George Naumof
Senior inspector
Romanian Naval Authority
Dear Professor Erik Rosaeg,
After reading the Mr. David Bolomini’s letters (13 and 16 August) and your comments (15 August), I come again with some considerations.
I had a separate correspondence with Mr David Bolomini on this issue and I expressed to him more detailed my judgment. I understood very well his opinion and I said that he is right if we look from the HNS Fund point of view (that quantities which actually do not bring real levies for the Fund are not relevant quantities), but because the reports are drawn by the States Parties, I cannot share his opinion.
In my opinion, a State Party could not assume “a priori” that each seller or buyer of LNG cargo which is not from a State Party rejects automatically to pay the contribution and therefore, to not include its LNG cargo in the list of relevant cargo transmitted to IMO Secretary General or HNS Fund Director.
The
criterion Mr. David Bolomini took into consideration, that could be possible
that a titleholder from a non State Party not to pay the contribution and
therefore not to consider as relevant the quantities of LNG discharged in a
State Party, in my opinion has no support in the provisions of the HNS
Convention.
The
same uncertainty we could have and in the case of every other person liable to
pay contributions, who, of course, is from a State Party. How a State Party
could support the HNS Fund in the case of a receiver which, the day after
receiving a relevant quantity of HNS cargo (or the day after the State Party
sent the report to HNS Fund) dissolves and at the date when HNS Fund will issue
the invoice for the contribution, this legal person does not more exist? How to
avoid that this example to become a general behavior of such companies dealing
with the receiving of HNS cargoes? If we agree that this behavior could exist,
then we have to consider that each HNS cargo received in a State Party is not a
relevant quantity to be included in the report(s).
May be I exercise on this issue more than is necessary and, if this is the case, I apologize.
Best wishes,
George Naumof
Bucuresti, 16 August 2007