COSTA CONCORDIA LOSS COULD BREACH $2BN, WARNS AGCS BOSS SCHEFFEL

Political pressures have been one factor in increasing the costs associated with the salvaging of Costa Concordia, which ran aground nearly two years ago, and the final cost could exceed $2bn, warned Carsten Scheffel in an interview with UK newspaper The Independent at the weekend. “Due to the vessel grounding in an environmentally sensitive area the complexity of the wreck removal has added significantly to the costs. At the moment, the overall cost of the incident is in the order of $1.6bn, which may not be the final amount", Mr Scheffel said, noting that “this will be one of the biggest single marine insurance losses in history". Mr Scheffel said that one reason for the enormity of the loss was that cruise ships were getting ever-larger, but David Croome-Johnson of the London arm of US-based mutual Associated Electric & Gas Insurance Services (AEGIS) said that “the increasing cost of removal of large wrecks, such as the Costa Concordia, is fuelled by environmental pressures being applied to politicians and local agencies and the ever-increasing size and scale of vessels and wrecks being removed". He also observed that there had also been a lack of investment in the salvage industry. There was a concern that, for the largest tankers and vessels currently afloat, no equipment existed that could salvage them.