COS Weekly Newsletter - Friday, 28 January 2022

Western IntermodeX has now opened Coast2000’s Portside Depot II located at 17200 Portside Road in Richmond just east of Coast2000’s current Portside Depot. The temporary site is a collaboration between the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority (VFPA) and Transport Canada (TC), with funding to prepare the site made available through the National Trade Corridors Fund (NTCF). This collaborative effort is intended to ease supply chain bottlenecks by temporarily increasing container storage capacity in the Port of Vancouver. The development will span 20 acres and is permitted for the storage of empty shipping containers to be stored while waiting to be moved out of the Vancouver Gateway.

CN has appointed Tracy Robinson as President and Chief Executive Officer and as a member of its Board of Directors, effective February 28, 2022 which coincides with the retirement of Jean-Jacques (“JJ”) Ruest.  Ruest will remain at CN in an advisory role until March 31st to ensure a seamless transition. Robinson, who will be joining CN from TC Energy and previously spent almost three decades at Canadian Pacific, is a well-respected and seasoned public company executive who brings more than 35 years of operational management, strategy development, and project execution experience to drive growth and profitability to CN. She has a proven track record as an extraordinary high-performing leader, for which she is highly regarded within the Canadian federal and provincial regulated natural gas industry and beyond.

The FortisBC Tilbury natural gas plant has moved ahead another step towards expansion. Both the federal and provincial governments decided last week to move forward with environmental assessments of the proposed project to build a new storage facility and expand natural gas liquefaction capacity at the Delta plant, located on the Fraser River. FortisBC wants to start expanding the storage capacity of the Tilbury facility by 2023 and additional liquefaction capability in 2028. New storage capability would comprise 140,000 cubic metres of LNG capacity for a total of 188,000 cubic metres after the old storage tank is decommissioned.  If liquefaction were expanded, the plant would produce 7,700 tonnes of LNG per day

Aging infrastructure and insufficient capacity remain the top challenge identified by 90% of transportation leaders in the 5th annual WESTAC Compass Survey. The survey results also highlighted that the challenges that have emerged since the beginning of the pandemic are at a crossroads and a new comprehensive strategy is needed for Western Canada's trade corridors. Workforce issues have been identified for the first time as a top transportation challenge.

For 60 years ago the Canadian Coast Guard has been a reassuring symbol of service and safety, a beacon of hope for mariners in distress and a source of pride for Canadians.  Canadian Coast Guard personnel are there 24/7, 365 days a year to carry out operations vital to coastal communities and marine industries, including search and rescue, environmental response, icebreaking, marine traffic control, and aids to navigation. The anniversary theme of "Celebrate the past. Navigate the future." points to the increasingly critical role that the Coast Guard will play in protecting our oceans and those who make a living from them by ensuring modern services that continue to meet the needs of mariners. The Canadian Coast Guard is responsible for 123 ships, 23 cutting-edge helicopters, approximately 17,000 fixed and floating aids to navigation, and 183 marine communication towers.

The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, announced that the second round of applications is open for $200 million through the Low Carbon Economy Fund’s Champions stream, which supports a wide range of local pollution‑cutting initiatives in communities across Canada.  The Champions stream is open to provinces and territories, municipalities, Indigenous communities, businesses and not-for-profit organizations.

The Federal Maritime Commission met in both open and closed sessions today to be briefed on efforts to address detention and demurrage, improve supply chain data transparency, and an ongoing investigation of Canadian government regulations that affect U.S. flag Great Lakes shipping. The Commission was also advised of the work its Area Representatives are doing at locations key to shipping around the Nation. While commissioners expressed concern about Audit Team data that showed carrier revenues from detention and demurrage charges were up sharply over 2021, Commission staff made clear this is not an unexpected development given record volumes of trade and congestion throughout the US supply chain. Additionally, chassis shortages, insufficient warehouse space, and some shippers abandoning cargoes are contributing to the issuance of detention and demurrage charges. It was also noted that direct engagement with ocean carriers is yielding progress in changing behavior and practices with carriers waiving a much higher percentage of detention and demurrage charges. Topics addressed in the closed session were the VOCC Audit Program, detention and demurrage, Area Representative activity update, and updates to the ongoing investigation into the conditions created by Canadian Ballast Water Regulations.

Passengers on Crystal Cruises' Crystal Symphony were kept onboard an extra day when the ship changed course after a warrant was issued for its arrest. On Saturday, the ship sailed to Bimini in the Bahamas after skirting its planned disembarkation in Miami where the ship may have been met by a US marshall. On January 21, Peninsula Petroleum Far East had an arrest warrant approved by a Florida judge, alleging a total $4.6 million in missed fuel payments, with $1.2 million accrued by the Crystal Symphony.  Disembarking passengers were transported from Bimini to Port Everglades by ferry. Crystal Cruises has suspended operations through late April, canceling or cutting short itineraries for the Crystal Symphony and two other ships.

Major shipping companies are offering seafarers bonuses worth as much as three years' salary in an effort to keep talent in an industry that has had its toll on those at sea. COSCO Shipping gave workers year-end bonuses of about 30 times their monthly salary, Chinese Media group Caixin Global reported. Similarly, the Taiwanese shipping companies Evergreen Marine handed out bonuses as high as 40 times its workers' monthly pay, while Wan Hai paid out bonuses worth a full year's salary or about $36,093.  In 2021, global cargo carriers are estimated to have generated a record $150 billion in profits, but continue to face difficulties keeping workers. On Wednesday, the annual Seafarers Happiness Index found that seafarers' levels of unhappiness reached all-time lows in 2021 and that many seafarers over the age of 35 were not intending to return to sea.

The methanol-fuelled chemical tanker Seymour Sun, owned by NYK Bulkship (Asia) Pte. Ltd., an NYK Group company based in Singapore, was delivered on Thursday (27 January).

The vessel was built at Hyundai Mipo Dockyard in Korea.

Seymour Sun has been equipped with a dual-fuel engine that can use not only heavy fuel oil but also methanol. When navigating using methanol as fuel, the vessel has a new technology that suppresses the production of nitrogen oxides (NOx) by adding water to methanol to lower its temperature during combustion.

As a result, the vessel can comply with the IMO’s stringent Tier III NOx emission standard and contribute to environment-friendly transportation without the need for an exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) system and a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) device.

Under the management of NYK Shipmanagement Pte. Ltd., an NYK Group company, the vessel will be engaged in a long-term charter contract with Vancouver-based Waterfront Shipping Limited, which is a subsidiary company of Methanex Corporation, the world’s largest methanol producer.