Eco-friendly ferry christened

The San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority has christened the first of its fleet of ferries, ‘Gemini’.

‘Gemini's’ exhaust is 85 percent cleaner than EPA emission standards for Tier II (2007) marine engines, and is ten times cleaner than existing Bay Area ferries. Significant emissions reductions are achieved by incorporating selective catalytic reduction and a blend of biodiesel and ultra low sulphur diesel fuel. Two solar panels installed on the bridge deck will gauge the feasibility of solar power in the Bay's foggy conditions. The catamaran's sleek hull design reduces fuel consumption and minimizes shoreline response to wake impacts. Other innovative measures include sonar for avoiding whale strikes and floating debris. Additionally, the US Geological Service completed a three-year rafting bird study to enable WETA to operate the vessels with minimal impact on water birds for safety and security, the bridge was raised and eight-foot wide windows were installed to give the operator a 360-degree view. WETA's 149-passenger vessel will be put into service on the Alameda / Oakland Ferry and Tiburon routes in January 2009 after modifications to the Alameda and Oakland docks. ‘Gemini’ will also be available as a spare vessel in case of temporary disruption of transit service or damage to the Bay Area highways and bridges.

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DHT Maritime: Best Nautical Investment since the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria

DHT Maritime owns nine double-hull tankers consisting of 3 very large crude carriers (VLCCs), 2 Suezmax, and 4 Aframax tankers.

All nine tankers are chartered out under long-term contracts to Overseas Shipholding group (OSG). These two companies have a solid history together as DHT was spun out from OSG in October 2005. Of the nine vessels, seven are chartered until the end of 2010 to early 2012 while the remaining two are chartered until 2014 to 2018. These long term charters allow DHT to completely avoid the sometimes volatile spot market but also include profit sharing agreements with OSG that allow DHT to participate in the upside should spot rates be higher than the chartered base rate. DHT has been crushed with the rest of the shipping group and now trades at a compelling valuation and offers a total return opportunity as the dividend is yielding roughly 20%. DHT has long term charters and is completely contracted out through the end of 2010 so they are entirely insulated from any downward swing in spot rates. Furthermore DHT has profit sharing agreements that allow them to capture 33-40% of the upside from higher spot prices.

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Shell committed to oil sands

Anglo Dutch Shell boss Jeroen van der Veer said that the company remains committed to investing in Canadian oil sands after putting on hold the expansion of the second phase of the Athabasca project in Alberta.

“Looking at the long-term energy agenda, the Canadian oil sands will be exploited,” said van der Veer. “And we will continue to expand, though we have postponed the expansion for now,” he said. The company said on 30 October that it was pressing ahead with the first expansion phase of its Athabasca Canadian oil-sands project, while putting further investment there on hold because of mounting local construction costs. The company expects to add 250,000 barrels of oil production by the end of this year, helped by winter oil output from its Sakhalin project in Russia’s Far East coming on line soon. Van der Veer said even under the current market circumstances the company will continue to be a “relatively large investor.”

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Singapore retains box crown for 2008

Port of Singapore has posted its 2008 container throughput figures showing a rise of 7.1% to 29.9m teu, confirming it as the world's busiest container port ahead of Shanghai with 28m teu.

The port also claims to have been the world's busiest in terms of vessel arrivals with 1.6bn gt (11%) and bunker volumes of 34.9m tonnes (10.7%). Total throughput rose 6.5% over 2007 to reach 515.3m tonnes. In addition, the Singapore Registry of Ships is currently the world's fourth largest with 43.7m gt (10.4%), and the Singapore maritime cluster as a whole employs more than 100,000 people and contributes more than 7% to Singapore's GDP. An important contributing factor is the country’s Approved International Shipping (AIS) scheme has drawn over 100 companies with projected committed local business spending of about $3bn annually. However, Singapore's Minister for Transport and Second Minister for Foreign Affairs, Raymond Lim, warned that the Singapore economy faced a 'difficult year ahead' and that in November the port had experienced its first decline in month-on-month container throughput traffic since 2001.

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Somali pirates say released Saudi supertanker

Somali pirates said they had freed a Saudi-owned supertanker, whose capture nearly two months ago wreaked panic in international shipping and spurred the world into tougher anti-piracy action.

The 330-metre Sirius Star, owned by the shipping arm of oil giant Saudi Aramco, was seized far off the east African coast on November 15, in what was the pirates' most daring attack and largest catch to date "All our people have now left the Sirius Star. The ship is free, the crew is free," Mohamed Said, one of the leaders of the pirate group, told by telephone from the pirate lair of Harardhere. "There were last-minute problems but now everything has been finalised." Sahafi Abdi Aden, speaking from the same town on Somalia's Indian Ocean coast, also said the hijacking was over. The amount of the ransom paid for the ship's release was not yet known. Pirates had told days after seizing the Sirius Star they wanted 25 million dollars (18 million euros) for its release but the latest reports indicated that the demand had been lowered to around 3.5 million. The Sirius Star was manufactured in South Korea and delivered last year. It is believed to be worth around 150 million dollars and its cargo was estimated at the time of the hijacking at 100 million dollars. The crew of the Sirius Star is made up of 25 people from Britain, Croatia, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Poland, where the ship's captain hails from.

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New US dedicated littoral warfare systems facility

USA: The Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD), a field activity of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), has held a ground-breaking ceremony for the Littoral Warfare Systems Facility.

The site will include a state-of-the-art facility, specially designed to support the research, development, testing, evaluation, acquisition support, integration and certification of littoral warfare systems. It will allow NSWC PCD to consolidate work under one roof that is now being performed in facilities spread throughout the base. LWSF also will be a centre of excellence for research, development and integration of existing and future adaptive force packages. These modular and deployable packages will provide warfighting capability to non-traditional and unconventional maritime platforms within the Navy's global maritime partnerships. The project is expected to be completed by November 29, 2009.
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