Halter Marine breaks order drought A $10,768,440 contract for two ferries "comes at a good time" for Halter Marine Group, says Chairman, President and CEO John Dane III, as the multi-yard group "needed additional work to start filling in the oil and gas backlog."
Tidewater in stock buy-back The board of Tidewater Inc. has authorized a $50 million repurchase of shares of its common stock.
Bonn scraps tax breaks for ship finance funds GERMANY scrapped its successful KG ship finance programme yesterday when the Bonn parliament finalised approval of a major tax reform package.
UK Tories promise tonnage tax amendments in Finance Bill AMENDMENTS to the Finance Bill incorporating a UK tonnage tax will be tabled by the Conservative Party, shadow transport minister Bernard Jenkin has promised.
Clarkson insists it will not cut jobs Leading shipbroker Horace Clarkson has resolved to fight the temptation to make cuts, despite a tumble in company profit and turnover.
Profits surge at Sea Containers SEA Containers saw a 39.7% increase in net income to $58.7m for 1998, helped by strong performances from the container leasing and passenger transport divisions, writes Roger Hailey.
US yards gain from foreign scrapping bar A highly political one-year US moratorium on the sale to overseas firms of government vessels set for scrapping has already 'cost' shipbreakers the loss of 29 ships, US maritime administrator Clyde Hart has revealed.
Asian owners look for action on plunging rates Asia's top shipowners have met in Shanghai to discuss hopes for reversing the free fall in freight rates.
Evergreen to boost Lloyd Triestino fleet Just six months after taking over Lloyd Triestino, Taiwanese container shipping giant Evergreen is to more than double the capacity of the Italian carrier.
NYK charter-back deal JAPAN'S Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) has sold one of its ro-ro vessels in a $50m sale and charter back deal.
Shipowners Hurt By Oil Production Cuts A recent oil producer's pact to shave output by two million barrels a day caused a build up of shipping tonnage and weakened freight rates for very large crude carriers, shipping brokers reported. Tankers operators estimated that up to 90 vessels of 25.7 million tons are available in the Middle East Gulf within the next 30 days.
Villages Evacuate As Tanker Burns About 200 people from two villages on the north coast of Scotland were reportedly evacuated after fire broke out on an abandoned tanker filled with lethal chemicals drifting just three miles offshore.
U.K. Detains 25 Ships Nine of the 25 ships detained in U.K. ports in February were held wholly or partly for non-compliance with Global Maritime Distress Safety System (GMDSS) requirements. In many cases the new equipment had not been fitted and the flag state had declined to issue an exemption, the agency said in a statement.
Bouygues To Sign Port Contract Morocco and French construction firm Bouygues will reportedly sign a $450 million contract next week to build a new port in the northern Tangiers area.
Clarkson Profits Halved; Freight Rates To Blame British shipbroking group Horace Clarkson Plc reported that profits had more than halved in 1998 as a result of low freight rates but its tanker division had maintained earnings by increasing market share.
Merger OK'd Slovenian port Luka Koper and shipping firm Intereuropa reported that their supervisory boards had approved a merger of the two firms. The two companies are already closely related as about a third of Luka Koper's total revenue is derived from operations and services of Intereuropa.
Overcrowded Ship Sinks, 70 Perish Around 70 people reportedly drowned when an overloaded ship sank in rough seas off the coast of Sierra Leone.
The most aggressive, widely supported and optimistic assault on rail market power since Congress first placed railroads on a leash more than a century ago has been introduced in the Senate as the Railroad Competition and Service Improvement Act. A similar bill could surface in the House by April. Although congressional passage is unlikely, House and Senate aides predict that if the shipper lobby recruits enough supporters to threaten reauthorization of the Surface Transportation Board for the second successive year, a legislative compromise could be forged that includes some of the shipper aims as part of the STB reauthorization.
Amtrak has become a railroad under siege. Being found in its file cabinets are nasty secrets that include improperly executed contracts that squandered millions of dollars, possible equipment-engineering errors totaling tens of millions of dollars, a $107 million contractual payment to union employees not reported to Congress and accounting records that mask actual annual losses. Although Amtrak has its own inspector general who is supposed to root out and report such lapses, they are being revealed by other federal agencies following complaints by Amtrak employees.
The shutdown of a Northern California oil refinery for a safety investigation is pumping up fuel prices by as much as 15 cents a gallon in that state and has sparked the ire of motor carriers who say the state's environmental laws put them at a competitive disadvantage. Tosco Corp. shut its Avon, Calif., refinery after an accident Feb. 23 that killed four employees and severely injured a fifth. The plant's closure hits California truckers especially hard because it produces approximately 30 percent of the specially formulated, clean-burning fuel that the state requires drivers to use.
Officials of the American Trucking Associations courted the 2,100 attendees at last week's annual meeting of the Truckload Carriers Association as if ATA's survival was at stake. In fact, as the largest affiliate of the ATA, the 1,100-member TCA has a large say in how far ATA's reorganization plan flies. The full-court press by ATA executives appears to be working.
The Federal Maritime Commission has uncovered a huge antitrust case where ocean carriers artificially jacked up transpacific prices to unfairly benefit from a capacity crunch in the second half of last year. The abuses, laid out in 40,000 pages, show that carriers colluded in inflating prices and refused to carry low-priced cargo. NVOCCs were paying rates up to $300 over normal prices yet preferred customers weren't being socked with the higher rates. The FMC's Bureau of Enforcement is considering punitive action.
After months of negotiations, Neptune Orient Lines finally found a buyer for APL's intermodal stacktrain service: a partnership between Apollo Management L.P. and Pacer International Inc., bought the service for $315 million. Pacer, which had fallen out of the bidding earlier this year, was able to secure the needed financing after teaming with Apollo in February. The deal will make Apollo and Pacer heavier hitters in the intermodal marketing industry. NOL will use the proceeds to reduce debt and invest in its own logistics business.
The former president of GATX/Airlog is back in business and armed with a new company, a new partner and a new STC to begin again converting passenger aircraft into freighters. Just seven days shy of the three-year anniversary of the FAA's grounding of 10 Boeing 747 freighters modified by GATX, Cargo Conversions LLC, Rick Hatton's new company, was granted a new STC to fix those grounded aircraft and begin anew. Despite staring down a handful of lawsuits over the grounded aircraft, Hatton is bullish on the conversion market and excited about his new partnership with Lucas Aerospace.
The Coast Guard's differential global positioning system is open for business. Although the system has been up since 1996, last week marked the official start to the Coast Guard's new high-tech navigational and tracking system. This is the first step toward a new national navigational system but for now it works along the U.S. coastline and on the Mississippi River. Full nationwide coverage is slated for 2003.
Canadian ports continue to handle a significant share of U.S. imports and exports, much to the chagrin of U.S. port operators, according to a report from the U.S. Maritime Administration. Shippers say price is one of the deciding factors in routing their goods through the Canadian ports. For international ocean shipments, the northern ports simply are less costly than their U.S. counterparts.
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