The delivered 380 CST bunker fuel price spread between South Korea and Japan widened to a record high Thursday, due to persistent tightness in high sulfur fuel oil supply in South Korea and rising supply in Japan. The South Korea versus Japan delivered 380 CST bunker spread rose $6/mt day on day to $81.75/mt Thursday — the highest on record, S&P Global Platts data showed. Delivered 380 CST bunker in South Korea typically trades at a premium to a similar grade delivered in Tokyo Bay. The price of delivered 380 ...

On the 3rd July I specified the very large crude carrier, the Grace 1, under the Sanctions Regulations. The designation of the vessel arose from information providing Her Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar with reasonable grounds to suspect that the Grace 1 was being used in breach of applicable EU Sanctions against Syria. The information suggested that the vessel was bound for the Baniyas Oil Refinery in Syria where it would supply its cargo of 2.1m barrels of crude oil to the Assad regime. At 2am on 4th July 2019, the ...

Maersk delivers a 17% increase in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) to USD 1.4 bn in Q2 compared to the same quarter last year. Revenue grew slightly to USD 9.6bn, which is on par with last year, and the underlying profit increased to USD 134m from USD 15m in Q2 2018. “Q2 was a quarter of solid progress. EBITDA was up 17% and cash flow improved 86% year on year, driven by continued recovery in Ocean,” says Søren Skou, CEO of A.P. Moller – Maersk. On the ...

TORM’s results in the first half of 2019 reflect the Company’s strong operating performance relative to its peers and our focus on maintaining efficient operations and a low cost base. Our profit before tax of USD 28.7m in the first half of 2019 represented the strongest half-year result in three years, and we are pleased to be able to generate a profit also in the second quarter of year that has been negatively impacted by an unusually high and prolonged refinery maintenance period,“ says Executive Director Jacob Meldgaard and adds: ...

Leading classification society, the Indian Register of Shipping (IRClass), recently launched a bespoke training course for the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) at IRClass’ head office in Mumbai, India. Welcoming senior officers of the ICG, Mr Suresh Sinha, Managing Director of IRClass, lauded the close collaboration between IRClass and ICG in co-creating course material relevant to ICG’s training needs. “IRClass, through its training arm, IRClass Academy, worked under the auspices and guidance of ICG Inspector General TP Sadanandan, TM, DDG (M&M) and ICG Deputy Inspector General Sudhir Sahni to curate course ...

Golden Ocean Group Limited (NASDAQ: GOGL / OSE: GOGL) (the “Company” or “Golden Ocean”), a leading dry bulk shipping company, announced its results for the quarter ended June 30, 2019. Highlights Net loss of $33.1 million and loss per share of $0.23 for the second quarter of 2019, which includes $13.3 million in mark to market losses on derivatives, compared with net loss of $7.5 million and loss per share of $0.05 for the first quarter of 2019 Adjusted EBITDA of $21.5 million for the second quarter of 2019, compared ...

NORDEN has contracted with Enviva to transport 1.3-1.5 million metric tons of wood pellets from the United States to Europe over a 6-year period. The Contract of Affreightment (CoA), which runs from 2021 to 2026, builds on NORDEN’s long-term collaboration with Enviva, which began in 2012 and expands the co-operation between the 2 companies. “With Enviva being the world’s largest producer of wood pellets, we are delighted to further cement our good relationship and proud to be entrusted to once again deliver even more Enviva products to their customers across ...

Q2 weaker than Q1 – but continued belief in an autumn market turnaround Developments during the second quarter were largely as we expected – namely, weak but still stronger than the corresponding quarter the previous year. Among the reasons were OPEC’s production cuts, extended seasonal maintenance of refineries prior to IMO 2020 and extensive deliveries of new vessels. The increased number of vessel deliveries is largely due to delays. The vessels should actually have been delivered in the first quarter but came into service in spring instead. Normal refinery maintenance ...

APM Terminals Poti has commenced the implementation of uninterrupted 24/7 operations to maximise berth utilisation, increase efficiency and speed up vessel handling. The implementation of a flexible workforce management solution will take place in two phases. Phase one will apply to single berth occupancy. The workforce currently allocated to the free berth will be assigned to the operational berth to cover break times and support a smooth and uninterrupted workflow. The second phase, which will apply when both berths are occupied, is expected to be fully implemented in Q4 2019. ...

A shortlist of five port and supply chain options to manage Perth’s long-term freight requirements has been released with all options proposing a new container port. The Government of Western Australia said the assessments of the independent Westport Taskforce ranked 25 different options featuring the ports at Fremantle, Bunbury and Kwinana against each other. Three shortlisted options feature container operations – all of which are currently managed at Fremantle – being moved to a new port in Kwinana Outer Harbour. Two further options propose sharing the container-handling task between Fremantle ...

Chinese city-gas distributor Shenzhen Gas will launch next week in southern China its first fully-owned terminal to import liquefied natural gas (LNG), a company executive told Reuters on Friday. This will make Shenzhen Gas the second city gas distributor backed by a local government that owns an LNG import facility. The first was Shenergy Group, which opened an LNG import terminal in Shanghai in 2008. Most of China’s import terminals are owned by the dominant state-run oil and gas companies like China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) [SASACY.UL] and PetroChina. ...

A change in trading patterns emerged in the wheat market this year as long-haul freight rates got a boost ahead of IMO 2020, which kicks off at the start of 2020. Typically, with harvest pressure from the Black Sea at this time of the year, Australian wheat, which is at the tail end of its marketing year, is pushed to the sidelines, particularly in the Southeast Asian markets, where both the origins compete head-on. In the last few weeks, however, the opposite has been observed in the Southeast Asian feed ...

The Caspian pipeline, which transports oil from Kazakhstan to Russia, will boost capacity by around a quarter to 83 million tonnes a year the end of 2023, a Caspian Pipeline Consortium official told an in-house magazine published on Thursday. Project consultant Christopher Scott Bowen said capacity was set to expand from around 67 million tonnes a year now thanks to a de-bottlenecking programme, which would allow the pipeline to pump 72.5 million tonnes of oil a year from Kazakhstan alone. Capacity will be boosted due to an expected rise in ...

Crude Oil Price Movements The OPEC Reference Basket (ORB) averaged higher in July, up by $1.79, or 2.8%, m-o-m reaching $64.71/b, supported by a pick-up in Asian crude demand. Crude oil futures prices also rose from their low levels registered a month earlier as escalating geopolitical tensions offset bearish sentiment in global oil demand. In July, ICE Brent was $1.18, or 1.9%, m-o-m higher, averaging $64.21/b, while NYMEX WTI rose m-o-m by $2.84, or 5.2%, averaging $57.55/b. Year-to-date (y-t-d), ICE Brent was $5.85, or 8.2%, y-o-y lower at $65.87/b, while ...

As Europe’s largest gas market, Germany seems an obvious candidate to take advantage of the growing global appetite for LNG. However, the country remains an outlier, lacking direct access to the LNG market. Momentum around proposals to develop a German LNG import terminal has gathered pace in the last year. But similar proposals have come and gone in Germany over the years. Has enough now changed for the country to join the world’s growing club of LNG importers? German gas supply on the political agenda The German government has given ...