Shipping and the World

[from Seatrade Maritime News]

Asyad Dry Dock Expanding Capacity As Demand Grows

Oman shipyard Asyad Dry Dock is expanding its capacity by 20% with a new floating dock as its current facilities are fully utilized.

by Marcus Hand

The shipyard, formerly Oman Drydock Company, is now part of the Asyad Group, the logistics arm of the Oman government. Management of the yard has been combined with shipowner Oman Shipping Company, and overseen by Dr. Irbahim Al Nadhairi, Chief Executive Officer, Shipping & Drydock.

“We have integrated the shipping and drydocking as the shipping service. The companies are still two legal separate entities but then we share the same executive team to be more efficient,” Dr. Ibrahim told Seatrade Maritime News in an interview at Posidonia 2022.

On the shipping side of the business the group owns a fleet of 65 ships with plans to increase the fleet to over 100 vessels over the next five years. He explains that with such a size of fleet the shipowner needed a quality shipyard so it made sense to work together.

Asyad maintains most, if not all its fleet at the shipyard in Oman, accounting for around 15% of its business. While part of the same group Dr. Ibrahim says it does not send its ships to the yard “by default,” and they have to make sure it is competitive as it needs to be for their third-party customers.

Business has been growing for the shipyard and it experienced a spike in the first half of this year as Chinese capacity has been taken out of the market by COVID restrictions pushing work to yards in other parts of the world. “So, we could see there was a big hike in the number of ships, not only for Asyad Dry Dock, but the entire region as well,” Dr. Ibrahim said.

“The next 12 months I believe the ship repair industry will still continue to flourish on our side.”

The shipyard’s two 600,000 DWT drydocks are already operating at full capacity and this year sees it adding a floating dock with the capacity to handle vessels up to Panamax size.

“We’ve recently acquired a floating dock which is of Panamax size and we reckon that about 40% of the business in ship repair is within that Panamax size. The floating dock gives us around 20% extra capacity,” he said. It will increase the number of ships the yard can repair from 200 to around 240.

The floating dock is expected to arrive in Oman in the next six weeks, and following some dredging works be operational by the start of Q4 this year.

Greek owners are major clients of the shipyard and account for around 40% of business, and Dr. Ibrahim said they added two more Greek clients last week. “It seems we have a good reputation in the Greek market and between now and end of Q3 we have 27 ships in orderbook from the Greek market.”

Globally its customer base includes MSC, AP Møller-Mærsk, CMA CGM S.A., Hapag-Lloyd, and Mitsui OSK Lines (株式会社商船三井). Maersk currently has currently two vessels in the yard.

Being able to deliver services efficiently and on time is of critical importance in the financially booming container sector.

“Today when you talk about bringing a container ship into a shipyard time really is money,” Dr. Ibrahim said. If a container ship owner says a ship will be in the yard for 15 days the owner will expect work to be completed in 12 days.

‘Further Action Is Needed’ As MEPC 78 Gets Underway

IMO Secretary General Kitack Lim hailed the 78th session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee as an opportunity to be brave and lead by example on decarbonization.

by Gary Howard

MEPC 78 has a packed agenda with the opportunity to consider and progress IMO’s work on cutting greenhouse gas emissions from ships.

At the last MEPC meeting, a revision process was agreed to strengthen the IMO’s initial GHG strategy which was adopted in 2018. A strengthened version of that initial strategy is due in mid-2023 at MEPC 80.

Speaking to Seatrade Maritime News in May, Stamatis Fradelos, Vice President, Regulatory Affairs at ABS said that important influencers in the IMO like the United States, EU, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand are calling for net zero emissions from shipping by 2050 and introducing a level of ambition for 2040.

“Whilst progress has been made on many of the measures set out in the Initial Strategy, I am sure that we can all agree that further action is needed. Your discussions this week will chart the way forward for the decarbonization of international shipping,” said Lim.

“It is therefore of utmost importance that IMO continues to deliver concrete progress in transitioning international shipping from fossil fuels to low and zero-carbon alternatives.”

Member states at MEPC 78 will also consider adoption of guidelines to support short-term measures on GHG emissions, including correction factors for carbon intensity, EEXI calculation methodology and revised SEEMP.

Calculations on the GHG impact of fuels will be discussed, as ISWG-GHG 11 reports progress on developing lifecycle GHG assessment guidelines. Well-to-wake and tank-to-wake calculations are in scope, with the aim of giving fuel users a full picture of the impact of the production and use of the fuels they choose.

“Your constructive discussions on these topics will enhance the Committee’s evidence-based decision making when further considering proposals for mid-term GHG reduction measures,” Lim told Member States.

“I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest appreciation to all Member States, and observer delegations, and especially the Chair of the Working Group on reduction of GHG emissions from ships, Mr. Oftedal of Norway, for the extraordinary effort and dedication in ensuring the successful outcome of both intersessional meetings.”

Houston Begins $1.1Bn Ship Channel Widening

The Port of Houston kicked off its the long-awaited billion dollar dredging scheme, the Houston Ship Channel Widening and Improvement Project 11 last week.

by Michele Labrut

The $1.1bn expansion of the Houston Ship Channel, which has been in planning for more than a decade is finally underway.

After more than a decade of planning, Project 11 will allow the ship channel to accommodate an additional 1,400 vessels per year and could generate up to $134bn more annually in economic impact once completed. The channel currently accommodates about 8,200 vessels and 215,000 barges each year, hauling more than 247m tons of cargo.

“This project will enable Port of Houston to continue to grow and respond effectively to whatever the future demand in the supply chain has to offer,” Port of Houston Executive Director Roger Guenther said in a statement.

Port of Houston is a 40-2 km-long complex of nearly 200 private and public industrial terminals along the 583.6 km-long manmade Houston Ship Channel, which connects the port to the Gulf of Mexico.

Project 11 will widen the Houston Ship Channel by 51.8 m along its 41.8 km Galveston Bay reach, to 213.3 m wide. It will also deepen upstream segments from a current depth of 13.7 m to a depth of 14.7 m. Dredging began last week. The Houston Ship Channel winds from the Gulf of Mexico through shallow Galveston Bay and up through the port.

“This project is important on many levels, including improving the efficiency of our nation’s supply chains, promoting navigational safety, and creating environmental benefits through the innovative use of dredged material,” Michael Conner, Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works), said in a statement.

Port of Houston and the Army Corps of Engineers signed an agreement in August giving the port permits to start dredging the federal waterway. Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. was awarded a $95m contract in October, which also includes oyster mitigation and construction of a bird island. The channel widening and deepening project is scheduled to be completed in 2025.

EU Transport Commissioner Focuses on ‘Solidarity Lanes’ and Sanctions

As the global food crisis deepens and millions of tons of Ukraine’s grain remain blocked in the Black Sea, EU Transport Commissioner Adina-Ioana Vălean has declared that all transport modes will be considered in setting up new Solidarity Lanes that bypass the Black Sea.

by Paul Bartlett

Her comments come as disrupted grain movements risk a global food crisis.

Speaking to journalists immediately prior to yesterday’s opening ceremony at Posidonia, she said that trucks, tracks, trains, transshipment and storage facilities will all contribute to new supply chains to ensure that exports from one of the world’s largest grain exporters can resume, at least in part, as soon as possible.

She said that the setting up of Solidarity Lanes would have important commercial implications for shipping and could even lead to changes in the sector’s business models. 

Vălean also rejected criticism from prominent Greek shipowners who had claimed earlier in the day that sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of its invasion on Ukraine won’t work. At a Maritime Leaders Summit staged by Capital Link on Monday, George Prokopiou and Evangelos Marinakis had both said that sanctions against Iran and Venezuela had been shown not to work and similar moves against Russia would not be effective either.

However, other sources pointed to the scale of the sanctions package that has severely impacted the Russian economy by disrupting key revenue generating sectors. Energy exports are the most obvious example and although Russian oil is still easily sold in India and China, for example, it is at deep discounts to global prices.

Meanwhile, LNG exports have also been hit and development of Arctic LNG supply chains have also been severely affected. Within the next few months, Vălean said that Russian oil exports would be further disrupted by the withdrawal of insurance cover on shipping and transport arrangements.

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis: Marine Economy, 2020

[from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis]

The marine economy accounted for 1.7 percent, or $361.4 billion, of current-dollar U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 and 1.7 percent, or $610.3 billion, of current-dollar gross output. Real (inflation-adjusted) GDP for the marine economy decreased 5.8 percent from 2019 to 2020, compared with a 3.4 percent decrease for the overall U.S. economy. Real gross output for the marine economy decreased 8.5 percent, while marine economy compensation decreased 1.2 percent, and employment decreased 10.8 percent.

Read the current release [Archived PDF]

World-Watching: Shipping Problems Webinar

Solving SMB Shipping Problems with Technology — June 14th @ 2 PM EDT

[from FreightWaves]

The supply chain challenges we hear about today likely bear little resemblance to those we envisioned at the beginning of 2020. Ongoing disruption to the global supply chain has accelerated and heightened the need to focus on risk mitigation — or face even more critical concerns.

To uncover ways small and midsized (SMB) organizations can overcome tech adoption challenges and continue to grow, FreightWaves has partnered with MyCarrier for a one-hour webinar at 2 PM EDT on Tuesday, June 14.

In this webinar, learn how SMB organizations can alleviate the pressure of industry volatility by utilizing technology to:

  1. Reduce shipping costs
  2. Maintain customer demands
  3. Source reliable capacity
  4. Ensure timely pick ups 
  5. Manage inventory
Speakers

Register for the webinar.

Economy-Watching: Supply Chain Pressures

[from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Applied Macroeconomics and Econometrics Center]

Global Supply Chain Pressure Index: June 2022 Update

A new reading of the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index has been posted.

The GSCPI compiles more than two dozen metrics across seven economies—data on global transportation costs and regional manufacturing conditions—to track shifts in supply chain pressures from 1997 to the present.

The GSCPI will be updated regularly at 10 AM ET on the fourth business day of each month. The index was first introduced through a Liberty Street Economics post in early January 2022 [archived PDF], with subsequent blog posts in late January 2022 [archived PDF] and March 2022 [archived PDF].

The GSCPI is a product of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Applied Macroeconomics and Econometrics Center.

View the Index.

Wired Magazine and Charles Dickens

We think of the leading tech periodical Wired and we think of the internet and smartphone phase of technology innovation.

As always, there’s a wide-angle deeper view that helps you to avoid being “stranded in the present” (to use Professor Peter Fritzsche’s useful phrase and book title as a warning about the flaws of a no-overview sense of reality).

Think back to the famous Charles Dickens classic novel, Hard Times from 1854.

Chapter 11 of this novel talks about “electric wires.” Thus today’s copper wires and fiberoptics have a nineteenth century anticipation.

The end-notes on Hard Times inform us:

“…the wires of the telegraph which were becoming common as an adjunct to the railways from 1846-1847. During the French Wars the old wire-and-lever telegraphs had been set up between Whitehall and the main naval bases. The ‘galvanic’ telegraph had been invented by 1840, the idea of stretching the wires between tall posts by 1843, and by mid-1848 half the railways were so equipped.”

(Charles Dickens, Hard Times, Penguin Books, 1969, page 328)

The following added point will further elaborate on this chapter of the world’s wiring adding a larger comparative perspective:

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-Line Pioneers is a book by Tom Standage. First published in September 1998 through Walker & Company, the book discusses the development and uses of the electric telegraph during the second half of the 19th century and some of the similarities the telegraph shared with the Internet of the late 20th century.

The book’s central idea posits that of these two technologies, it was the telegraph that was the more significant, since the ability to communicate globally at all in real-time was a qualitative shift, while the change brought on by the modern Internet was merely a quantitative shift according to Standage, though, by the same token, global communication was just a quantitative shift from long-distance communication.

The book describes to general readers how some of the uses of telegraph in commercial, military, and social communication were, in a sense, analogous to modern uses for the Internet. A few rather unusual stories are related, about couples who fell in love and even married over the wires, criminals who were caught through the telegraph, etc. The culture which developed between telegraph operators also had some rather unexpected affinities with the Internet. Both cultures made or make use of complex text coding and abbreviated language slang, both required network security experts, and both attracted criminals who used the networks to commit fraud, hack private communications, and send unwanted messages.

U.S. Labor Trends: Atlanta Fed’s Labor Market Tracking Tools Updated with May Data

[from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Center for Human Capital Studies]

What do May employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics mean for the outlook for labor markets? Find out in the Atlanta Fed’s Labor Market Distributions Spider Chart, Jobs Calculator, and Labor Market Sliders.

Want to see even more economic data? Our EconomyNow app will put GDPNow and all our data tools right in your hands. Download it today to see the latest data on inflation, growth, and the labor market.

Education and the Historical Swirl: Part II

We concluded Part I on this topic with the following comments which we wish students to incorporate into their educations, irrespective of the major, field or concentration:

The gold standard itself, dominated from London led to intricate problems: Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939 (published in 1992) by Barry Eichengreen, the leading historian of monetary systems, shows the downstream pitfalls of the gold standard.

In other words, the de facto emergence of Britain/London as the world commercial and policy center and the relation of this emergence to empire and international tensions and rivalries, means it is very problematical for any country to steer a course other than staying in tandem with British moods and ideologies, such as free trade. Any country by itself would find it difficult to have a more independent policy. (Friedrich List of Germany, who died in 1846, wrestles with these difficulties somewhat.) The attempts to find “autonomy and autarky” in the interwar years (Germany, Japan, Italy) led to worse nightmares. The world seems like a “no exit” arena of ideologies and rivalries.

The “crazy dynamics” and the semi-anarchy of the system, which continues to this day and is even worse, means that policy-making is always seen through a “dark windshield.”

History in the globalizing capitalist centuries, the nineteenth and the twentieth, is a kind of turbulent swirl and not a rational “walk.”

Here’s a bizarre but necessary comment on this sense of turbulent and surprising swirl propelling history forwards and backwards and sidewards at the same time:

The historian, Barry Eichengreen (mentioned above), is a distinguished analyst of world monetary systems at U.C. Berkeley and perhaps the leading expert today on the evolution of such systems.

From movies such as Shoah and Last of the Unjust by the great filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, we know that Barry Eichengreen’s mother was Lucille Eichengreen, a Jew born in Hamburg, Germany (1925) and deported to the Łódź Ghetto in Poland during World War II. She survived through many miraculous accidents and contingencies, then wrote about her experiences.

We get a deeper insight into “the way of the world” by seeing that the Holocaust itself has as a backdrop the anarcho-craziness of the world. The Fascists and Nazis were jumping from the “frying pan into the fire” by imagining that world conquest and world-murdering could “stop the world.” They and their favored populations could “get off” and step into a racial dreamworld. They were taking today’s concept of “gated community” and applying it to the “racial community” (Volksgemeinschaft, in German).

This led to the phenomenon depicted in Goya’s famous aquatint: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.

The perceived madness of the world and the madness of leaders that this perception leads to have never been analyzed together.

The fact that the behavior of world leaders could be “crazy like a fox” (half-insane, half-opportunistic, or Machiavellian “clever”) is a complicating factor or twist from Mussolini until today.

San Francisco Fed Economic Letter: Estimating Natural Rates of Unemployment

[Federal Reserve Bank San Francisco Economic Letter 2022-14, by Brandyn Bok and Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau]

Before the pandemic, the U.S. unemployment rate reached a historic low that was close to estimates of its underlying longer-run value and the short-run level associated with an absence of inflationary pressures. After two turbulent years, unemployment has returned to its pre-pandemic low, and the estimated underlying longer-run unemployment rate appears largely unchanged. However, economic disruptions appear to have pushed up the short-run noninflationary rate substantially, as high as 6%. Examining these different measures of the natural rate of unemployment can provide useful insights for policymakers.

Read the full article [archived PDF].

Line from Tennyson Poem: Thinking about Education

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson FRS (6 August, 1809 – 6 October, 1892) was the Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria’s reign and remains one of the most popular British poets.

One of his most famous poems is Locksley Hall (1835-1842).

In the poem, Tennyson predicts the rise of both civil aviation and military aviation with the following words:

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;

A key line in this poem is: “Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.”

This Tennyson line is not identical with what we are attempting here but it is helpful in terms of its basic intuition as to what “evaporates” from the mind and what might remain.

Our quest is more: develop through all these examples a sense of “omnidirectional zooming out” from any one field, lecture, book, movie, topic, question, quiz, discussion in schools and universities and create your own inner “map room.”

One “strange” characteristic of this particular map room is that it does not “banish the intensely personal” but considers that the basis and not some kind of illegitimate distraction. But that’s not all: it proposes that you hold in your mind the truth the education is itself found between the intensely personal and the global surround of techno-commerce, and that means that “the omnidirectional quest to understand” must always be aware of these levels and dimensions at the same time and in the same mind and person. Everything else is specialized training or platitudinous “motivational speaking.”

What we are introducing here is “equidistant” from all that and insists on an “all at once” evolving overview as odd as that may appear when you start.

You can neither “major in everything and all fields” and you also cannot neglect the deepest dimensions, taken together. This is the “razor’s edge” one must walk on.

World-Watching: 21st International Economic Forum on Africa 2022

[From the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)]

The Future Africa Wants: Better Policies for the Next Generation and a Sustainable Transition

Fast and brutal mutations in the global economy today are reshaping conditions for transforming African economies and creating better opportunities for its youth. Efforts to reduce the continent’s dependence on raw material exports, advance productive transformation and increase investment and domestic resource mobilization are being challenged.

Can innovative policies and international partnerships help address: 

Join OECD experts, African leaders and policy makers and shakers to discuss next steps for a more sustainable future.

The 21st edition of the AU–OECD International Economic Forum on Africa takes places in the framework of the OECD Ministerial Council Meeting (MCM), chaired by Italy under the theme “The Future We Want: Better Policies for the Next Generation and a Sustainable Transition.” The Forum is an opportunity for OECD members to engage at high level, yet informally, with Africa’s leaders, movers and shakers on the way forward.

Register to attend in person.

Can’t come to Paris? Join the Forum online, watch it on OECD TV, Twitter or Facebook