Yesterday, I published a critique of the Transportation Institute’s claim that foreign ships operating under the current Jones Act waiver are unsafe, noting that these ships have lower rates of deficiency findings in US Coast Guard inspections than the domestic Jones Act fleet. This prompted a rebuttal, the centerpiece of which is that international Port State Control (PSC) inspections—the basis for its claims that foreign ships are dangerous—and domestic US Coast Guard Certificate of Inspection (COI) exams aren’t comparable systems.
That’s a fair point worth engaging honestly. It doesn’t, however, rescue the group’s original argument.
Even Conceding the Point Changes Nothing
TI’s core objection is that Coast Guard COI exams of US ships and its Port State Control inspections of foreign vessels are not equivalent and that COI findings can include administrative items that have no PSC equivalent (for example, a vessel’s upholstered furniture being cited for lacking a specific Coast Guard approval number, even though the vessel had already filed a request asking the Coast Guard to accept it as equivalent that was still pending review). That’s true, but it also doesn’t matter much.
Running every domestic Jones Act tanker deficiency through a test for items describing an equivalency request under review with no accompanying description of a physical defect finds 11, all of which apply to a single vessel (American Energy, the ship with the highest deficiency count at 22). Running the same test against the waiver fleet’s inspection record returns zero, confirming that the category is not only unique to the domestic system but also concentrated entirely on a single ship.
Stripping these administrative items out entirely leaves the domestic Jones Act tanker deficiency rate unchanged at 46 percent, versus the waiver fleet’s 27.6 percent. None of the 23 Jones Act tankers with deficiencies were flagged for paperwork reasons alone, with each also having equipment or safety findings. The severity gap narrows somewhat, but the basic result holds.
The Asymmetry Doesn’t Explain the Difference
TI argues that COI exams and PSC inspections aren’t comparable because of who conducts them and the processes each follows. As TI puts it, PSC inspections “are conducted by independent foreign governments,” while COI findings are part of “an ongoing compliance process” and “are not enforcement actions by a foreign sovereign.”
That distinction doesn’t obviously cut in TI’s favor, though. A PSC inspection is typically a discrete examination during a single port call, and some deficiencies may have to be fixed before the ship can depart. In contrast, a flag administration examining its own vessel can revisit the same finding over an extended period, such as through deadline extensions, mitigation plans, and equivalency reviews. American Energy’s record, for example, shows exactly that, with equivalency requests extending from an original deadline into November, resolution letters issued weeks apart, and mitigation plans adjusted while waiting on parts. A finding that remains unresolved through such an extended process is difficult to dismiss as inherently less meaningful than one identified during a single PSC boarding.
If Jones Act tankers still post a higher deficiency rate within a system that allows this much continuing review, that asymmetry doesn’t explain away the domestic fleet’s higher recorded rate.
There’s No PSC Baseline for Jones Act Ships
Jones Act tankers operate in domestic trade and—outside, perhaps, the odd voyage to Japan with Alaskan oil—are essentially never subject to PSC, which only applies to a foreign authority inspecting a visiting vessel. In other words, TI has been highlighting a PSC violation rate for the waiver fleet with no comparison point in the domestic fleet. Providing that comparison required using domestic Coast Guard data that TI now says isn’t comparable. TI’s objection, taken to its logical conclusion, is that its own metric can’t be benchmarked against anything. That’s an argument against TI’s original claim, not a defense.
It’s worth being precise about what TI’s response actually accomplishes. Even granting every objection it raises, it only shows that the comparison I used has limitations—not that TI’s original claim has been established. Those are different propositions, and TI’s response only addresses the first. Indeed, once the administrative findings TI identifies are removed, the domestic tanker deficiency rate remains unchanged, as shown above.
If TI rejects the domestic Coast Guard data as an invalid comparison, it is left without any meaningful basis for concluding that vessels operating under the waiver are unusually unsafe. Even if the comparison I used isn’t ideal, TI still hasn’t substantiated its original claim.
I’d genuinely like to see a comparison that TI considers more appropriate. Thus far, it hasn’t offered one.
