During the 2019 SAFETY4SEA Athens Forum, Mr. Stavros Meidanis, DPA/CSO, S&Q Manager, Capital Ship Management Corp shared his views on how shipping will look like in 2030 even 2050, focusing on implications for ship managers in the future.
On Monday, October 21, French energy major, Total, signed a shareholders’ agreement with Chinese state-owned Zhejiang Energy Group (ZEG) establishing a joint venture company dedicated to the supply and delivery of marine fuels in the region of Zhoushan, China.
The US and China agreed on the outlines of a partial trade accord on Friday, October 11, according to which China would step up its purchases of US agricultural commodities, agree to certain intellectual-property measures and concessions related to financial services and currency.
China’s first Cruise Tourism Development Demonstration Zone was launched in the Baoshan, in order for the latter to further develop for cruise and tourism operations. Shanghai considered the development of the cruise economy to be important, in order to be established as an international shipping centre.
The Port of Los Angeles managed less containers of imported goods in September, following the ongoing trade war between the US and China, as the US sanctions affected the port given that it is the busiest one for ocean trade with China, as Reuters reports.
Reuters reports that almost a third of the tankers owned by COSCO Shipping Tanker have shut off their AIS systems after the U.S. imposed sanctions on the company for reportedly shipping Iranian crude. In the first week of October, a total of 14 COSCO Dalian ships, including nine VLCCs, have shut off their ship-tracking transponders and have stopped sending location data from their automatic identification system.
The Shanghai Shipping Exchange reported that China’s coastal bulk freight market has seen a decrease in general demand, analysing the index of coastal bulk freight, coal sub-index, metal ore sub-index, and refined oil products index, according to Xinhua.
According to Bloomberg the costs of oil tankers are rapidly increasing, following the US’s sanctions against Chinese companies accusing them of hauling Iranian crude. The rates for vessels hauling 2 million-barrel cargoes of Middle East oil to Asia rose to 19%; Meanwhile, the cost to transmit US crude to Asia on supertankers increased by 6.3% to $8.5 million on Thursday, as Bloomberg reports.
The American Club published ‘Bunkering – A Compedium’ report, providing details on approaches towards loss prevention initiatives, demanded by both regulations and by supplying guidance on operations and management, ashore and afloat, aimed at obviating exposures with both a P&I and FD&D insurance implications.
As part of its “Learn from the past” series, SAFETY4SEA is focusing today on the Sanchi disaster, which claims the world’s worst oil tanker disaster in decades, less than two years after it collided with ‘CF Crystal’ on East China Sea and took lives of 32 people while causing a vast oil pollution.
