Loading…
Vetting is the oil and chemical major's equivalent of port-state control — a private inspection process that determines whether a vessel is acceptable to carry a charterer's cargo or call at their terminal. Two regimes dominate: SIRE for tankers (including gas and chemical carriers) and RightShipfor dry bulk. Both sit entirely outside IMO treaty law yet have a more immediate commercial impact on a ship's ability to trade than almost any statutory inspection.
A vessel with a poor SIRE report or a low RightShip rating will be rejected by major charterers. A single vetting failure can strand a ship for weeks while deficiencies are rectified and a re-inspection arranged. For the crew, this means that every preparation drill, every procedural record, and every interaction with an inspector is financially significant to the owner — and a poor result reflects directly on the shipboard management team.
The Ship Inspection Report Programme (SIRE) is operated by the Oil Companies International Marine Forum (OCIMF). It replaced the Vessel Inspection Questionnaire 7 (VIQ7) regime in September 2024 with a fundamentally different philosophy: SIRE 2.0 is built around behavioural competence rather than hardware checklists. Inspectors assess whether officers and ratings actually understand their procedures and can demonstrate competence under questioning — not merely whether paperwork is in order or equipment is present.
Key structural changes in SIRE 2.0:
The Tanker Management Self-Assessment (TMSA) is an OCIMF programme in which tanker operators self-assess their safety management systems against 13 elements, each with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and four compliance levels (1 = basic through 4 = best practice). Companies submit their TMSA to OCIMF, which makes the submission available to subscribing oil majors who use it as a pre-qualification screening tool. TMSA 4 is the current edition; it added dedicated elements on cyber security and energy management.
Compliance Level 1 means the minimum documented element is in place. Level 4 means a proactive, self-improving management system with demonstrable best-practice benchmarking and external verification. Most major oil-company vetting programmes require operators to be at Level 3 or above in critical elements before accepting their vessels.
Senior management commitment to safety and environmental protection; company policy; objectives and performance targets.
Competence, training and development of shore-based staff with safety and environmental responsibilities.
Recruitment procedures; STCW compliance; familiarisation; rotation; performance appraisal; competence assurance.
Planned maintenance system; critical equipment identification; class compliance; defect reporting and close-out.
Voyage planning; passage execution; ECDIS; bridge procedures; pilot boarding and interaction; near-miss reporting.
Cargo handling procedures; loading computer; ballast water management; mooring standards; anchoring practice.
Formal MOC process for changes to vessels, equipment, personnel, and procedures — preventing incidents from unmanaged change.
Root-cause investigation; near-miss and accident reporting; lessons-learned dissemination fleet-wide; trend analysis.
Risk assessment; permit-to-work; enclosed-space entry; LOTO; hot work; working at height; safety meetings; safety officer.
MARPOL compliance; oil record book; garbage management; ballast water; sewage; air emissions; CII management.
Drills; muster lists; emergency response plans; shore-based emergency team; pandemic planning; cyber incident response.
KPI setting and monitoring; internal audit; management review; benchmarking; continuous improvement cycle.
ISPS compliance; Ship Security Plan; SSO training; access control; piracy / armed robbery contingency plans.
RightShip is a digital maritime vetting platform owned by BHP, Rio Tinto, and Cargill, now operating as a standalone entity. It assigns every inspected dry-bulk vessel (and increasingly, other vessel types) a star rating from 1 to 5 stars, where 5 stars is the safest. The rating combines inspection findings, port-state control detentions, class status, age, previous incidents, and owner/manager safety record.
Major dry-cargo charterers — particularly the iron-ore and coal majors — will typically not accept vessels below 3 stars. A vessel that drops to 1 or 2 stars due to detentions or a poor RightShip inspection may find itself unable to fix any cargo in the spot market until the rating improves. RightShip also maintains a "GHG Rating" (A–G) for carbon efficiency, which is increasingly used by environmentally focused charterers.
The Dry Bulk Management Standard (DryBMS), introduced in 2022 by BIMCO, INTERCARGO, and RightShip, is the dry-bulk sector's equivalent of TMSA. It provides a structured self-assessment framework for bulker operators covering the same broad categories as TMSA — safety management, navigational safety, cargo handling, maintenance, environmental compliance, and crew management. Operators submit DryBMS self-assessments to the RightShip platform; high DryBMS scores positively influence the RightShip star rating.
For crew, a SIRE 2.0 or RightShip inspection is a managed event — preparation is intensive, typically beginning 48 hours before the inspector boards. The duty officer will be questioned directly; the ability to explain the "why" behind a procedure, not merely follow it mechanically, is what SIRE 2.0 now tests. Drill records, permit-to-work logs, safety meeting minutes, and maintenance records must be current and physically available for inspection. A single serious observation — a bypassed safety device, an officer who cannot explain the ECDIS watchkeeping plan, an incorrect entry in the oil record book — can result in a "negative SIRE" report that affects the vessel's trading position for months.