The Biden administration has temporarily suspended oil and gas leasing and permitting on federal lands and waters while it evaluates the legal and policy implications of the program, according to a Department of Interior memo.The move appears to be a first step in delivering on newly sworn-in President Joe Biden's campaign promise to ban all new federal drilling permits
Business interruption, pandemic outbreak and cyber incidents -- three separate but 'strongly interlinked' matters -- lead the pack as the top threats to maritime in 2021, according to the 10th Allianz survey on risk in the maritime sector.The maritime industry, on its best day, is fraught with risk, as people
The United States is urging European allies and private companies to halt work that could help build the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline and is preparing wider sanctions on the Russian project in coming weeks, senior Trump administration officials said on Wednesday.The outgoing Trump administration is readying a fresh round of congressionally mandated sanctions “in the very near future” that
Russia has resumed construction of the politically-charged Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany, laying pipes after a one-year hiatus prompted by U.S. sanctions, the pipeline operator said on Friday.An alleged nerve agent attack on Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in August was the latest political controversy to hit the nearly-completed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline
Venezuela has resumed direct shipments of oil to China after U.S. sanctions sent the trade underground for more than a year, according to Refinitiv Eikon vessel-tracking data and internal documents from state company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).Chinese state companies China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) and PetroChina - long among PDVSA's top customers - stopped loading crude and fuel at
Venezuela's oil exports fell to a historic low of 359,000 barrels per day (bpd) in October as most of state-run PDVSA's long-term clients paused trade to meet a U.S. deadline to halt business with the firm, according to data seen by Reuters on Monday.The United States set an October-November deadline for PDVSA's long-term customers - including Italy Eni
As the global maritime community collectively is slowly pushed toward decarbonization, it is generally agreed that there is no ‘silver bullet’ technical solution and that progress will come in steps, led by public/private collaboration and funding.A recent development following that script is the awarding this week of federal funds to a Washington State team working to accelerate ferry technology
With developments in the current health crisis almost entirely consuming nearly all news reporting, one could be forgiven for thinking that the members of Congress are thinking about and working on little else, and that even if they were, the divisive partisanship of recent years would doom the prospects of much else getting done. Happily, that is not the case for the nation’s inland waterways.
As COVID-19 and a historically weak energy market wreaks havoc on the maritime industry, Christopher J. Wiernicki, CEO, American Bureau of Shipping, tells Maritime Reporter & Engineering News in its May 2020 edition that “COVID-19 will function as threat, a disruptor and catalyst for change, driving class further away from calendar maintenance towards predictive operations.
China is set to release its first-ever quotas to export very low sulphur fuel oil (VLSFO) with total volumes of 10 million tonnes for this year, six industry officials with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.The quotas, which came in the wake of Beijing’s policy in January to offer tax sweeteners to boost local production of the fuel
Small shipyards in the U.S. are critical to the nation’s maritime operations and economic security. Typically family-owned and employing less than 1,200 workers, America’s small shipyards support more than 400,000 jobs, employ more than 100,000 Americans directly and contribute tens of billions in gross domestic product, according to the U.S.
Two decades into the 21st century, we’re seeing a growing and pernicious threat to global information security: ransomware. Even non-technical folk have loosely heard of it, but the broader implications haven’t yet penetrated the public consciousness. In different industries, that general lack of awareness could be a big problem—and the maritime sector is a good example.