Intra-Asia Container Trades

Asian trade (excluding the Mid-East, Indian subcontinent and Australasia) amounted to 28.6 million teu in 2007, accounting for one fifth of total global trade.

This excludes any business moving within its confines on a feeder basis which are bound for markets such as Europe, the US and South America. With China acting as a regional resource centre and with new free-trade deals emerging, there seems little doubt that the intra-Asian trades will continue to grow at a robust pace in the short to mid-term. This volume is forecasted to reach 50.7 million teu by 2013. Within the intra-Asian operating arena, niche, regional and global operators co-exist by operating ships as small as 150 teu up to 4,000 teu or more, and with divergent commercial strategies. On the core east/west trade lanes, business practice is by and large fairly similar and shippers have much less product differentiation to choose from other than “personalised service”. In intra-Asia, local players such as Temas Line and Winland Shipping compete with pan-regional operators such as Regional Container Lines and Samudera as well as global carriers like K Line and Yang Ming. A couple of clear trends have emerged in recent years. Regional players have expanded into the deepsea markets and larger vessels have been deployed on the core China/ASEAN axis. Both developments have arisen as a result of a number of global ocean carriers launching more of their own intra-Asian services in order to primarily cater for their feeder requirements.
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US Navy releases LCS Ship 'Freedom' pictures

The US Navy has released pictures of its littoral combat ship, ‘Freedom’ (LCS1), the inaugural ship in an entirely new class of US Navy surface warships.

The photographs were taken during a speed run during Builder's Trials. Following the completion of Builder's Trials, Freedom will return to Marinette Marine to prepare for Acceptance Trials that will be conducted by the US Navy's Board of Inspection and Survey. LCS 1 is scheduled to be delivered to the Navy later this year and will be homeported in San Diego. The LCS 1 Freedom class consists of two different hullforms: a semiplaning monohull and an aluminum trimaran, designed and built by two industry teams, respectively led by Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. The seaframes will be outfitted with reconfigurable payloads, called Mission Packages, which can be changed out quickly. These mission packages focus on three mission areas: mine counter measures (MCM), surface warfare (SUW) and anti-submarine warfare (ASW).
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Petroamazonas takes over Oxy fields

Ecuador's state-owned company Petroamazonas will start to operate the oil fields left by California-based Occidental Petroleum for five years next Tuesday.

Petroamazonas will replace a temporary administrative unit of Petroecuador to manage the so-called Bloc 15 fields left by Occidental. Currently the daily production of Bloc 15 is some 95,000 barrels, and Petroamazonas has vowed to increase the number to 101,000 barrels by the end of this year. Ecuador canceled Occidental's operating contract in May 2006, claiming the company had broken several of the terms, particularly by transferring a 40%stake in its Ecuadoran projects to Canada's EnCana without approval from the Ecuadoran government. Director of Petroamazonas Wilson Pastor said his company is a body to serve the country rather than a newly-formed oil company. He also mentioned the possibility of combining Petroamazonas with Petroecuador within a short period of time.
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Container operations backlogged at Cochin port following strike

The flow of containers to and from vessels calling at Cochin port has resumed after two days of suspended service due to a wildcat strike by drivers and crew of the container transportation trucks in Mumbai.

The strike was organized by worker unions servicing the India Gateway Terminal - a project jointly operated by DP World (holding a 76% stake), Container Corporation of India (15%), Chakiat group (5%) and Transworld Shipping (4%). According to local papers, the unions were protesting extensive delays due to congestion that required them to spend a lot of time waiting at the port with inadequate facilities to cater to worker needs such as rest areas and canteens. Despite the strike lasting just over 48 hours, the congestion coupled with additional vessels awaiting loading and discharge means that the port is reported to be running severely behind schedule. Two vessels have been diverted to the neighboring ports of Colombo and Tuticorin respectively to allow them to offload.
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