Claiming for demurrage

In a dramatic reversal of the judgment of Mr Justice Field at first instance (see National Shipping Co of Saudi Arabia v BP Oil Supply Co [2010] EWHC 3043 (Comm)), the Court of Appeal has held that a period counting as laytime or demurrage but which shipowners originally treated as a different category of claim could be considered a claim for demurrage – where all documents had been submitted in time, it was not defeated by the 90-day contractual time bar.

Johanna Hjalmarsson

The facts

The owners of the vessel Abqaiq, the National Shipping Co of Saudi Arabia, agreed pursuant to a charterparty on BPVOY4 form dated 29 January 2008 with the charterers, BP Oil Supply Co, to perform with their vessel a single cargo-carrying voyage from Freeport Bahamas to Singapore. The cargo was to be dirty petroleum products. At Freeport an incident occurred which owners at the time took to be an interruption of laytime. A ship-to-ship transfer of a parcel of cargo was to be carried out, but due to circumstances attributable to charterers, the two suitable berths were not available at the same time which caused a delay.