While symbolic barriers are better than nothing, it would be best to invest in physical barriers. The Nautical Institute gives this advice in its latest Mars Report in which a dredger’s master accessed the area a crane was in operation and was crushed between the crane and cargo hold as a result.
The Nautical Institute gathers reports of maritime accidents and near-misses. It then publishes these so-called Mars Reports (anonymously) to prevent other accidents from happening. A summary of this incident:
A small hopper dredger equipped with a deck grab crane was occupied with the refurbishment of a port breakwater. The work involved lifting boulders from the cargo hold with the deck grab crane and positioning them at the breakwater. The chief engineer, who maintained direct contact with the crane operator via a portable radio, was on the bridge overseeing the operation.
The master, who was new to the ship and had joined only two weeks earlier, was occupied with administrative tasks. At one point, he decided to go on deck and check on some recent maintenance work at the bow. He took the access way on starboard side of the cargo hold to reach the forecastle (the port side access way had been cordoned off.) During this time, the crane operator, who was placing one boulder in position at the breakwater, noticed the master in proximity of the paint locker.
After checking on the maintenance, the master decided to check the status of the boulders in the cargo hold. He climbed the starboard stairs to the cargo hold and looked inside the cargo hold. At this time, the crane operator had the crane’s boom in line with the cargo hold and was picking up a boulder from the hold. Within a matter of seconds, the crane turned clockwise towards the breakwater, entrapping the master between the body of the crane and the cargo hold coaming.
The crane operator heard a scream and turned the crane back towards the cargo hold. He immediately noticed the master lying on deck. He raised the alert and the chief engineer, who was on the bridge, called for shore medical assistance.
The master was admitted to the local hospital; he had suffered a massive hematoma, muscle laceration of the right abdominal wall, and a fractured vertebrae. The victim was discharged from hospital the next day and received further medical treatment once home.
Investigation findings
The investigation found, among others, that although access to the forecastle from the port side of the cargo hold had been cordoned off by a physical barrier system (a chain), access to the forecastle from the starboard side was unobstructed. Black and yellow “hazardous area” markings were painted in a semi-circle on the deck around the crane, extending from port to starboard. But paint markings are a symbolic barrier system and therefore require one’s interpretation to be effective (as opposed to a physical barrier system).
Advice from The Nautical Institute
While symbolic barriers are better than nothing, their effectiveness is debatable. Physical barriers are much better. And an excellent complement to physical barriers are administrative barriers documented in a vessel’s safety management system (SMS).
Mars Report 201851 documents a very similar accident, but one with more serious consequences as the victim, new to the ship, died of his injuries. In that case, not only was there an absence of physical barriers, but no danger warnings were present.
The project will address challenges to adopting new reactor technology in commercial maritime applications. ABS will develop models of different advanced reactor technologies for maritime applications and develop an industry advisory on the commercial use of modern nuclear power.
The contract was awarded by the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy last year and formally contracted through its U.S. Industry Opportunities for Advanced Nuclear Technology Development funding opportunity.
Support will be provided by the Department of Energy’s National Reactor Innovation Centre (NRIC), based at Idaho National Laboratory. NRIC will provide the advanced reactor framework to help propose how a maritime nuclear demonstration could take place.
In a separate, smaller award, the DOE has also contracted ABS to support research into molten salt reactors being carried out by the University of Texas.
“Modern nuclear technologies are increasingly suggested as a potential solution to shipping’s decarbonisation challenge. The technology certainly has potential both in terms of its contribution to emissions reduction and for U.S. shipyards and their supply chains to leverage national investment in terrestrial nuclear energy development. Nevertheless, many questions need to be answered and it is critical the industry is able to evaluate these technologies with a laser focus on safety. ABS is up to the challenge to support the DOE in these efforts,” said Patrick Ryan, ABS senior vice president, global engineering and technology.
“The national lab system has powerful capabilities – when we partner with industry, we can jointly apply those to our energy challenges, and NRIC was created to make that happen faster,” said NRIC director Ashley Finan. “There’s a tremendous opportunity to reduce emissions in shipping, as well as growing interest from both the maritime and advanced nuclear sectors, and we’re pleased to be a part of this important work.”
The nascent seaborne hydrogen trades are set to cross the Atlantic. Germany, which has been scouring the globe for new sources of energy in the six months since Russia invaded Ukraine, has signed a hydrogen supply deal with Canada.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and German chancellor Olaf Scholz signed a five-year hydrogen accord on Tuesday in Newfoundland and Labrador on Canada’s east coast. The two countries will create a transatlantic supply chain for green hydrogen this decade, with first deliveries aiming for 2025.
Scholz said Canada “has almost boundless potential to become a superpower in sustainable energy and sustainable resource production.”
To date, Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries has been the only company to develop and operate liquefied hydrogen carriers, with a new route taking the gas from Australia to Kobe. Kawasaki Heavy is working on developing larger hydrogen carriers as are many other shipbuilders in Asia.
Speedcast has signed a reseller agreement with Algérie Télécom Satellite (ATS), an Algerian satellite services provider.
The agreement will provision Speedcast’s experience and expertise for ATS’ resell, expanding its business in VSAT solutions and services.
ATS has provided satellite services in Algeria for more than four decades and currently operates fixed and mobile satellite networks for cellular, banking, government and other industries across the country. Headquartered in Algiers, ATS operates a teleport at Lakhdaria and offices around Algeria.
“By bringing Speedcast’s world-class technology and services to the Algerian market, ATS has positioned itself to take advantage of positive trends,” said James Trevelyan, senior vice president of enterprise and emerging markets at Speedcast. “The company conducted a thorough RFI process before selecting us as their global services partner, and we’re pleased to engage in a mutually beneficial opportunity to deliver critical connectivity solutions to customers in this region. We look forward to widening the collective business portfolio in this key North African nation,” Trevelyan added.
In June, President Joe Biden spoke by phone to several traders and farmers highlighting the impact of rising shipping costs and how they were affecting businesses. Biden went on to castigate shipping companies for hiking prices and promised to take an action, aimed at reducing the cost of inflation.
Biden was only the latest in a growing number of critics citing the staggering profits of the large shipping companies over the past two years. With companies such as Maersk reporting the largest profit ever in 2021 for any Danish company the focus on profits has continued. While most of the focus was on how the companies were making staggering profits as long-term contracts and spot freight rates jumped to exorbitant levels, some commentators started to focus on the taxes paid by the shipping companies.
For a long time, shipping companies have enjoyed favorable tax terms. The carriers are taxed based on their tonnage, referred to as tonnage tax, which is different from the normal corporate tax system.
Thus, in most instances, many shipping carriers pay no corporate income tax. But even in situations where the corporate is charged, it is still way below that of other sectors. For example, the average corporate income tax of bulk carriers is 6 percent and just 3 percent for the tanker sector, which if contrasted with the 27 percent charged to freight forwarders appears outrageous.
However, since the pandemic began, the shipping industry has become lucrative. The ocean carriers are now moving massive volumes of cargo while at the same time posting eye-watering profits. Estimates for 2021 set the profits for the industry anywhere between a low of $110 billion to $150 billion or even $200 billion.
As a result, the discourse to reappraise the carriers’ tax regime is growing. Taking note of the matter, Sea-Intelligence in its weekly report said the present tonnage tax system creates a risk for big shipping players.
“The problem for the carriers right now is that the disparity between their present profits and their low tax rates has become extreme,” wrote the analysts at Sea-Intelligence. “Add into the mix that the carriers are politically seen as being part of driving inflation, even though not to the degree that some might believe. Add on top of that the very real emotional impact…that in the middle of a continuing supply chain crisis, the providers of exceedingly unreliable services are seen to profit like never before.”
With Maersk posting a profit of $8.6 billion and Hapag Lloyd $4.4 billion for Q2 2022, Sea-Intelligence goes further to predict that the political headwind against the carriers is poised to increase.
In the case of Maersk, they are going to pay $164 million in taxes for the second quarter of 2022. This is a rate of 1.8 percent. Hapag Lloyd is going to pay $20.9 million, meaning an effective tax rate of 0.5 percent.
Confronted by a sagging economy and soaring inflation rates, some French politicians were the first to take on the issue proposing a 25 percent windfall tax on the “super profits” earned by the domestic carrier CMA CGM, along with other French giants including TotalEnergies and Engie. According to the lawmakers, the windfall tax money would have helped to fund measures aimed at protecting consumers’ purchasing power.
CMA CGM’s CEO Rodolphe Saade argued with the politicians saying they needed to look at the company’s competition and the financial disadvantage they would be placed under with the windfall tax. In the end, CMA CGM and Total, both agreed to reduce prices for French customers to avoid the tax.
Globally politicians in the developed world have pushed for the first global minimum tax on multinational corporations. While some analysts agree that there is a need for a global minimum corporate tax, especially applicable to the big ocean carriers, some caution that a wrong political answer to the tax question could have a devastating outcome.
Unlike other industries, ocean carriers’ business model is quite volatile and depends on a range of factors spread across the world. Further, there is global pressure on the shipping industry to invest large sums to address emissions and achieve decarbonization of a sector that many considered one of the most difficult to decarbonize. There are already reports showing the shipping market may start to contract in 2023, meaning the revenues might fall before a consensus on the tax issue is reached.
Kalmar, part of Cargotec, will supply 11 Kalmar Hybrid Shuttle Carriers to The Port of Virginia, a deepwater port in the U.S. East Coast.
All of the new units will be delivered to Virginia International Gateway (VIG), one of the port’s primary container terminals and is capable of handling the biggest vessels in the Atlantic trade, with deliveries scheduled to be completed in Q3 2023.
A next step in the Port’s commitment to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, the new units will directly replace the Kalmar diesel-hydraulic shuttle carriers that were delivered during the terminal’s grand opening in 2007.
The order is the sixth consecutive order of hybrid shuttle carriers from The Port of Virginia following previous corresponding orders dating back to 2017. The Port has been using Kalmar Hybrid Shuttle Carriers since August 2015. With this order delivered, the customer will have altogether 103 Kalmar Hybrid Shuttle Carriers in operation between their two terminals.
Kalmar also provides the port with support and servicing through a local team of technicians and local parts inventory.
Rich Ceci, Sr. Vice President of Technology and Projects, Port of Virginia, said, “The Port of Virginia has already surpassed a 32% reduction in CO2 emissions since 2017, which is largely due to the long term strategic decision to transition the shuttle carrier fleet to Kalmar hybrids. We are pleased with Kalmar’s continued commitment to delivering on-time quality products to us. Their local support team continues to work together with our management and ILA-partners to keep things moving consistently.”
Troy Thompson, Vice President, Sales, Kalmar Americas, said, “We are all faced with challenging times. Our customers, our suppliers and our factories continue to be burdened with shortages. However, we have remained steadfast in our journey and committed to our deliveries. We continue to invest in our local resources to be the world’s best intelligent horizontal transport supplier. Our hybrid straddle/shuttle carrier fleet has now surpassed some 250 units just in the USA, largely due to the partnership with The Port of Virginia.”
Shell and unions representing workers at its Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility have reached a wage deal to end a long-running strike and restart production at the site off northwest Australia, they said on Wednesday.
Shell shut the 3.6 million-tonnes-a-year Prelude facility in July and told customers it would be unable to supply LNG for the duration of the protected industrial action, or strikes approved by Australia’s Fair Work Commission, over a wage dispute.
“Shell is pleased to confirm an in-principle Enterprise Agreement has been reached with the Australian Workers’ Union and Electrical Trades Union in relation to the Prelude FLNG facility,” the company said in an emailed statement.
“The process to formally lift the work bans in place under the Protected Industrial Actions is expected to be completed shortly, which will enable the facility to commence the process to prepare for a hydrocarbon restart,” it said.
A Shell spokesperson was not immediately available to comment on how soon the company would be able to resume LNG shipments.
The Offshore Alliance, which combines the Australian Workers’ Union and Maritime Union of Australia, said workers would vote on the enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) later this week.
“76 days of lawful Protected Industrial Action to secure an EBA which prevents jobs being outsourced to low-wage labor hire contracts is a fight worth having,” the Offshore Alliance said on its Facebook site.
The maritime sector is looking for new ways to cut emissions to meet future climate targets, but Finnish cruise ferry operator Viking Line reports that it has already made a significant dent. Viking reports that it has cut its fleet’s CO2 per mile by nearly a third over the span of the past 15 years, thanks in large part to investments in “the Baltic Sea’s most climate-smart vessels.”
The reduction is nearly enough to meet the midterm IMO climate goal – to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from maritime transport by 40 per cent from 2008 levels by 2030.
In port, Viking’s vessels have started to be supplied with green shore power. Fuel efficiency is now taken into account when Viking’s timetables and routes are planned. But according to the company, the measures that have had the greatest impact are the $450 million investment in the LNG/rotor sail powered Viking Grace, which made its maiden voyage in 2013, and the slightly larger Viking Glory, which entered service in March.
“On board Viking Grace alone, the intelligent, need-based ventilation system saves the same amount of energy that all of our offices and warehouses use in one year. And that is just the case of a single technological innovation on one vessel,” says Dani Lindberg, Viking’s sustainability manager. “The Grace and Glory are already equipped to start using biogas or synthetic fuels produced from renewable energy when they become available in the future. That is the next big step towards carbon-neutral maritime traffic.”
These carbon reductions will be helpful when the European Union’s new maritime transport carbon emission rules begin to take effect. The European Parliament and European Council are negotiating the final legislative text of new regulations to bring maritime transport into the EU Emissions Trading System, with significant implications for shipping between EU ports. The final draft is expected as early as the fourth quarter of the year.
In addition, the arrival of the EEXI and CII energy efficiency regulations next year will require continual reductions in carbon intensity – much like the steps Viking has already taken over the past decade.
A group of French entrepreneurs has acquired one of the former Holland America Line cruise ships sold during the pandemic with plans to revive their effort for a cruise line marketed to France. The former Holland America Line Maasdam recently adopted the new name of Renaissance and Compagnie Française de Croisières (CFC) based in Marseille plans to announce in September its new cruises.
Reports indicate the CFC is being started up by partners Clément Mousset and Cédric Rivoire Perrochat. Both of the executives had been working with UK-based Cruise & Maritime Voyages with plans to launch the dedicated French cruise operation. CMV had marketed cruises starting in 2016 to France and in late 2019 announced plans for these executives to launch a French division of the company. They were to start cruising year-round in May 2021. CMV reported it would refit the cruise line’s vessel Astor and rename her Jules Verne. The plan, however, did not proceed due to the suspension of cruising in March 2020 and the financial collapse of CMV later that summer.
The executives are deferring details of their new effort until the September press conference. However, they are being linked to the sale of the former Holland America Maasdam, which has been laid up in Greece since the summer of 2020. Greek investors which also own Seajets a Greek ferry operator purchased a series of cruise ships mostly from Carnival Corporation as the company sought to accelerate the disposal of older ships during the pandemic-related industry pause. Maasdam was renamed Aegean Myth but remained idled while it was believed Seajets sought a buyer or long-term charter.
Built in 1993, the 55,500 gross ton cruise ship was the second in a new class of vessels built for Holland America Line by Fincantieri shortly after the line was acquired by Carnival. Accommodating 1,200 passengers, the cruise ship was a key part of Carnival’s expansion and modernization of Holland America. In later years, she had been replaced by larger cruise ships while Holland America placed the Maasdam on longer cruises and sending her to exotic destinations. She along with her sister ship Veendam and two other sisters that were operating for P&O Australia were all sold by Carnival in 2020. Three of the ships were acquired by Seajets which offered them for resale while the fourth ship was acquired by Portuguese investors and now operating on charter to Nico Cruises.
CFC’s efforts to launch a French-speaking cruise line are not the first recent effort at developing the market. Before CMV’s plans for France, Spain’s Pullmantur tried to develop the French cruise market. In 2008, working with Royal Caribbean which had acquired Pullmantur, they launched Croisières de France, a new cruise brand using the 1981-built Europa renamed Bleu de France. The cruise ship was sold in 2011 but they replaced her with other ships from Pullmantur before disbanding the brand in 2016.
Other cruise lines including Ponant are based in France but market their ships internationally. The new cruise line will be predominately marketed in France and the on-board operations will be French-speaking. Details on the first cruise and the itineraries are expected to be announced on September 6.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The U.S. Navy on Tuesday welcomed its third Overlord unmanned surface vessel into the fleet, as the service prepares to ramp up its USV experimentation at sea and ashore.
Mariner, built by Gulf Craft in Louisiana and managed by prime contractor Leidos, was delivered in March and christened Aug. 23 at the U.S. Naval Academy. It is already outfitted with a government-furnished command-and-control system, a virtualized Aegis Combat System, an autonomous navigation system and more. After a few more upgrades and testing, it will head out to California and begin operations in fiscal 2023, the Navy’s program executive officer for unmanned and small combatants, Rear Adm. Casey Moton, told reporters during a tour here.
Mariner’s sister ships, Nomad and Ranger, recently participated in the Rim of the Pacific naval exercise in Hawaii. The addition of Mariner to the USV fleet will add both volume and new capabilities as the Navy tries to learn more about operating unmanned craft and decide what the future hybrid manned-unmanned fleet ought to look like, Moton said.
The Navy’s test plan includes both land-based and at-sea testing, he said. During land-based testing, the Navy can more easily install new items, can run tests for longer durations and in more controlled conditions, and can update systems more easily as test results highlight needed fixes.
At sea, though, he said “you’re in the dynamic marine environment, with the ship moving around, and in a corrosion environment, and watch standers having to move around … dynamic loads and all kinds of things. There is absolutely a place for both.”
The Navy will ultimately have seven USVs to experiment with at sea: Nomad, Ranger, Mariner and fellow Overlord USV Vanguard, which is under construction at Austal USA with prime contractor L3Harris; as well as Medium USV prototypes Sea Hunter and Sea Hawk, which also participated in RIMPAC, and a third medium-size ship on contract with L3Harris.
Moton argued it’s important to have so many at-sea test platforms because of the scale of testing the Navy is trying to do, working through different vendors’ systems for perception, autonomy, machinery control and more, as well as testing out a number of potential payloads.
A new feature built into Mariner will also allow for some unique concept of operations testing at sea: the virtualized Aegis Combat System will actually allow Mariner to control another USV, Moton said.
“Now we can take two of our USVs and go out and do multi-vessel ops and control and not necessarily have to take a [destroyer] off of actual fleet operations to go do that. It gives us that ability to just get there that much more quickly,” he said.
A program official added during the tour that the USV Division 1 staff in California, who could in the future operate USVs from an ashore unmanned operations center or from aboard a Navy ship such as a destroyer, could actually use Mariner as a training vessel, embarking it as they would a destroyer and controlling another USV manually from Mariner’s combat system. USV Division 1 officials were able to collaborate with destroyers during RIMPAC, though access to such warships for experimentation is far from the norm because of busy training and deployment schedules. That’s why officials hope Mariner could serve as something of a training ship for the division staff as they learn how to employ a USV from a ship at sea.
As for the land-based testing, Moton said the Navy is moving ahead with industry-led testing of engines for unmanned vessels even as its official USV land-based engineering site is under construction at Naval Surface Warfare Center Philadelphia. L3Harris has an MUSV plant in Camden, N.J., that would be transitioned to the Navy facility just across the river if the service decides to move ahead with those types of USVs. The Navy is currently committed to a large robotic-ship program (LUSV) and is still weighing the value of medium-size ships against the capabilities that small drones in large numbers could bring.
On LUSV, a variety of potential engines are being tested ashore by their various vendors — which Moton said is a good thing for technology development and for keeping the program competitive — and that work will also be moved to Philly when the new test center is ready.
Despite all the testing taking place, Navy officials during the tour said commercial industry has done quite a bit of work already to mature autonomy systems on ships. In the case of Mariner’s parent design, autonomy features were optimized for the fast supply vessel to bring people and materials to oil rigs with a crew of just six on the 194-foot boat.
Because of the pre-existing emphasis on autonomy and redundancy to support a small crew, the ship was already designed with five water jets, each with their own engine and drive train and an ability to switch between them if one experienced a problem. The Cummins engines were built with an option that avoids the need for periodic oil changes — something that would otherwise prevent USVs from operating months at a time without a crew — using a system that automatically burns off the old lube oil and adds in new lube oil.
The Navy went further and added in a whole web of cables that connect sensors to ship systems and enable the machinery control system to autonomously monitor hull, mechanical and electrical systems and shift between redundant systems when needed.
The large unmanned surface vessel Ranger transits the Pacific Ocean on June 22, 2022, ahead of the Rim of the Pacific exercise in Hawaii. (MC1 Tyler Fraser/US Navy)
Brian Fitzpatrick, the principal assistant program manager for USVs at the unmanned maritime systems program office within PEO USC, said the Navy had collected 400 terabytes of data from Nomad, Ranger, Sea Hunter and Sea Hawk at RIMPAC and that his office would spend the coming months parsing through that data to understand both system performance at sea and to refine what data they wanted to continue collecting in the future.
Fitzpatrick said the Navy was looking forward to the delivery of its final OUSV prototype, Vanguard, which takes Mariner’s parent design and scales it up to a 205-foot design. Because the vessel is larger, it can hold more fuel and therefore gain even greater range, and it can haul even heavier payloads. Fitzpatrick said Vanguard would push the limits of what a vessel of this size class could do for the Navy.
The program-of-record LUSV’s design hasn’t been finalized yet but will certainly be larger than Mariner and even Vanguard. Fitzpatrick and Moton said all the testing at sea and ashore will apply equally to a future LUSV and a potential MUSV from an engineering perspective. From a concept of employment perspective, the Navy knows just what it wants from LUSV — to serve as an adjunct missile-launcher — but testing will help inform whether hauling around sensors and electronic warfare packages on a vessel of this size is worth the price tag.
“I think it’s completely healthy for the top levels of the Navy to be having that question about what a hybrid fleet, manned-unmanned, looks like. And we are essentially providing the data and the feedback on [concepts of operations] that’s supporting that discussion,” Moton said.
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