Panama Canal expansion awarded 'Most Significant Project in the World'

The Republic of Panama has received a prestigious international award in Verona for the expansion project.

The Republic of Panama has received the prestigious Samoter 2008 International 'Most Significant Project in the World' award for the Panama Canal Expansion Program. The Samoter International award honours those that contribute to the development of construction at both national and international levels, through significant works and technologically advanced projects. The official ceremony and presentation took place in Verona, Italy, where the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) Administrator/CEO Alberto Alemán Zubieta was presented with the award. 'We are honored by this recognition and I share this with the best asset of the Canal, our hard-working world-class work force. We are making great progress with the Panama Canal Expansion Program and look forward to its continued success,' said Mr Alemán Zubieta. Expansion will build a new lane of traffic along the Panama Canal through the construction of a new set of locks, which will double capacity and allow more traffic and longer, wider ships. The Samoter International award is a highly-regarded and sought-after global honor assigned by VeronaFiere since 1973 to distinguished figures whose work on behalf of development and success in building and site activity, have helped consolidate major entrepreneurial systems on an economic and social scale.

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US warships off Lebanon worsening crisis

Russia told the UN Security Council that the presence of US Navy warships in the Mediterranean off the coast of Lebanon was not helping resolve the country’s political crisis.

Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the current council president, said he raised the US deployment at a closed council meeting on implementation of the UN cease-fire resolution that ended the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon in August 2006. We pointed out the fact that basically all Lebanese political forces expressed their concern about that, including the government of Prime Minister (Fuad) Saniora, and we have said that such acts were bringing up some unwanted historical analogies,’ he said. Saniora’s Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition have been locked in a 15-month power struggle, with Hezbollah and its allies trying to force out Saniora’s administration. Saniora has said his government did not ask for the ships and that they were not in territorial waters. Some in his coalition said they were surprised by the deployment. The new US deployment of warships brought back memories of the bloody American involvement in Lebanon in the 1980s, during the country’s 1975-1990 civil war. In 1983, at the height of US intervention, about 17 warships patrolled the Lebanese coastline, bombarding Muslim militia positions on shore. The last time US ships came to Lebanon was during the 2006 war when the American Navy helped evacuate Americans. The decision to send the ships appeared to be a not-too-subtle show of US force in the region as international frustration mounts over the political deadlock.
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Companies Capitalize on Warming Waters

Norilsk Nickel is building its own fleet of ships to capitalize on the melting of the polar ice caps.

The company ordered five reinforced cargo vessels that can plow through the waters north of Siberia as new sea routes open. Moscow-based Norilsk, the world's biggest producer of nickel, is spending at least $467 million to buy reinforced vessels rather than rent both freighters and icebreaker escorts. Global warming, while threatening environmental disasters, is creating economic opportunity for ship owners, makers of ocean cargo vessels and tour operators. New routes may expand access to the world's second-biggest oil supply, deliver U.S. wheat to Asia 30% faster and increase Arctic tourism as much as 50% in a decade. Norway's Aker Yards and South Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries Co. are producing ships for such Arctic investors as oil refiner ConocoPhillips and Moscow metal producer OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel. Norilsk is shipping nickel, copper and palladium north of Siberia to Europe from the Taimyr Peninsula in Northern Russia. One reinforced ship is already in service and four are being built by Aker Yards for delivery by mid-2009, all using new hull designs that allow for bow- or stern-first sailing, depending on the thickness of the ocean surface. The next most likely route to open is a straight line across the magnetic North Pole, bulldozed by a new generation of ships. That course would save 4,000 miles and 11 days compared with an 11,000-mile, one-month trip between Hamburg and Yokohama, Japan, via the Suez Canal.

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MOL to launch three new services for Asia-Middle East

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines is to launch three new Asia-Middle East services, beginning next month.

The services (CM4, CM5, CM6) will complemtent its current CMI, CM2, and CM3 services, and increase network services for the Middle East to six per week. MOL believes that the additions, when combined with its Intra-Asia network will enable it to offer the fastest transit times from Japan to the Middle East. The first, the new CM4 service, will be launched on April 11 at Busan and will offer direct connections from main ports in South Korea, Taiwan, and South China to the UAE and Pakistan. The new CM5 service, to begin on April 12 at Xingang, will offer direct links between major ports in China and the UAE. The new CM6 service is a direct service from South China to Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE.

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Gas price to soar as CNG takes over

Compressed Natural Gas will take over from LNG within the next 15 years as the main way to transport gas in the Mediterranean and elsewhere.

Professor Michael Economides, who used to be a senior adviser to Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky before his imprisonment, made the prediction at last week’s Mare Forum conference on energy in Athens. For short distances of less than 2,000 km and for relatively small loads of up to 10M cubic metres, LNG simply cannot compare with CNG, he said. This is because the entire investment is essentially in the ships themselves, which he called “floating pipelines”, while the cost of building CNG terminals is trivial. The main message of the conference was that in spite of the political rhetoric on alternative energy sources, oil, gas and coal will dominate the world energy demand for the next hundred years, and the benefit of shipping will remain undiminished. Economides also predicted that Russia would be unable to meet its commitments for gas supply to Europe and China because its system was mismanaged and it was practically impossible for the infrastructure to be built on time. As a result, he said, by 2010 there are going to be 100Bn cubic metres of shortfall of Russian gas for Europe.
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