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Gene Ellis

U.S. Ports Seek to Lure Big Ships After Panama Canal Expands - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...fter-panama-canal-expands.html

panamax

shared by Gene Ellis on 10 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • The big ships — known as “Post-Panamax” and even “Super-Post-Panamax” — are already in heavy use worldwide, making up 16 percent of the container fleet but accounting for 45 percent of its capacity, according to a July report by the Army Corps of Engineers.
  • The Port of Virginia, in Norfolk, is ready to receive the big ships today. And New York is also prepared, thanks to a massive dredging project that began 13 years ago.
  • But nearly every port in the game still faces major challenges and expenses —
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Baltimore, which already has a 50-foot channel, has a bottleneck on the land side: the Howard Street tunnel, through which trains have to pass to reach the port, and which is too small to accommodate the double-stacked container cars that are increasingly the standard for rail shipping. The rail line CSX has announced a workaround that could cost hundreds of millions, involving a new yard beyond the tunnel filled with containers brought by truck; the port will load the trains with a single container to get through the tunnel, and the trains can be completed at the yard.
  • The big ships will also come via places beyond Panama: many are expected to come from Southeast Asia through the Suez Canal, and from South America’s eastern ports.
Gene Ellis

As Panama Canal Expands, West Coast Ports Scramble to Keep Big Cargo Vessels - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...cramble-to-keep-big-ships.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Making Everything Shipshape
  • The ports in Tacoma, Seattle, Oakland, Los Angeles, Long Beach and elsewhere offer much shorter sailing times than Gulf Coast and East Coast ports. But for shippers of some goods, the web of logistics, including trucks and railroads, ends up being less expensive if they go through the Panama Canal.
  • While the widened Panama Canal will allow an all-water route for big ships to the East Coast, the project — originally scheduled to open this year — has been plagued with construction delays. And the authorities have yet to announce toll charges for passing ships. In the end, it might be too expensive for some ships to use.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • At the same time, sailing patterns may shift as Asian manufacturing continues to move from China to countries to the south, like Singapore and Vietnam, which are actually closer by sea to East Coast ports through the Suez Canal than to West Coast ports across the Pacific.
  • For trade with China, Prince Rupert’s appeal is proximity. Prince Rupert is two to three days closer than the western coast of the United States, helping ships cut fuel costs.
  • While the railways and truck lines in Canada have a history of labor instability, cargo carriers sailing into the country can avoid taxes levied by the United States government.
Gene Ellis

U.S. Ports Seek to Lure Big Ships After Panama Canal Expands - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...fter-panama-canal-expands.html

u s ports ships panama canal nytimes nytimes com com

shared by Gene Ellis on 21 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • But, he said, containers loaded on the West Coast, which has built up its container yards and highway and rail infrastructure, can outrun those that travel to the East Coast by water, and that can make the difference when speed and dependability are more important than cost alone
  • Besides, he added, costs and fees can shift; Panama can be expected to raise rates for canal passage, and “the railroads are not going to sit idly by” and let the water route undercut their business.
  • After Hurricane Katrina, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi trumpeted plans for a “port of the future” at Gulfport with a 50-foot-deep channel, redirecting some $600 million in federal housing disaster funds on a project he pledged would spur the economy and create bountiful jobs.
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  • To Robert Puentes, a transportation expert at the Brookings Institution, the problem of whether the ports are overbuilding for a Panama payoff is one of planning. “We are the only industrialized country on the planet that doesn’t have a comprehensive freight policy,” he said.
Gene Ellis

U.S. Ports See Costly Delays as Cargo Ships,Volumes Grow - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-ships-volumes-grow-1430340113

u s ports cargo

shared by Gene Ellis on 06 May 15 - No Cached
  • U.S. Ports See Costly Delays as Cargo Ships, Volumes Grow
Gene Ellis

Deepening divide over Elbe dredging | Germany | DW.COM | 19.12.2016 - 0 views

www.dw.com/...a-36833744

Hamburg Ports Shipping

shared by Gene Ellis on 20 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Deepening divide over Elbe dredging
  • The Marco Polo, for example, carries 16,000 containers and has a draft (the vertical distance between waterline and ship's keel) of 16 meters. Given present river depths and tides, such ships can only enter Hamburg at certain times and when not fully loaded.
  • Tidal range is a prime cause for erosion, which previous river dredging, as well as waves generated by passing ships, have exacerbated
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • As the river deepens, more seawater from the North Sea flows at a faster rate towards Hamburg, bringing sediment that builds up on the riverbed. The Hamburg Port Authority dredges the river to counteract the build up, which cost taxpayers 120 million euros ($125 million) in 2015.
  • The two projects amount to an expensive redundancy, Siegert said, with the JadeWeserPort costing $1.6 billion and the Elbe project an additional $940 million. "This is the reason for our protest: They decided on the first port, and now they should coordinate traffic, so that the really large ships can go to Wilhelmshaven or, under certain restrictions, to Hamburg."
Gene Ellis

Shipping Boom: Hamburg's Port Sees Fruits of German Upturn - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...of-german-upturn-a-720267.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 21 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Shipping Boom: Hamburg's Port Sees Fruits of German Upturn
Gene Ellis

Sasol Betting Big on Gas-to-Liquid Plant in U.S. - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...gas-to-liquid-plant-in-us.html

betting plant natural gas

shared by Gene Ellis on 17 Dec 12 - No Cached
    • Gene Ellis
      Gene Ellis on 17 Dec 12
       
      These are areas with lots of natural gas, and little chance of getting it to market, save for liquefication, but even then lacking access to ports.
  • The process is challenging and complex. First a synthetic gas is made from pure oxygen and methane, the main component of natural gas, which is cleansed of sulfur, metals and other impurities, under intense pressure and heat. Then the synthetic gas is put in giant reactors that make a synthetic crude through the Fischer-Tropsch process. The process essentially forces heated synthetic gas to react with a catalyst, typically cobalt, to convert into a liquid hydrocarbon. Finally that liquid is refined into one fuel or another. The process is far more complex than that at a typical refinery, so the plant is much more expensive to build and operate. Alfred Luaces, a refining specialist at the consultancy IHS, said a conventional oil refinery could be built for $50,000 per barrel of capacity, less than half of what Sasol says it is willing to spend on the proposed Louisiana plant.
  • Sasol is building a gas-to-liquids plant in Uzbekistan with the Malaysian oil company Petronas. It is working with Chevron to build another plant in Nigeria.
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  • Rick Manner, a vice president at consultancy KBC Advanced Technologies who has contributed to gas-to-liquids studies for Sasol and other companies, estimated that the projects must keep capital costs at $100,000 for every barrel a day of production capacity to be worthwhile economically at current prices of about $100 a barrel for oil and $4 per thousand cubic feet for natural gas.
  • Mr. Louw, Sasol’s Qatar president, said that the Oryx plant was designed to be profitable with oil at $25 a barrel. That implies a very low long-term price for the natural gas feedstock. He would not specify what Sasol pays its Qatari partner for gas, but he said it was “not zero.”
  • Gene Ellis on 17 Dec 12
     
    The potential, or lack thereof, of natural gas to diesel conversion.
Gene Ellis

Oil tanker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/Oil_tanker

oil tanker

shared by Gene Ellis on 10 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Oil tankers are often classified by their size as well as their occupation. The size classes range from inland or coastal tankers of a few thousand metric tons of deadweight (DWT) to the mammoth ultra large crude carriers (ULCCs) of 550,000 DWT.
  • The expense was significant: for example, in the early years of the Russian oil industry, barrels accounted for half the cost of petroleum production.[10]
  • While a typical T2 tanker of the World War II era was 532 feet (162 m) long and had a capacity of 16,500 DWT, the ultra-large crude carriers (ULCC) built in the 1970s were over 1,300 feet (400 m) long and had a capacity of 500,000 DWT.[29]
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  • "Supertankers" are the largest tankers, including very large crude carriers (VLCC) and ULCCs with capacities over 250,000 DWT. These ships can transport 2,000,000 barrels (320,000 m3) of oil/318 000 metric tons.[46] By way of comparison, the United Kingdom consumed about 1.6 million barrels (250,000 m3) of oil per day in 2009.[47] ULCCs, commissioned in the 1970s, were the largest vessels ever built, but the longest ones have already been scrapped; only a few ULCCs remain in service, none of which are more than 400m long.[48] Because of their great size, supertankers often can not enter port fully loaded.[28] These ships can take on their cargo at off-shore platforms and single-point moorings.[28] On the other end of the journey, they often pump their cargo off to smaller tankers at designated lightering points off-coast.[28] A supertanker's routes are generally long, requiring it to stay at sea for extended periods, up to and beyond seventy days at a time.[28]
  • As demand grew moderately in the United States and Western Europe, expanding economies such as China fueled exponential growth in demand.[60]
  • The average one-year time charter rate for a 5-year-old tanker of 280,000 metric tons of deadweight varied from $56,500 per day in December 2005 to $53,000 per day in September 2007 with a high of $64,500 per day in September 2006.[59]
Gene Ellis

Europe Haggles Over New Rules Aimed at Saving Fish Stocks - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...4263404578613472428647506.html

fish Europe

shared by Gene Ellis on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Fishermen currently discard nearly a quarter of Europe's total catch on average, and as much as 70% of the hauls in some areas, European Commission data show
  • "The law has been made by someone who doesn't know fisheries," said fisherman Geert Luickx as he painted his boat here in this North Sea port. Without financial assistance, more crew, and a bigger boat, he said, he won't be able to comply with the new law.
  • Commission data show 80% of stocks in the Mediterranean, including swordfish, and 47% of stocks in the Atlantic, including whiting off Scotland's western coast, are being exploited at levels that will lead to extinction.
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  • Much of this unwanted catch will likely be sold to fish farmers to feed high-value fish like salmon.
  • though there are no legally binding targets for rebuilding fishing stocks.
  • How to enforce the new discards law is also under debate. Installing video cameras on all vessels or employing observers to ensure fisherman follow the law has been proposed, but nothing yet has been settled. "We do not have the resources for this kind of enforcement,
  • Organizations notes that Norway—which, along with Iceland, is one of two non-EU nations to ban discards—took 20 years to eliminate them.
Gene Ellis

Carmakers Are Central Voice in U.S.-Europe Trade Talks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...for-us-europe-trade-talks.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 18 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • With the dexterity of thieves stripping a vehicle for parts, they remove each van’s engine, bumpers, tires, drive shaft, fuel tank and the exhaust system.
  • Next, the crews pack everything into steel freight containers, which begin a journey by river barge and cargo ship to Ladson, S.C., near the port of Charleston. There, American teams put the vans back together again.
  • It would be more efficient to ship the vans in one piece, of course. But with current trade rules, efficiency is seldom the goal.
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  • Daimler’s stripped-down vans travel by cargo ship to Ladson, S.C., where a token portion of assembly occurs to avoid a costly American tariff.
  • It was first imposed on European light trucks during the 1960s in retaliation for German and French trade restrictions on American chickens.
  • The importance of European-American auto production, meanwhile, was highlighted by Volkswagen’s announcement on Monday that it would open a new production line in Chattanooga, Tenn., to make sport utility vehicles.
  • In Europe, discussion about the economic benefits of an agreement has been overshadowed by fears that more open trade would expose the Continent to what are widely perceived as less stringent safety and environmental standards in the United States. (And once again, chickens play a big role.)
  • Trucks, cars and other transportation equipment such as airplanes make up the second-biggest category of merchandise traded between the United States and Europe, just behind chemicals.
  • n the first three months of 2014 alone, the United States exported $2.6 billion in motor vehicles and parts to the European Union, and imported $12.3 billion worth.
  • The engines and other components used in Freightliner heavy trucks made in Portland, Ore., are similar to those installed in Mercedes-Benz heavy trucks made in Wörth, Germany. But Daimler must design and engineer many parts twice — and submit them for regulatory certification twice — to meet different United States and European rules.
  • The reason that Daimler goes to the trouble of finishing assembly in Germany in the first place is that the vehicles must be test-driven before they leave the factory. It would be too costly to set up a separate testing operation in the United States, the company said.
  • Industries like chemicals and pharmaceuticals are even trickier, and food is a particularly emotional issue in Europe.
  • there is a fixation on American chickens disinfected with chlorine, which local consumers find repellent
Gene Ellis

U.S. Offshore Wind Farm, Made in Europe - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-wind-farm-made-in-europe.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • On Germany’s coast, for example, an estimated $1.3 billion went into revitalizing ports and factories to serve the industry, creating about 10,000 jobs. But demand frequently drops off when projects stall, at times leaving factories in coastal towns like Cuxhaven, on Germany’s North Sea, sitting idle with hundreds of workers laid off.
  • But a major setback came around 2009, when G.E. decided to back away from the offshore wind business, saying it was still too expensive to compete with land-based wind power.
Gene Ellis

Greece threatens tilt to Russia and China unless Europe yields - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...hina-unless-Europe-yields.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 18 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Greece threatens tilt to Russia and China unless Europe yields
  • Greece's radical new government has threatened to seek money from Russia and China to avert a financial crisis rather than yield to austerity demands from Europe,
  • the defence minister
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Nikos Chountis, Greece's deputy foreign minister, said on Tuesday that Russia and China had already offered financial support to the country.
  • Cyprus has already caused a political storm by offering to expand Russian access to its ports and airfields – including “military facilities” - though it has stopped short of offering full military bases.
Gene Ellis

UAE's Mubadala, Guinea sign $5 billion bauxite, alumina deal | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...a-guinea-idUSBRE9AO0BS20131125

shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The agreement includes $1 billion for extraction and exports of bauxite to the UAE as well as a $4 billion aluminium refinery and a port, Mohamed Lamine Fofana, Guinea's minister for mines and geology told Reuters at a Guinea investors' conference in Abu Dhabi.The investment forms part of the UAE's expansion plans for its Emirates Global Aluminium business, set to become the world's fifth largest aluminium company by output next year.Emirates Global Aluminium was created from the merger of DUBAL and Emirates Aluminium (EMAL). The merged group has two aluminium plants in the UAE, one in Dubai and a second at Taweelah near Abu Dhabi.
  • In May 2013, Mubadala and DUBAL said they would jointly take over a Guinea Alumina Corp project in Guinea, acquiring 66.6 percent from BHP Billiton (BHP.AX) and Global Alumina.
Gene Ellis

To Lower Tariffs, Vietnam Pushes for Easing Trade Rules - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...es-for-easing-trade-rules.html

trade rules Vietnam Europe

shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Europe generally requires what is known as a “double transformation” in goods for them to be considered made in a certain region. In the case of clothing, one step, or “transformation,” would be weaving yarn into a fabric. A second transformation would be assembling the fabric into a garment. The United States requires a “triple transformation” that extends back to the production of yarn from synthetic or natural fibers, like cotton.
  • Lien Phat Ltd.'s factory,
  • Its supplies are imported. “I mainly take orders from international corporations, who give us materials and designs,” said Truong Thi Thuy Lien, the owner of Lien Phat. “Usually the clients will designate us to certain suppliers, most of them are in China.”
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  • “I don’t deal with the exporting process. I take the order and deliver the goods to the port” in Ho Chi Minh City, she said. “The rest lies with my clients.” <img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif"/>
Gene Ellis

Arctic Shipping Soars, Led by Russia and Lured by Energy - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...c-shipping-soars-led-by-russia

russia artic shipping

shared by Gene Ellis on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Although the Arctic provides a shorter route around the world than the traditional course through warmer waters, it is not necessarily cheaper.
  • The ships were expensive to build and operate,
  • The first commercial Chinese vessel and first container ship to transit the NSR, the Yong Sheng, commissioned by state-owned Cosco shipping, arrived in Rotterdam on September 10 laden with steel and industrial machinery. Its 33-day journey from the Chinese port of Dailan was nine days and 2,800 nautical miles shorter than the conventional voyage through the Suez Canal
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  • The Arctic Council's 2009 report estimated that the NSR offers from a 35 percent to 60 percent savings in distance for ships traveling between Europe and the Far East. Ships also can circumvent regional conflicts and the risk of piracy near the coast of Africa or in the Straits of Malacca off Malaysia.
  • Hiring charges for mandatory escort by Rosatomflot's icebreakers vary, but the average cost is about $200,000,
  • the cost of escort through the NSR is roughly equivalent to that of passage through the Suez Canal.
  • Because "container" shipping of goods, (as opposed to bulk shipping of raw commodities like ores and fuel), relies heavily on on-time delivery, Carmel thinks it unlikely the NSR ever will become a major pathway for this kind of global commerce.
  • primary focus on the 22 percent of the world's remaining undiscovered oil and natural gas resources to be found in the far north.
  • Just last month, Novatek signed a deal to supply China National Petroleum Corporation for 15 years with fuel sent from Yamal by tanker
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