Maritime News from gCaptain.com

By Jenny Leonard (Bloomberg) — The U.S. and China reached a partial agreement Friday that would broker a truce in the trade war and lay the groundwork for a broader deal that Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping could sign later this year, according to people familiar with the matter. As part of the deal, […]

By Marianna Parraga and Roslan Khasawneh MEXICO CITY/SINGAPORE, Oct 11 (Reuters) – Nearly 300 oil tankers globally have been placed off limits as companies fear violating U.S. sanctions against Iran and Venezuela, driving freight rates to new highs, industry sources said. The move has taken roughly 3% of the global oil tanker fleet out of […]

By Nidhi Verma and Chen Aizhu NEW DELHI/SINGAPORE, Oct 11 (Reuters) – Asian oil refiners are grappling with a jump in global freight rates that shows no sign of abating, driving up costs of crude imports from all regions in the fourth quarter, industry officials said. The cost of shipping crude from the Americas, Europe, […]

By Anna Shiryaevskaya and Stephen Stapczynski (Bloomberg) –The cost of chartering a liquefied natural gas vessel on the short-term market has jumped the most since at least 2013. The day rate for a standard tanker East of the Suez Canal jumped 57% in the week to Oct. 9, as issues related to U.S. sanctions on […]

By Parisa Hafezi and Sylvia Westall DUBAI, Oct 11 (Reuters) – An Iranian-owned oil tanker was struck, probably by missiles, in the Red Sea off Saudi Arabia’s coast on Friday, Iranian media said, an incident that if confirmed will stoke tension in a region rattled by attacks on tankers and oil sites since May. The […]

NEW YORK, Oct 10 (Reuters) – Phillips 66 tentatively chartered a supertanker to ship U.S. crude from the U.S. Gulf Coast to South Korea for a record $14 million this week, sources said Thursday, as tanker rates continued to soar after U.S. sanctions on units of Chinese giant COSCO. Phillips 66 provisionally chartered the Very […]

LOS ANGELES, Oct 10 (Reuters) – The Port of Los Angeles, the busiest for ocean trade with China, processed fewer containers of imported goods in September as the prolonged U.S.-China trade war whipsaws global supply chains. Imports fell 2.9% to 402,320 TEUs, or 20-foot equivalent units, in September – the first decline at the Port […]

By Devika Krishna Kumar and Collin Eaton NEW YORK/HOUSTON, Oct 10 (Reuters) – China’s Unipec, the trading arm of Asia’s top oil refiner Sinopec, has banned the use of vessels linked to oil flows from Venezuela in the last year, according to sources familiar with the matter and a contract clause seen by Reuters on […]

By Michael Carr – We were all beyond exhausted. Muscle memory and caffeine were keeping us going. And now I was certainly going to jail when all I had wanted to do was wash the sticky, smelly mud from the Gulf of Mexico off our tug’s deck. “Really?” I thought to myself. This guy wearing […]

LONDON, Oct 10 (Reuters) – A humpback whale found dead in the River Thames just east of London had likely been struck by a ship, scientists who conducted an autopsy on the animal said on Thursday. The 8-meter long whale, a young female, was sighted swimming in the Thames on Monday, but was found lifeless […]

Imports at the nation’s major retail container ports are expected to hit their highest level of the year again next month ahead of new tariffs set to take effect in December, according to the Global Port Tracker report released Wednesday by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates. New 15 percent tariffs that took effect […]

By Mike Wackett (The Loadstar) – The number of containerships transiting the Panama Canal during its fiscal year ending 30 September declined slightly, by 1.1% to 2,575. But there could be further reductions after ocean carriers announced a number of blanked sailings in the coming weeks on their Asia to US east coast all-water schedules […]