ANNUAL REPORT 1980-81' ANNUAL REPORT 1980-81' INTRODUCTION The Shipping Research Bureau was founded in early 1980 by the Holland Committee on Southern Africa and the Working Group Kairos, two long standing anti-apartheid organizations, based in the Netherlands. The two founding organizations have for many years been actively engaged in attacking the oil link of the western oil majors, Shell in particular, with South Africa. The Working Group Kairos has since 1973 constantly been campaigning on this issue. The Holland Committee on Southern Africa joined then in 1977. From March 1979 the organizations together embarked upon a nationwide campaign for an oil embargo against South Africa and for the withdrawal of all Shell commitments from that country. Few if any statistical sources are available on the trade in crude oil with South Africa, and enormous secrecy surrounds the means whereby South Africa obtains its oil. However by researching and analysing movements of the world's tanker fleet important information can be obtained regarding this trade. The initiative to set up a monitoring unit to investigate the tanker trade with South Africa, was in accordance with the resolution on an oil embargo against South Africa, passed by the Council of Ministers of the Organizationof African Unity in July 1979. Paragraph 1 of resolution 731 explicitly "welcomes proposals for methods of monitoring and cutting down the shipment of oil to South Africa". In March 1980, Amsterdam was the venue of the International Seminar on an Oil Embargo against South Africa, organised by the Holland Committee on Southern Africa and the Working Group Kairos, in close co-operation with the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid. The Seminar was presided by Ambassador B. Akporode Clark of Nigeria, chairman of the Special Committee. One of the concrete recommendations resulting from this seminar was: "The creation of machinery to monitor all oil shipments to South Africa", considered an essential component of an effective oil embargo. With immediate effect, two researchers were assigned by the founding organizations to set up a monitoring unit, named Shipping Research Bureau, and they started their investigations into the tanker trade with South Africa. Setting up this research desk was made possible by generous financial assistance of development cooperation organizations and by donations of church bodies in the Netherlands and abroad. PUBLICATIONS Within half a year of its inception, the Shipping Research Bureau published its first main report, entitled "Oil tankers to South Africa". The 90 page report presented available information on tanker movements to South Africa, mainly from shipping industry sources. It provided a list of 150 tankers which called at Durban or Cape Town between 1 January 1979 and 31 March 1980, and P 0 BOX 11898 AMSTERDAM THE NETHERLANDS TEL020.25130 included information on the identity and nationality of owners, managers and charterers of the tankers involved as well as the ports of call before and after sailing to South Africa. Advance copies of the report were made available to the Chairman of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid in December 1980. He then addressed letters to the Permanent Representatives of countries which, while they voted for General Assembly resolutions on the oil embargo against South Africa, appeared in the report to be involved in oil supplies to South Africa. They were requested to undertake appropriate investigations and encouraged to furnish relevant information and advice. Specific parts of the main report were made public on two occasions. In December 1980, a press conference was staged in Oslo by the Norwegian Council on Southern Africa, where a preliminary extract of the report of the Shipping Research Bureau on the Norwegian connection was published. Similarly, a press conference in The Hague, organised by the founding organizations of the Bureau in January 1981, focussed upon tankers somehow connected with the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles. Both reports received wide coverage in the national press as well as abroad. IMPACT The Shipping Research Bureau report "Oil tankers to South Africa" was a main topic at the Brussels conference of West European parliamentarians on an oil embargo against South Africa, held in February 1981 and organised by the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid. On the basis of the Shipping Research Bureau findings 40 members of Parliament from 11 countries called upon the United Nations Security Council to impose a mandatory oil embargo against South Africa. In March 1981, the report "Oil Tankers to South Africa" as a whole was presented in New York to the Chairman of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid by the Chairman of the Shipping Research Bureau's Board. Simultanious press conferences were organised in New York and in London, where the report was made public, in London through the Anti- Apartheid Movement. In addition, press communiques based upon the findings of the Bureau were issued at the same time in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, in collaboration with the respective national anti-apartheid organizations. Summaries of the main report and of the press releases were translated into Arabic and widely distributed. Again, the results of the investigations of the Shipping Research Bureau were widely covered by the international press, both in newspapers all over the world, and in specialised periodicals of the oil and shipping circles. In a letter of 17 March 1981 to the Board of the Shipping Research Bureau, the Chairman of the United Nations Special Committee, Ambassador B. Akporode Clark expressed his appreciation of the work done by stating: "The Bureau has already, within its first year, fully justified its existence". About this time Ambassador Clark then disclosed a number of replies received from Governments that had earlier been approached by him to react to the findings of the Shipping Research Bureau on the possible involvement of shipping and oil companies based in their respective countries. Some relevant reactions of Governments may be cited here. The Indonesian Government stated that if the Bureau was right in its accusation that a certain company took Indonesian oil to South Africa, "the Government of Indonesia will circulate (the company's) name and that of the broker to all oil companies operating in Indonesia and prohibit them from doing business in Indonesia". The Government of Libya stated that it had decided "to bar from entering Libyan ports and to include in the blacklist", a tanker which the report revealed had called at a South African port for less than one day while en route from Libya to Japan, even though it had delivered no oil during its stop in South Africa. In May 1981 the Government of Liberia publicly issued a statement to the effect that it had proclaimed a decree "to make it illegal for any ship flying the Liberian flag to enter the territorial waters of South Africa. " This was done at the request of the OAU Liberation Committee meeting in Tanzania, where the report of the Bureau was presented by the consultant of the Shipping Research Bureau. The Government of Norway proposed a conference of oilshipping countries (such as Norway) and oil producing countries, to discuss means to stop the movement of embargoed oil to South Africa. At the United Nations sponsored International Conference on Sanctions against South Africa, held in Paris, May 1981, a declaration was adopted which stated that an effective embargo on the supply of petroleum is an essential component to the arms embargo against South Africa. The Paris declaration requests all states concerned to take effective action against corporations and tanker companies involved in the illicit supply of oil to South Africa. In the technical commission of the conference the report for the Shipping Research Bureau was presented and elucidated and another paper presented there, commissioned by the United Nations Centre against Apartheid, was mainly based upon research conducted by the Shipping Research Bureau. Resulting from the great demand by oil and shipping companies, journalists, embassies, universities and other agencies, a second reprint of the report proved necessary. PRESENT ACTIVITIES Since the publication of the report "Oil Tankers to South Africa", the small staff of the Bureau has continued its research. Notwithstanding the greater difficulties faced in obtaining relevant data (because of an increasing clamp down on information by the South African authorities) the Shipping Research Bureau plans to publish another similar report in a few month's time. It will cover a period of one and a half years (1 January 1980 - 1 July 1981), and compared with the first main report, the scope will be widened in two respects. Besides oil tankers as such, the new report will also handle other oil carrying vessels, such as combined carriers (ore/oil, bulk/oil). In addition, apart from Cape Town and Durban, other South African ports are being monitored as well, of which Saldanha Bay is particularly important. Many of the future possibilities of the Shipping Research Bureau depend on the availability of sufficient financial means, which are rather difficult to obtain. -4 In a letter to the Board of the Shipping Research Bureau, the Chairman of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid concluded as follows: "The work of the Bureau must continue and be extended until there is an effective machinery to monitor the oil embargo and punish the culprits. I hope that it will receive the necessary co-operation, as well as material and financial support, towards this end." Amsterdam, January 1982. ANNUAL REPORT 1982 -1983 P.O. Box 11898 1001 GW Amsterdam The Netherlands Phone (020) 251300/270801 Telex 17125 comsa nl ANNUAL REPORT 1982 -1983 P0. Box 11898 1001 GW Amsterdam The Netherlands Phone (020) 251300/270801 Telex 17125 comsa ni REPLBLIC OF SOU Ill AI-ICICA HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY DEBATES (IlANSARD) tIlIRD SLSSION-SE\ EN, I H PARLIAMUNT WEDNESDAY, 9 MARCH 1983 CRUDE OIL SUPPLIES FOR THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA *The MINISTER OF MINERAL AND ENERGY AFFAIRS: I think all hon.