Surging shipments into the United States are fueling record high freight costs and logjams at seaports, but transportation executives say the rally will lose steam with a second wave of COVID-19 restrictions on the cards. Container shipping companies, which move goods for customers including Amazon.com and Walmart, got stung late last year and early this year when COVID-19 halted trade around the world, and they question whether the U.S. import boom can be sustained. “Let’s not get carried away,” Rolf Habben Jansen, chief executive of Germany’s Hapag Lloyd, told reporters. ...

The UP World LNG Shipping Index, the world’s only stock index focused on companies in the LNG shipping sector, added 2.88 points, or 4.76%, last week. The largest growth achieved Awilco LNG ASA (ALNG) with 22.6% and Höegh LNG Partners LP (HMLP) with 20.3%. Exmar NV added 16.2%. Both Japanese companies rose for 8.1% (Mitsui O.S.K. Line Ltd.) and 6.2% (Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha). Dynagas LNG Partners (DLNG) contributed the most to the declines, writing off nearly 6%. MISC Berhad, which a week before lost 7%, added 5.5% now. Fearnleys ...

On August 16, 2006, five tugboats dragged Emma Maersk from a Danish shipyard and towed her backward to the sea. The length of four soccer fields, her keel nearly a hundred feet below her deck, Emma was far larger than any container ship ever before ordered and by far the most expensive. She was a bet on globalization: By transporting a container more cheaply than any other vessel afloat, she and her six sister ships were expected to stimulate even faster growth in international trade, lowering the cost of moving ...

U.S. regulators are rolling out on Monday the first of a two-part regime imposing new pollution control standards on ships. The regime will have long-term implications for how shipowners manage vessel discharges. The 329-page Vessel Incidental Discharge National Standards of Performance, issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, sets a new framework for regulating discharges “incidental to the normal operation of vessels.” The change is aimed at bringing consistency and certainty to the oversight of such discharges from approximately 82,000 U.S.- and foreign-flagged commercial vessels operating in U.S. waters, including ...

Oil Market close yesterday evening Oil dropped yesterday 3% as virus infections, Libyan oil output rebound. Oil prices fell more than 3% on Monday, extending last week’s losses as coronavirus cases continued to surge in the United States and Europe, while Libya’s rebound in crude production raised fears of oversupply. The United States reported its highest number yet of new coronavirus infections in two days through Saturday, while in France new cases hit a record of more than 50,000 on Sunday. Italy and Spain imposed fresh restrictions to curb the ...

Seafarers continue to face a bleak future in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest Seafarers Happiness Index report, published today by The Mission to Seafarers. The survey, undertaken with the support of the Shipowners’ Club and Wallem Group, reports on the experiences of seafarers between July and September 2020. This period saw some welcome action to address the dire situation facing the world’s seafarers in the midst of COVID-19, including the ongoing crew change crisis, but still fell short of the comprehensive response that is needed ...

As one of the world’s busiest seaports, the focus on Singapore is inevitably on big numbers: Global leader in terms of annual shipping tonnage, carried by some 200 shipping lines who make an annual average of 140,000 vessel calls. What the commercial statistics – or most stories on Singapore’s success as a maritime hub – usually don’t include are the crew on board each of those ships. To the casual observer, seafarers are barely visible. Stranded cruise ship passengers made front-page news early in the outbreak of COVID-19 – the ...

Yesterday ABS Nautical Systems® (ABS NS) launched NS eLogs, a powerful digital solution that replaces traditional paper logbooks and brings a new dimension to compliance management through a browser-based experience. The launch follows the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) non-mandatory adoption of electronic record books on 1 October 2020, welcoming digital entries on board. A seamless business automation tool for today’s digital fleet, NS eLogs helps ship owners and operators reduce operational costs, simplify user data entry, enhance data reliability and improve regulatory compliance. NS eLogs can function as a standalone ...

The Shipping Ministry’s plan to drive demand for ships built in India by linking a government-mandated cargo support policy for domestic fleet owners to India-built vessels, may yet not work out. Indian-built, Indian-flagged and Indian-owned ships will get top priority when state-owned firms and government departments float tenders to hire ships for hauling cargo or for dredging and offshore oil exploration support services, according to the new rules on the so-called right of first refusal (RoFR) announced on Thursday. Foreign-built, Indian-flagged and Indian-owned ships will get second preference while Indian-built, ...

International port operator DP World is on track to report a “relatively stable financial performance” this year after the recording a 3.1% increase in third-quarter shipping container volumes, its chairman said on Monday. The Dubai state-owned company, which reported contractions in container volumes in the first two quarters, handled 18.3 million containers in the July – September period, it said. The 52.2 million containers handled in the first nine months of the year were down 2.5% compared with the same 2019 period. Chairman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem said recent volume ...

The impact of COVID-19 in the dry bulk market could be assymetrical in terms of its timing in demand and freight rates. In its latest weekly report, shipbroker Allied Shipbroking said that “a month or so ago, many were still holding out hope for something promising to emerge during the final quarter of the year. Given the good – at that time – momentum that was being accrued across the vast majority of dry bulk markets, many were converging towards a more bullish attitude, despite the concerning business environment noted ...

The Baltic Exchange’s main sea freight index, which tracks rates for capesize, panamax and supramax vessels, fell on Monday, on lower rates for capesize vessels. The Baltic index fell 13 points, or 0.9%, to 1,402. The capesize index fell 54 points, or 2.4%, to 2,207. Average daily earnings for capesizes, which typically transport 150,000-tonne cargoes such as iron ore and coal, slipped $445 to $18,304. Iron ore futures hit a four-week low on Monday, as China’s portside inventory piled up to its highest since February and worries about future demand ...

The goal of reducing sulfur dioxide emissions from marine fuels is part of the overall effort to combat climate change internationally and is framed by the United Nations Convention and the subsequent Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol, which entered into force in 2005, commits the 141 signatory countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from 2008 to 2012 at a cost-effective rate, as compared with related emissions in the 1990s. In this context, the Emissions Trading System (ETS) is one of the flexible mechanisms implemented by Kyoto Protocol and concerns the ...

One of numerous possible ways to comply with the IMO’s strategy on the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships is to use biofuels or biofuel blends. Biofuels have very low sulphur levels and low CO2 emissions, as such they are a technically viable solution in meeting some of the current and future emission requirements. However, their NOx emissions might be higher than with fossil diesel oils and another immediate challenge is that the shipping sector still have limited knowledge on handling and applying biofuels as part of their ...

Upgrading the main engines of very large gas carriers to dual fuel technology using LPG to reduce sulfur emissions would cost more than three times that of retrofitting scrubbers, a senior Dorian LPG official said. Research and preliminary engineering studies by the company to upgrade the main engines of up to 10 of its VLGCs to dual fuel technology showed “significantly higher” capital expenditure than deemed necessary to justify the investment, the company’s chief financial officer Ted Young said. “Capital expenditure for dual fuel LPG upgrade is generally quoted at ...