Daily Briefing August 27 2020
Free to read: Crew change crisis deepens amid bureaucracy, logistics and cost | Open-loop scrubbers shrug off regional restrictions | Merger of HHI-DSME receives Singapore approval
Good morning. Here’s our quick view of everything you need to know today.
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What to watch | Analysis | Markets | In other news
What to watch
A second wave of lobbying to facilitate urgent crew changes will launch next month after initial efforts and pledges to solve the issue faltered against a background of bureaucracy, logistics and cost.
The increasing regional restrictions and prohibitions on open-loop scrubbers have not prompted a shift within the market as global regulatory clarity may be a few years away.
The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore has approved the proposed merger of Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, stating that it will not infringe its competition act.
Analysis
Shipping needs to put 36 ammonia-fuelled vessels into service every month to meet any net carbon zero-emissions targets, an International Energy Agency special report on energy technology found.
Islamist insurgents have often been hard on the global maritime industry, but have been out of sight for a while. Well, now they are back and threatening a large part of the industry in Mozambique.
Weekly Briefing: Maersk has predicted a ‘progressive recovery’ in container shipping demand in the third quarter of 2020 after a 16% drop in volumes, while new crude oil data shows a steep fall in fuels in the opening half of the year compared with 2019.
Markets
The Panama Canal Authority is to extend the suspension of advance payments for transit reservation, which was introduced in May to support shipping through the coronavirus pandemic, until the end of the year, it said in a statement.
In other news
Avance Gas, an owner of very large gas carriers, says demand from Asia for liquefied petroleum gas is starting to normalise, and, combined with high US inventories and low US prices for the commodity, has led to an opening of the arbitrage between the two regions.
A new technical reference for methanol bunkering has been developed to boost safety in handling a fuel that could enable the shipping industry to meet greenhouse gas emission targets.
Shippers have to play their part in ensuring supply chains run smoothly as container shipping emerges from the pandemic, according to Hapag-Lloyd chief executive Rolf Habben Jansen.
India has decided to restart the Gujarat Maritime Board’s second shipbreaking yard at Sachana village in Jamnagar having resolved issues pertaining to its environmental clearances, according to a government release.
Hong Kong-based shipping tech firm Crew Assist has teamed up with global authentication and secure traceability solutions provider Sicpa to come up with a technology-based solution for maritime crew changes.