DAILY COLLECTION OF MARITIME PRESS CLIPPINGS 2018 – 013 Number 013 *** COLLECTION OF MARITIME PRESS CLIPPINGS *** Saturday 13-01-2018 News reports received from readers and Internet News articles copied from various news sites. The MSC JULIA R. navigating the Westerschelde inbound for Antwerp Photo : Chris Rombouts (c) Distribution : daily to 38.300+ active addresses 13-01-2018 Page 1 DAILY COLLECTION OF MARITIME PRESS CLIPPINGS 2018 – 013 Your feedback is important to me so please drop me an email if you have any photos or articles that may be of interest to the maritime interested people at sea and ashore PLEASE SEND ALL PHOTOS / ARTICLES TO : [email protected] If you don't like to receive this bulletin anymore : To unsubscribe click here (English version) or visit the subscription page on our website. http://www.maasmondmaritime.com/uitschrijven.aspx?lan=en-US EVENTS, INCIDENTS & OPERATIONS The STAD AMSTERDAM oubound from Willemstad - Curacao heading for Cartagena-Colombia. Photo : Kees Bustraan (c) Distribution : daily to 38.300+ active addresses 13-01-2018 Page 2 DAILY COLLECTION OF MARITIME PRESS CLIPPINGS 2018 – 013 NYC Ferry uses tugboats to break up ice in New York Harbor, East River By Vincent Barone Brian Dubreuil took in Jamaica Bay’s sunrise Wednesday from a landscape that seemed more Alaska than New York. Nestled in the wheelhouse of the Agnesk, he guided the tugboat slowly through the massive chunks of blue-tinted ice that bobbed sluggishly in the pinkish-grey water of the bay. “You can see the sun reflect on the buildings,” Dubreuil said, with one hand gently pulling the throttle. Dubreuil, 42, is the captain of one of just three or four tugboats in the harbor tasked with breaking up ice and clearing a path for smaller vessels, allowing regular water traffic to continue during the winter months. Since the new year, Dubreuil’s employer, Vinik Marine, has been working under contract for the city’s Economic Development Corporation to help clear the waterways for NYC Ferry. The steady streak of freezing cold days, paired with Thursday’s snowstorm, has created some of the iciest harbor conditions Dubreuil has seen during his 22 years of maritime work in the area. The arctic-like waters have led to the suspension of NYC Ferry’s Rockaway route since Friday, Jan. 5. “Back in ’95 or ’96, I was working in Bay Ridge. You could pretty much walk over from Bay Ridge or lower Manhattan down to Staten Island,” said Dubreuil, who lives in Bergen County, New Jersey. “The harbor was one sheet of ice.” The process of disrupting the ice is zen-like. Often beginning before than 4 a.m., Dubreuil plows his tugboat — equipped with two diesel engines and a steel hull — directly into ice at speeds of about 5 mph. Slates of ice, varying from 3-18 inches thick and sometimes as large as 100-feet-long by 100-feet-wide, are broken into smaller pieces. A shift could last 10 hours or more. Sometimes a tugboat will make the same half-mile route back and forth, over and over again, just to clear routes in ice as it forms around bridges. The ultimate goal is to break up the ice (so that it melts faster) while also positioning it to get swept out to the Atlantic Ocean by the current. The city is paying Vinik Marine $950 an hour for its ice-breaking services. “Once we get the ice past the Rockaway Point area it has a very, very good chance of not coming back,” said Francis Fata, 22, a deckhand from Whitestone, Queens. “You have a lot of current flowing out to the Narrows from the East River and the Hudson River and that will push the ice out to the Atlantic.” As Dubreuil navigates southwest from Rockaway, Queens, toward the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, a collection of tools rests on a small kitchen counter surrounded by instant ramen, doughnuts and chocolate chip cookies. He eyes tracks in a massive sheet of ice — an indicator that two pieces had frozen together after a previous boat had pushed through. It can be hard from the wheelhouse to predict where and how the ice will move, due to difficulty detecting factors such as wind and current. “On one side of the boat there’s no ice, and the other is full of ice. if the wind changes one way it could blow it all across the bay,” said Dubreuil, who grew up working on fishing boats. “It can change in an hour.” Even with a warm week such as this, the ice can linger. The city’s EDC is taking Rockaway service day- by-day and can’t commit to when the route will relaunch. “This is one of the variables. Every day we don’t know what we’re dealing with, so we make the call at 3 or 4 a.m.,” said Stephanie Baez, an EDC spokeswoman. “That’s when we’ll know if we can launch service safely.” Vinik Marine operates an essentially 24-hour call service for public agencies such as the EDC or private companies looking for tugboat muscle. “I love it. I might do ice today, or for this week. Next week I might be taking a crane barge in a creek for construction equipment. Maybe there will be something like a fireworks barge on July 4th, stuff like that,” Dubreuil said. “Every day is a different adventure.” Source: AMNewYork LNG to drive Arctic shipping development Liquefied natural gas is becoming the key driver for the development of the Arctic and Arctic shipping, both in Russia and in the USA. With the Alaska LNG project the two countries obtain an opportunity to settle the issue of shipping in the Bering Strait, which is essential for the functioning of the Northern Sea Route and for LNG exports from Alaska. The USA is going to boost Distribution : daily to 38.300+ active addresses 13-01-2018 Page 3 DAILY COLLECTION OF MARITIME PRESS CLIPPINGS 2018 – 013 LNG production. For that purpose regasification terminals are being converted for gas liquefaction. On the one hand, that will create a competition with the Russian LNG, on the other hand - will let settle the issue of shipping across the Bering Strait. In the end of 2017, Alaska authorities approved the expansion of the Point Thomson project (LNG production, Point Thomson reservoir, Alaska's North Slope). According to analysts, annual LNG production under the project will reach about 20 mln t by 2020-ies. Just like Russia’s project Yamal LNG, the Alaska LNG project involves Chinese capital. Liquefied gas is supposed to be transported to the Asia-Pacific region. For example, it will take about 7 days to deliver gas from the Point Thomson to Japan. The route will run across the Chukchee Sea and the Bering Strait, eastern gate of the Northern Sea Route and a border area between Russia and the USA. The problem resides in the following fact: maritime boundary between the USA and Russia runs along the Bering Strait under a treaty on delimitation line of maritime spaces signed by the United States and the USSR on 1 June 1990. The agreement has not yet been ratified by the Russian Parliament. Besides, the Bering Strait is recognized as waters open for international shipping and covered by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982) while the USA is not a party to UNCLOS 1982. Meanwhile, Russia also has its plans on LNG exports by eastern route. The year of 2017 saw the first commercial voyage of the Christophe de Margerie tanker (owned by Sovcomflot), which delivered a batch of LNG by the Northern Sea Route, from Norway to S. Korea. In order to develop the eastern route there is a plan to build the most powerful leader type icebreakers. Besides, Russia is interested in short-sea and transit cargo transportation along this route. As long as the Bering Strait was not in intense use there were no special problems. However, with the development of the Arctic shipping unsettled issues can hinder the development of both countries. To settle the situation, the Russian Federation and the USA filed a joint note to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in December 2017. The two countries suggest designating in the Bering Strait and at the approaches two-way shipping lanes open for free passage of vessels flying the flag of any state. In particular, it is suggested to arrange the traffic of ships sailing in the Bering Strait and between the coasts of Russia and the USA in the Bering Sea so that to decrease the risk of collision by separating opposite-direction flows and to prevent/reduce the risk of pollution or other damage to marine environment. The designation of two-way routes will ensure availability of free, internationally recognized corridors for vessels sailing across the Bering Strait in the interests of the Russian Federation despite any shifts in foreign policy of the USA. “According to preliminary estimates, shipping lanes in the Bering Strait can obtain a legal status before the end of 2018”, Vitaly Klyuyev, Director of RF Transport Ministry's Department of State Policy for Maritime and River Transport, told IAA PortNews. So, the growth of LNG production in the USA will contribute to cooperation of the two countries in the sphere of Arctic shipping despite sanctions. Source : Portnews The UNION DIAMOND with in tow the GIANT 6 enroute from Ras Al Khaimah UAE and round Cape Good hope bound for North west Europe made a crewchange at the anchorage of Walvisbay.