.<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s ports have been closed since Russia’s invasion in February, which Moscow calls a “special military operation”, with marine insurers based in Lloyd’s of London and the wider London commercial insurance market awaiting more assurances given the potential losses involved with every ship.<\/p>\n
Insurance for the ships would be possible “if a sensible solution were offered”, said Rory Colacicchi, a partner at insurance broker McGill and Partners.<\/p>\n
“There would have to be escorts, mine sweepers, so an underwriter could say ‘that’s given us the satisfaction that it’s not just a gamble’. At the moment, that’s just a gamble, you wouldn’t be able to go.”<\/p>\n
An acceptable escort could be provided by joint Ukrainian and Russian ships, or by the United Nations or a neutral power such as Turkey, insurance sources said.<\/p>\n
An aide to mine sweeping could be the use of satellite technology to identify the locations of the mines, said a marine war insurer who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.<\/p>\n
Countries such as the United States, Britain or France may have that technology, the insurer added.<\/p>\n
The initial problem is that there are over 80 ships stuck in Ukraine – many with cargoes onboard including grain – which need to get out before new ships can go in, sources said.<\/p>\n
A second UK-based broker, who declined to be named, said his firm had worked to get an “insurance framework” in place for a ship willing to go into Ukraine to bring out grain, once a corridor is in place.<\/p>\n
“The client is on standby to go in from a humanitarian perspective,” the broker said.<\/p>\n
Additional premiums charged to go into the broader Black Sea area have dropped, reflecting more confidence to provide insurance since February, industry sources said.<\/p>\n
The additional premiums paid to go into Black Sea waters have dropped to 2% of the value of the ship from 5% shortly after the invasion, said Marcus Baker, global head of marine at broker Marsh.<\/p>\n
(Reuters – Reporting by Carolyn Cohn and Jonathan Saul, editing by Sinead Cruise and David Evans)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Insurers will only be willing to cover ships sailing through a proposed corridor to get Ukrainian grain out if there are arrangements for international navy escorts and a clear strategy to deal with sea mines, underwriters and brokers say. Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations are expected to sign a deal later this week …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/30866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}