The world’s largest containership, Ever Ace, made its first transit through the Suez Canal on Saturday, during a voyage from China to the Netherlands.

The hulking vessel is 400 meters long and 61.5 meters wide with a 15-meter draft, and it can carry on board up to 23,992 TEUs, overtaking HMM Algazeras as the world’s largest box ship in terms of overall capacity.

The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said it took “all necessary measures and procedures” to ensure safe passage for the record-setting vessel, providing a group of senior pilots and accompanying tugs for assistance, in addition to the real-time follow-up from the main traffic office and guidance stations along the canal.

The Suez Canal, which gained international attention when the 20,000 TEU containership Ever Given ran aground and blocked the vital trade artery for six days in March, has accelerated plans to widen and deepen stretches of the waterway amid the growing size and number of ultra large container vessels operating globally.

The head of the SCA, Lieutenant-General Osama Rabie, said the canal is taking proactive steps and upgrading its navigational service as it aims to keep pace with these developments.

He said the world’s largest containership crossing the Suez Canal on its first cruise reflects the navigation community’s confidence in the canal’s ability to receive and accommodate current and future generations of mega ships.

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A private dive team will try to locate the source of a suspected oil spill spotted in the Bay Marchand area of the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, after Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc in the region this week, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Saturday.

U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite images, first reported by the Associated Press on Wednesday, showed a miles-long brownish-black slick spreading in coastal waters about two miles off Port Fourchon, Louisiana, an oil and gas hub.

The images appeared to show the slick drifting more than a dozen miles (19 kilometers) eastward along the Gulf coast, the AP said.

Ida, one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to strike the U.S. Gulf Coast, hit Louisiana about a week ago before moving northeast and causing intense flooding that killed dozens in New York and other northeastern states.

A Coast Guard spokesman said Talos Energy had hired Clean Gulf Associates to respond to the suspected spill and contracted the private dive team to locate the source of the slick.

The AP quoted the energy company as saying it believes it is not responsible for the oil in the water.

Members of the Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit’s prevention department and the Gulf Strike Team were monitoring reports and NOAA satellite imagery to determine the scope of the discharge, the spokesman said.

Once the source had been identified, the Coast Guard and partnering agencies would work on a recovery and source control plan, he added.

He said Clean Gulf Associates has put skimmers and a containment boom in the area to mitigate any further environmental impact.

The Bay Marchand spill was one of several reported environmental hazards that authorities were responding to in Louisiana and the Gulf following Hurricane Ida.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday it had dispatched a surveillance aircraft to an area in Louisiana hard hit by Ida that includes a refinery where an apparent oil spill was reported.

The aircraft dispatched from Texas was going to gather data on a Phillips 66 refinery and other priority sites.

Phillips 66 had said flooding had occurred at its Alliance Refinery and a sheen of unknown origin in some flooded areas of the refinery had been discovered.

U.S. Gulf Coast energy companies on Saturday got a boost from the reopening https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-offshore-oil-recovery-begins-with-ports-refineries-restarting-2021-09-04 of ports and restart of oil refineries shut by Ida, but damage to key facilities still crimped oil production.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru and Andrea Shalal and Valerie Volcovici in Washington; Editing by Alistair Bell and William Mallard)

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Leading shipping associations have proposed creating a global levy on carbon emissions from ships to help speed up the industry’s efforts to go greener.

With about 90% of world trade transported by sea, global shipping accounts for nearly 3% of the world’s CO2 emissions and the sector is under growing pressure to get cleaner.

For the first time, the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) and Intercargo jointly proposed a levy based on mandatory contributions by ships trading globally, exceeding 5,000 gross tonnage, for each tonne of CO2 emitted.

The money collected would go into a climate fund that would be used to deploy bunkering infrastructure in ports around the world to supply cleaner fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia, according to the proposal.

“What shipping needs is a truly global market-based measure like this that will reduce the price gap between zero-carbon fuels and conventional fuels,” ICS Secretary General Guy Platten said.

The proposal was submitted on Friday to the UN’s shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

An IMO spokesperson said all proposals were welcome and would be up for discussion later this year, adding that “proposals on market-based measures are in line with the initial IMO GHG (greenhouse gas) strategy”.

The IMO will hold an intersessional working group meeting scheduled for late October, ahead of a late-November session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee, which will address issues including carbon-reduction efforts.

The European Commission in July proposed adding shipping to the bloc’s carbon market, targeting an industry that had for more than a decade avoided the EU’s system of pollution charges.

The ICS said “piecemeal” approaches such as the EU’s proposal would significantly complicate “the conduct of maritime trade”. (Reporting by Jonathan Saul; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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Leading shipping associations have proposed creating a global levy on carbon emissions from ships to help speed up the industry’s efforts to go greener.

With about 90% of world trade transported by sea, global shipping accounts for nearly 3% of the world’s CO2 emissions and the sector is under growing pressure to get cleaner.

For the first time, the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) and Intercargo jointly proposed a levy based on mandatory contributions by ships trading globally, exceeding 5,000 gross tonnage, for each tonne of CO2 emitted.

The money collected would go into a climate fund that would be used to deploy bunkering infrastructure in ports around the world to supply cleaner fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia, according to the proposal.

“What shipping needs is a truly global market-based measure like this that will reduce the price gap between zero-carbon fuels and conventional fuels,” ICS Secretary General Guy Platten said.

The proposal was submitted on Friday to the UN’s shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

An IMO spokesperson said all proposals were welcome and would be up for discussion later this year, adding that “proposals on market-based measures are in line with the initial IMO GHG (greenhouse gas) strategy”.

The IMO will hold an intersessional working group meeting scheduled for late October, ahead of a late-November session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee, which will address issues including carbon-reduction efforts.

The European Commission in July proposed adding shipping to the bloc’s carbon market, targeting an industry that had for more than a decade avoided the EU’s system of pollution charges.

The ICS said “piecemeal” approaches such as the EU’s proposal would significantly complicate “the conduct of maritime trade”. (Reporting by Jonathan Saul; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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The U.S. Coast Guard on Monday said it was probing nearly 350 reports of oil spills in and along the U.S. Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Ida.

Hurricane Ida’s 150 mile per hour (240 kph) winds wreaked havoc on offshore oil production platforms and onshore oil and gas processing plants. About 88% of the region’s offshore oil production remains shut and more than 100 platforms unoccupied after the storm made landfall Aug. 29.

The Coast Guard has been conducting flyovers off the coast of Louisiana looking for spills. It is providing information to federal, state, and local authorities responsible for cleaning the sites.

Flights on Sunday found evidence of a new leak from an offshore well and reported another leak responsible for a miles-long streak of oil was no longer active. A third report of oil near a drilling platform could not be confirmed, it said.

Offshore oil producer Talos Energy Inc, which hired divers and a clean up crew to respond to an oil spill in Bay Marchand, said old pipelines damaged during the storm were apparently responsible for the visible streak.

The spill off the coast of Port Fourchon, Louisiana, had decreased substantially since it was first discovered last week, Talos said. The company is not the owner of the pipelines and had ceased operations in the area four years ago, said spokesman Brian L. Grove.

An offshore well belonging to S2 Energy was discharging oil about five miles (8 km) away from the Bay Marchand site, the Coast Guard said. The company told the Coast Guard it has secured the wellhead and it was no longer discharging oil.

S2 did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Arpan Varghese in Bengaluru and Gary McWilliams in Houston Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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More than 80% of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico remains shut in after Hurricane Ida, a U.S. regulator said on Monday, more than a week after the storm made landfall and hit critical infrastructure in the region.

Energy companies have been struggling to resume production after Ida damaged platforms and caused onshore power outages. About 1.5 million barrels per day of oil production, or 84%, remains shut, while another 1.8 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas output, or 81%, was offline, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said.

A total of 99 oil and gas production platforms remain evacuated, down from the 288 originally evacuated.

“The entire region is still struggling with resupply,” said Tony Odak, chief operating officer of Stone Oil Distributor, which supplies fuel to the offshore industry. “The refiners are coming back up slowly, but there is so much infrastructure that needs to be brought back online and inspected as well.”

Five refineries in Louisiana remained shut on Monday, accounting for about 1 million barrels-per-day of refinery capacity, or about 6% of the total U.S. operable refining capacity, the Department of Energy said.

All three refineries in the Baton Rouge area and one near New Orleans have begun to restart, accounting for 1.3 million bpd of refining capacity, DOE said. However, the refiners will not produce at full rates for several days.

Operations remain limited at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) marine terminal, and repairs are underway, DOE said.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the largest U.S. Gulf Coast producer, on Sunday began redeploying staff to its Enchilada and Salsa platforms.

The region is still struggling with power outages, after Ida knocked out power to more than 1 million people last week. As of Monday morning, there were still about 573,000 outages due to Ida, including 568,000 customer outages remaining in Louisiana, DOE said.

The U.S. Coast Guard said on Monday it was investigating nearly 350 reports of oil spills in and along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the storm.

The lower Mississippi River and New Orleans ports were reopened to traffic and cargo operations, allowing the resumption of grain, metal and energy shipments.

(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly in New York Additional reporting by Liz Hampton in Denver Editing by Sandra Maler and Matthew Lewis)

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