COS Weekly Newsletter - Friday, 11 March 2022

With a strike mandate given by 3,000 members of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) representing locomotive engineers, conductors, trainpersons and yardpersons, CP Rail services could be disrupted as early as midnight EST on March 16th. The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service is scheduled to meet with the union between March 11 and 16.  CP has indicated that it has offered a fair and balanced agreement which includes increases for a two-year collective agreement and 20 union demands on benefits and work rules.  The main outstanding item apparently relates to pensions. Shippers are seeking a swift resolution in view of an already constrained supply chain and that a strike could have a far-reaching impact to the Canadian economy and food security.

A critical piece of infrastructure more than 10 stories high has arrived at the LNG Canada project site in Kitimat, B.C., in the traditional territory of the Haisla Nation, marking another phase in construction activities at Canada’s first major liquified natural gas facility. Measuring 35 metres in height and weighing 4,618 metric tonnes, the inlet facilities module will serve as the entry point for natural gas delivered to the LNG Canada site via the new Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline. One of more than a dozen highly advanced process modules built for the LNG Canada facility, and the first to arrive in Kitimat, the new inlet facilities module will receive natural gas directly from the CGL pipeline and evenly distribute it at a constant flow to treatment facilities and processes, including liquification and storage, before it is loaded into specialized carriers for marine transport, explains LNG Canada Senior Construction Engineer Gerard Bowers.

The Government of Canada has released its What we Heard Report summarizing input received during broad engagement on Canada’s Blue Economy Strategy.  A recurring theme in the report is that Canada’s oceans and marine resources must be healthy to support a prosperous blue economy while continuing to support industries that have traditionally relied on the ocean and its resources. To achieve this objective, the natural environment must be valued and measures to protect, conserve, restore and rebuild our marine and coastal resources must be adopted. In the area of marine transportation, two notable recommendations include 1) improving accountability and transparency of Port Authority decision-making - clarify roles and responsibilities and provide a mechanism for appeal of decisions, and 2) Coordinate across departments and agencies to review and streamline port policies, governance, mandate, transparency, and regulatory environment.

On April 20, Transport Canada’s vessel traffic management speed restrictions for all vessels over 13 metres, throughout much of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, will take effect to protect areas where whales are detected. The speed reduction is in addition to other measures such as seasonal and temporary fishing area closures and efforts to address ghost fishing gear by Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Natural Resource launched the $10-million Impact Canada Oil Spill Response Challenge, which encourages innovators to develop rapidly deployable solutions to detect oil spills and to increase oil spill recovery rates in a Canadian context. The Challenge will assess technologies through two streams: detection, to improve data availability and accuracy to inform oil spill response measures; and recovery, to clean up oil spills in aquatic environments to the fullest extent possible and expedite environmental recovery.  Innovators who will compete to develop and test their solutions are invited to apply for the Oil Spill Response Challenge by the June 1, 2022, deadline.

The Government of Canada has released the Labour Exploitation in Global Supply Chains: What We Heard Report. This is an important step towards the Minister of Labour’s mandate commitment to introduce legislation to eradicate forced labour from Canadian supply chains and advance concrete action to ensure that Canadian businesses operating abroad do not contribute to human rights abuses. While participants did note short-term costs associated with addressing forced labour, the long-term benefits were highlighted, particularly as more and more consumers are prioritizing ethical and transparent businesses. Stakeholders are invited to review the Report and share any additional feedback by April 8, 2022.

In a preview of operations planned if their merger is approved, Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern have launched interline intermodal service between Mexico’s port of Lázaro Cárdenas and Chicago.  The first train carrying containers offloaded at Lázaro Cárdenas arrived Tuesday morning at CP's Bensenville Yard in the Chicago area. CP said in a press release the service was launched “out of the need to avoid excessive delays due to the unprecedented and ongoing supply chain challenges facing North America’s West Coast.” Total transit time from arrival in port in Mexico to arrival at Bensenville was seven days.

The International Chamber of Shipping added its voice to a growing coalition of governments and organizations calling for the establishment of a maritime corridor to allow the safe evacuation of ships that are currently unable to leave territorial waters in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ICS’s warning came ahead of an Extraordinary Meeting of the UN, under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), where industry presented an eight-point plan on how to ensure seafarer wellbeing. It included calls for states to ensure seafarers access their pay, and for the establishment of safe corridors for ships to leave ports in Ukraine. Of shipping’s total workforce, 198,123 (10.5%) of seafarers are Russian, of which 71,652 are officers and 126,471 are ratings. Ukraine accounts for 76,442 (4%) of seafarers of which 47,058 are officers and 29,383 are ratings. Combined they represent 14.5% of the global workforce. To maintain trade levels, these seafarers must be able to join and disembark ships (crew change) freely across the world. However, flights have been cancelled to and from the region, making this increasingly difficult. Fears over crew safety and increasing insurance premiums to send ships to Ukraine or Russia have also discouraged shipowners from sending vessels to these countries. Industry has reported that some crews have abandoned their ships in Ukraine due to security worries.

Proman and A.P. Moller -Maersk (Maersk) have entered into a new cooperation agreement to identify and develop green methanol supply solutions for Maersk's new methanol-fuelled container vessels. Proman will aim to supply Maersk with 100,000 – 150,000 tonnes per year of green methanol from its new 200,000 tonnes per year methanol facility in development in North America. The project will be built by Proman with target start of operations in 2025, producing bio-methanol from non-recyclable forestry residues and municipal solid waste. Proman is looking to optimize supply at Maersk's key bunkering ports and is evaluating multiple bio-methanol and e-methanol projects in South America, Europe and the United Kingdom, which Maersk and Proman will explore as part of a longer-term green methanol supply strategy for Maersk and for the shipping industry.

More than a century after it sank off the coast of Antarctica, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance has been located, apparently upright, intact and in good condition beneath Antarctic ice. The 3-masted ship, which sank in 1915, is 3,008 metres (1.9 miles or 9,842 feet) deep in the Weddell Sea, a pocket in the Southern Ocean along the northern coast of Antarctica, south of the Falkland Islands.

Endurance departed from the U.K. in 1914 and reached Antarctica's McMurdo Sound the following year on a journey called the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.  However, due to the extreme conditions, the ship got stuck amid thick, impenetrable ice in the Weddell Sea. The 28 men on board, including Shackleton himself, abandoned the Endurance and set up rudimentary camp facilities on board ice floes that were floating northward.

Eventually, the team made it to the uninhabited Elephant Island, then some -- including Shackleton -- volunteered to get in a lifeboat and head toward South Georgia Island, finally crossing it on foot to reach Stromness whaling station, which was then manned by the Norwegians, and organize a rescue of the men left behind on Elephant Island.

Although the expedition was a failure, the team's survival and eventual rescue months later, without any loss of life, was seen as a triumph of their tenacity and the incredible leadership skills of Shackleton.

The Endurance22 mission, organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust and using advanced underwater vehicles called Sabertooths fitted with high-definition cameras and scanners, tracked the vessel's remains down.