Graduating from Galati University in 1980, Dragos Rauta worked for a local shipyard before joining Icepronav in 1983. There, he became part of the team that started up its new towing tank in cooperation with Mitsui Shipbuilding & Heavy Industries from Japan.
Difficult living conditions under the former communist regime and the Chernobyl nuclear accident compelled Dragos and his wife to relocate to Norway with their newborn child. In 1990, Dragos was hired by INTERTANKO, an Oslo-based international trade organisation representing independent owners of oil, chemical and gas carriers. INTERTANKO required naval architecture expertise to support the development and implementation of double-hull requirements following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.
Dragos stayed with INTERTANKO for 33 years, serving as its Technical Director from 2000. Except for three years establishing INTERTANKO’s US office in Washington, D.C., he remained in Norway, where he was actively involved in fundamental changes to how ships are designed and operated for increased safety and environmental protection. These included enhanced survey rules, stricter coating requirements, Common Structural Rules and more recent initiatives known in the industry as EEDI, EEOI, EEXI and CII. The tanker sector, formerly regarded as the black sheep of the international shipping industry, is now one of its safest.
Dragos has been an active member of several prominent committees dealing with ship safety, including with DNV, the Korean Registry, SNAME, NACE and IACS, and he has been a visiting professor at the Dalian Maritime University in China. Now retired, he is retained by INTERTANKO as a part-time consultant.
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Dragos Rauta, Icepronav alumnus and former Technical Director of INTERTANKO.
