GENERAL STRIKE!

Strike 'inevitable' for Alberta nurses, likely two months away

Jennifer Henderson

St. Albert Gazette
The Local Journalism Initiative
 Saturday, August 28, 2021 

Alberta nurses are likely to go on strike in the next two months if the Alberta Health Services (AHS) position in labour negotiations doesn't shift.

On Thursday the United Nurses of Alberta union (UNA) agreed on all of AHS's conditions for essential services, which are the conditions in the health-care system that must be upheld during a strike, bringing the province's 30,000 nurses one step closer to a strike.

Unlike most employees who can walk off their jobs, nurses were once banned from striking altogether because if they leave their jobs, lives are put at risk.

After a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 2015 nurses are now able to strike, but they must do it under conditions that both AHS and the nurses agree to. The plan, which the nurses agreed to this week, is detailed and specific for each unit across the province, but broadly works out to an around 66-per-cent decrease of staff during the striking period. Some units, such as Intensive Care Units, will likely not cut staff, while other units facing less dire consequences could see larger cuts to staff during a strike.

Agreeing to these conditions from AHS brings the nurses one step closer to a strike, UNA director of labour relations David Harrigan said on Thursday.

“Unless the government and the employer starts taking things seriously, I think it's absolutely inevitable that there's going to be a strike,” Harrigan said.

The legal process for the nurses to strike requires them to agree on the essential services to be provided during that time before they can move into the formal mediation process with AHS and the provincial government.

Now a mediator will be appointed, and if an agreement is not reached between the groups, then either the union can strike, or the employer can lock out.

Harrigan said once a mediator is appointed, they have 14 days to try and bring the parties to an agreement. If that can't be achieved, recommendations may given by the mediator. The groups will go into a 14-day cooling-off period before they can take any action.

“So we are probably looking at a month or two (before a strike),” Harrigan said.

The nurses are asking for a two-per-cent pay increase per year, along with a request that AHS and the provincial government reveal publicly how much overtime is being used on each unit per year.

The employer is asking for a three-per-cent cut to salaries, with a two-per-cent cut to the lump-sum payment nurses receive, which equals a five-per-cent reduction in their income.

On top of cutting salaries, working conditions would be made worse, Harrigan said, by removing the requirement to have a registered nurse or registered psychiatric nurse in charge of nursing units, which will deeply impact patient care.

“It's going to affect working conditions if you have a nursing unit and there's no nurse in charge, things can really go awry,” Harrigan said.

The union leader said it is unbelievable the province is saying it is in an emergency situation, as AHS has invoked emergency work rules for nurses as COVID-19 hospitalizations rise again, while trying to cut pay for the nurses.

Under the emergency provisions the nurses put their normal rules of employment on hold and instead they can be sent to other hospitals and required to work overtime.


“When you do that and at the same time, say, `We think you're worth less,' it's the perfect storm for chaos,” Harrigan said.

In a poll of members, Harrigan said 97 per cent of provincial nurses do not want to accept a pay cut and a “large majority” of members would be prepared to take strike action.

Provincial nurses have already been holding information pickets this summer, fighting back against the proposed wage rollbacks, staffing issues, and closures of beds across the province.

Alberta Minister of Treasury Board and Finance Travis Toews said in a press release on Thursday he is pleased that the United Nurses of Alberta and Alberta Health Services have reached an agreement on essential services that will be submitted to the Alberta Labour Relations Board (ALRB) for review.

“AHS and UNA will be filing a joint application to the ALRB for formal mediation,” Toews said.

“Previously, AHS had filed for informal mediation. We are pleased to see UNA is now a joint applicant, and has acknowledged the importance of mediation.”

The minister said mediation is a normal part of the negotiation process and is a step toward a settlement and long-term labour stability.

“It is clear the two parties want to reach an agreement and it is important that this happens quickly,” Toews said.

“I am confident that formal mediation will be productive as the two parties work collaboratively toward a deal that respects both the expertise of Alberta's nurses and the province's financial situation.”

The nurses contract expired in March 2020, although that contact currently extends until a new one can be reached. Negotiations were put off due to the pandemic but picked up again in July 2020.

Endosymbiotic theory: evolution is powered by innovation and thievery

Sometimes, new combinations of preexisting things revolutionize life.

NEIL SHUBIN26 August, 2021

Credit: Sigmund via Unsplash


Throughout evolutionary history, organisms have "stolen" the innovations of others rather than building them from scratch.
For example, the tiny "organs" inside of cells were once free-living bacteria.
Today, humans have taken CRISPR from bacteria and used it as a technique for gene editing.

Wheels have been on planet Earth for over 6000 years. Suitcases have been around for centuries. Suitcases with wheels were invented a few decades ago and changed life for many who travel. Every time I am in an airport, my rested back muscles are a kind of celebration of how invention can come from finding a new combination. Far from being an offbeat insight, the relationship between innovation and new combinations of parts is as much a part of our four-billion-year evolutionary history on Earth as it will be our future.

In one of her first research projects in the 1960s, Lynn Margulis, then a graduate student at the University of California-Berkeley, looked at the diversity of cells in living creatures and proposed a new theory for how they came about. She wrote it up and received rejections from, as she once described it, "15 or so journals." Undeterred, she eventually found a home for the paper in a relatively obscure journal on theoretical biology. Margulis' fearless persistence in the face of a chorus of negative reviews was breathtaking — here was a young female scientist at the start of her career set against an entrenched orthodoxy.

Margulis looked at the cells that make the bodies of animals, plants, and fungi. These cells have a complexity to them that bacteria do not. Animal and plant cells contain a nucleus in which the genome resides. Surrounding the nucleus are a number of small organs, so-called organelles, that carry out different functions. The most prominent among these organelles are the ones that power the cell. Plants have chloroplasts that contain chlorophyll that carry out the photosynthetic reactions that convert sunlight to usable energy. Similarly, animal cells have mitochondria that generate energy from oxygen and sugars.


Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA
List Price: $12.99


Margulis observed that these organelles look like mini-cells within the cell. Each has its own membrane around it, separating it from the rest of the cell. Mitochondria and chloroplasts reproduce in the cell by splitting into two, a process called binary fission. As they divide, the organelles elongate, pinch in the middle to look like a dumbbell, and then the separate to form two new individuals. These organelles even have their own genome, separate from that of the nucleus. The genomes of the organelles, however, are very different from that of the nucleus. DNA strands in the nucleus are linear; in mitochondria and chloroplasts, the DNA forms a circular ring.

Endosymbiotic theory

With their own membranes, reproduction by binary fission, and DNA organized as a circle, the structure of these organelles rung a bell for Margulis. She had seen these features before — in bacteria. Bacteria reproduce by binary fission, are surrounded by a similar kind of membrane, and have a genome that looks much like that of chloroplasts and mitochondria. The organelles that power animal and plant cells appeared more similar to bacteria than to the nucleus of the cell in which they reside.

From these observations, Margulis proposed a radical new theory of evolutionary history. Chloroplasts were originally a species of free-living cyanobacterium (also known as blue-green algae) that got incorporated into another cell and were put to work as metabolic laborers to provide energy for that new cell. Likewise, mitochondria also were originally free-living bacteria that merged with another cell and were put to use powering it.

Margulis' idea was met with either widespread scorn or complete indifference. Fortunately for Margulis, and science in general, technology caught up with her idea. With DNA sequencing methods developed in the 1980s, the history of the genes inside the organelles could be compared to those of the cell nucleus. The family tree that emerged was as beautiful as it was surprising. Neither mitochondria nor chloroplasts were genetically related to the DNA of their own nuclei. Chloroplasts were more closely related to different species of cyanobacteria than anything else inside the plant cell. Likewise, mitochondria were descendants of a species of oxygen-consuming bacteria and not related to their nucleus. Today, every animal or fungal cell has two families of life inside of it, one of their nucleus and another whose ancestors were once free-living bacteria. Plant cells have a third family whose ancestors were once free-living cyanobacteria.

The more we look, the more we find that traits can appear in one species only to be borrowed, stolen, and modified for new uses by another. In this way, hosts inherit the parts of a ready-made invention rather than having to build it themselves. These combinations of parts, and the new kinds of individuals that can emerge from them, can open up evolutionary opportunities.

For billions of years, life existed as single cells, and the inventions were in the ways creatures metabolized the energy and chemicals around them. Life was small. With the origins of ever more complex individuals came new ways of making proteins, moving about, and feeding. Creatures with bodies — animals, plants, and fungi — are relative newcomers to the planet, and each of these is composed of cells derived from the merger of different individuals. The advent of bodies opened up a new way of evolving for living things. Creatures made of many cells, each powered by organelles, could get big and develop new tissues and organs. The result is the diversity of tissues and organs that help animals fly to the highest altitudes, swim at the bottom of the ocean, and devise satellites to probe the far reaches of the solar system.

Theft, but in a good way

Combining, borrowing, and repurposing technologies and inventions from other species has been part of our multibillion-year past. It is also our future. The Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2020 went to two women who helped devise CRISPR-Cas, a new technique to edit the genome. In nature, CRISPR is a defense mechanism that bacteria use to ward off invasions by viruses. There is something beautiful in the notion that our conscious brain has accomplished what cells and genomes have done for billions of years. A process invented in bacteria has been coopted to change the genomes of others. The result, like what Lynn Margulis saw, is an appropriated technology that, when tinkered with, can transform evolution.

Neil Shubin is the author of Some Assembly Required, Your Inner Fish, and The Universe Within. He is the Robert R. Bensley Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2011. He lives in Chicago.

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'Endless potential' if mini-nuclear halves power cost to match green hydrogen: WoodMac

Small nuclear reactors could be competitive with H2 from renewables at $65/MWh, says research group

A Rolls-Royce SMR design.Photo: Rolls-Royce

24 August 2021
By Andrew Lee

A new generation of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) can compete with renewables as a power source for hydrogen electrolysis if they can hit a $65/MWh price benchmark that's roughly half today's level, claimed Wood Mackenzie.

The research group said at that point, and assuming electrolysers running at sufficiently high load factors, SMRs could emerge as a key element of the energy transition mix as a flexible, dispatchable option for H2 output alongside green hydrogen from wind and solar.


Rolls-Royce mini nuclear plant can now 'match offshore wind on power price'

SMRs, sometimes known as mini-nuclear plants, are designed to be smaller and far cheaper to deploy than the massive multi-gigawatt scale sites that are currently the mainstay of the nuclear power sector.

However, they are mostly in the early stage of development, with only a handful actually in operation, said Wood Mackenzie Asia-Pacific head of markets and transitions, Prakash Sharma.

Current SMR designs are delivering power in the range of $120/MWh or more, Wood Mackenzie reckons, but “can fall under $80/MWh in the 2030s with government support, technology innovation and investments. China has achieved faster cost declines in other technologies and could potentially repeat the success in SMR nuclear,” Sharma said.


Green, blue and pink: Bipartisan US infrastructure bill allocates $9.5bn to push down the costs of clean hydrogen

“SMR may still be in its infancy, but its potential is endless. They can play a role in producing low-carbon hydrogen, which is a cornerstone of almost all deep decarbonisation scenarios.”

Recharge has previously reported how Rolls-Royce, the UK power technology group with one of the most advanced SMR designs, has claimed it could match offshore wind on cost of electricity at around £50/MWh ($71/MWh) from a 470MW deployment.

President Joe Biden’s $2.3trn American Jobs Plan also namechecks nuclear, while corporate energy buyers such as Google have not ruled out the use of “advanced nuclear” technologies to meet decarbonisation goals.


Bill Gates small nuclear 'only option' for 24/7 power with wind and solar: Buffett utility boss

Nuclear is increasingly being spoken of as a potential good fit with zero-carbon hydrogen production, as its high capacity factor and continuous operation could in theory avoid the intermittency associated with renewable supply and run electrolysers more efficiently, and so at lower cost.

Large-scale plants such as EDF's planned £20bn ($27.8bn) 3.2GW Sizewell C facility on the coast of eastern England are also in the frame to provide power for hydrogen electrolysis.

However, opponents have labelled nuclear a dangerous distraction from a fully-renewable energy system, claiming that despite the smaller scale, basic concerns over safety and storage of waste remain unanswered with SMRs.(Copyright)

Read more
EDF’s plans to produce pink hydrogen at proposed 3.2GW nuclear plant are 'daft': Liebreich

Norway: New firm wants to produce 400kg of green hydrogen daily

By Molly Burgesson Aug 27, 2021

 

  

A new company has hit the Norwegian hydrogen market – and it wants to produce up to 400kg of the clean fuel daily.

Stord Hydrogen is the name behind such plans, and hopes its hydrogen production will start as soon as spring 2022.

Greenstat, Alltec Services and Hydrogen Solutions (HYDS) and Sustainable Energy Catapult Centre today (August 27) announced the formation of the company to spearhead Norway’s hydrogen market.

Already making headway on its plans, Stord Hydrogen has broken ground on a new facility at Energy House’s test centre, at which its hydrogen production operations will take place.

For such production, HYDS will deliver the flexible, module-based production facility which will produce compressed hydrogen through electrolysis at Stord.

The electrolysis technology will be delivered by the danish company Green Hydrogen Systems, through their Norwegian partner, Liquiline.

Commenting on the company’s formation, Willie Wågen, CEO in Sustainable Energy Catapult Centre, said, “This is a highlight for green industry development.

“Not only will green hydrogen be available for the market, but it will also be used by our clients in the world’s first full-scale test centre for new, green energy carriers, Energy House.”

Vegard Frihammer, founder and CEO of Greenstat, added,

 “The hydrogen market,  in Norway and international,

 will grow fast the next couple of years.

“The fact that we are now starting hydrogen production on the Western Coast of Norway and make hydrogen available is incredibly important to speed up the green shift.

“Hydrogen can be used as a material input in industries, and as a zero-emission fuel for cars, buses, trucks, trains or boats.”

Climate change linked to risk of viruses jumping species in the Arctic environment

 27 August 2021

By Adam Vaughan

Lake Hazen base camp on Ellesmere Island

Wolfgang Kaehler / Alamy Stock Photo

Climate change may increase the risk of viruses becoming capable of infecting new hosts in the Arctic, suggests a study of genetic material from a Canadian lake.

Canadian scientists found that an increase in glacier melt at Lake Hazen, the Arctic’s largest lake by volume and a location in George Clooney’s film The Midnight Sky, was linked to a greater risk of viral spillover, where a virus infects a new host for the first time. Melting glaciers were considered a proxy of climate change, which is causing their retreat globally.

The team from the University of Ottawa, led by Audrée Lemieux, gathered soil and sediment from the lake and sequenced the RNA and DNA in the samples. The researchers found signatures of viruses and their potential hosts including animals, plants and fungi. They then ran an algorithm recently developed by a different research team, which assesses the chance of coevolution or symbiosis among unrelated groups of organisms. The algorithm allowed the team to gauge the risk of spillover, and suggested this was higher in lake samples nearer to the point where larger tributaries – carrying more meltwater from nearby glaciers – flow into the lake.

“Our main finding is we show that for this specific lake, the spillover risk increases with the melting of glaciers. It’s not the same thing as predicting pandemics – we’re not crying wolf,” says Lemieux.

She says the risk of infectious diseases emerging from the Arctic is low today due to the region’s paucity of “bridge vectors”, such as mosquitoes, that can spread viruses to other species. However, the researchers note that climate change not only melts glaciers, but is also expected to cause more species to move towards the poles, which they warn “could have dramatic effect in the High Arctic”.

Read more: A deadly seal virus may be spreading faster due to melting Arctic ice

Exactly how glacier melt might increase spillover risk isn’t entirely clear from simply running the algorithm. Co-author Stéphane Aris-Brosou says one idea is that extra run-off simply increases the mixing of species because their local environment is disturbed, physically bringing together viruses and potential new hosts that wouldn’t otherwise encounter each other.

Most of the viruses found were plant and fungal ones. Other researchers question how many would be sufficiently intact, or in high enough concentrations, to remain infectious. “Much of the fragmented DNA or RNA they find will represent degraded viral genomes that no longer present a risk,” says Alex Greenwood at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany.

Lemieux and Aris-Brosou say another caveat is that this is the first time the spillover algorithm has been used in this way, so more studies will be needed to calibrate the true risk.

The threat of diseases emerging from the Arctic due to a warming world came to the fore in 2016 with a deadly anthrax outbreak in people in Siberia linked to the thawing of frozen ground uncovering a long-dead infected reindeer. “Are there potentially new viruses that the melting of the permafrost is going to wake up? As scientists, we ought to know, but we are really into the unknown unknowns,” says Aris-Brosou. Lemieux is now studying the team’s data to see if she can identify new viruses.

Reference: bioRxiv, DOI: 10.1101/2021.08.23.457348

Sign up to our free Fix the Planet newsletter to get a dose of climate optimism delivered straight to your inbox, every Thursday

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2288529-climate-change-linked-to-risk-of-viruses-jumping-species-in-the-arctic/#ixzz74tt1vPTO

Lake Ontario’s Marysburgh Vortex home to shipwrecks, strange reported sightings

By Darryn Davis Global News
Posted August 27, 2021 


Author Janet Kellough grew up in Prince Edward County and has a keen interest in the stories, tales, history and folklore of the County.

One part of that local folklore that Kellough is well acquainted with is the Marysburgh Vortex, located at the eastern end of Lake Ontario.

The Marysburgh Vortex runs From Marysburgh Township in Prince Edward County to Kingston and Oswego, N.Y.

At least 270 have made their watery grave in the Marysburgh Vortex like the Schooner the Bravaria.

Kellough says the ship was being towed in 1889 when something went wrong.

“The tow line parted and it eventually fetched up out towards Main Duck Island, which is out towards the middle of the lake,” said Kellough.

While the Bavaria was found, the same can’t be said of its crew.

“The table was set for dinner, the captain’s papers and his money were all there. There was even a pet canary that somebody had that was … happily singing in the cage, but there was not a single trace of the crew,” said Kellough.

Another schooner, the Picton, disappeared in 1900 in sight of two other ships travelling along with her.

“The top sails came down and then the rest of the sails came down and they couldn’t figure out what was going on, because there was no reason to lower the sails, and then just boom, gone,” said Kellough referring to the schooner.

The Picton was never found. Only a bottle with a note was discovered, which washed up on the shores of Sackets Harbour from ship Captain Jack Sidley.

“It said, ‘Have lashed Vessey to me with heaving line so that we might be found together,'” said Kellough.

Vessey was Captain Sidley’s young son.

Marc Seguin, an Ontario historian and lighthouse preservation advocate, says the eastern end of Lake Ontario has been hazardous to sailing for centuries.

Seguin says Lake Ontario narrows as it gets closer the the St. Lawrence river and the lake gets dramatically more shallow.

“One of these factors is this line of shoals, reefs and rocky islands that reach right across Lake Ontario from Prince Edward County’s south eastern point to the shores of New York State,” Seguin said.

That underwater formation is called the Duck Galloo Ridge.

“It magnifies the effects of storms which resulted in such a large number of ships sinking and shipwrecks in the 19th century,” said Seguin.

The Marysburgh Vortex is also known for a number of strange sightings and optical illusions.

Kellough says she experienced one herself at Prince Edward County’s Little Blough Conservation Area.

Kellough says she and a friend could hear a returning jet ski and as they looked out over the lake the jet ski appeared in the sky.

“We could see it but it was upside down and that image kind of hung there for several minutes,” Kellough told Global Kingston.

Kellough says she’s learned the apparition was caused by a natural phenomenon called thermal inversion.

“It kind of bends the light,” said Kellough.

Sidney Wells says he also has seen something unusual in the night sky near Little Bluff Conservation Area.

Wells says he was at a friend’s house on Sept. 15, 1986, with several other couples.

Wells says he was going to set up his telescope to look at stars on his friend’s deck when he saw something unexpected in the night sky.

“It was a diamond as in a ring, like that kind of thing with facets, but it wasn’t rays coming out of it. It was covered in a shroud like a cloud.”

Wells said he ran and got the other couples.

“We all stood and we stared and it just sat there hovering and then it started to revolve very slowly spinning.” said Wells

Wells says the object in the night sky then disappeared suddenly, as if someone flicked a switch.

Until that night, Wells said he was a skeptic when it came to UFOs, but no longer.

“It wasn’t terrestrial. There’s no question in my mind and there was no question in my friend’s minds.”

Skeptic or believer, Kellough says there is something magical about the area.

“It’s so beautiful and so kind of remote,” said Kellough,”and you just feel yourself getting in touch with the earth when you’re down in this end.”

WATCH: Eastern end of Lake Ontario is known to have a number of navigational hazards and is often referred to as the graveyard of Lake Ontario.

   

MULTI MEDIA SPECIAL

‘Strange things out there’: Inside Lake Ontario’s ‘Bermuda Triangle’

By Max Hartshorn Global News

August 28, 2021

16 min read

 

‘Strange things out there’: Inside Lake Ontario’s ‘Bermuda Triangle’ | Globalnews.ca

 MUTUAL AID; LAW OF THE SEA

Crew of Burning Fishing Vessel Rescued by Good Samaritans off Bilbao

Image courtesy Salvamento Maritimo

PUBLISHED AUG 26, 2021 3:02 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

Together with the Bilbao Maritime Captaincy and the rescue agency Salvamento Maritimo, a good samaritan vessel rescued the crew of the fishing vessel Siempre al Alba after a fire broke out on board off the coast of Armintza in Spain's Basque Country.

At about 0100 hours on Monday, a fire broke out on board the Siempre al Alba, a 90-foot commercial fishing vessel, at a position about six miles offshore. The 11 crewmembers were rescued by a good samaritan fishing vessel, the Nuevo Terreño, and were delivered safely to shore at Santoña. 

The Maritime Captaincy directed an operation to put out the fire and salvage the fishing vessel, and Salvamento Marítimo (Sasemar) led the effort. It dispatched the rescue boat Salvamar Alcyone to assess the situation and the tugboat María de Maeztu to conduct firefighting. The rescue vessel Salvamar Monte Gorbea also joined the operation, along with the Bilbao port tug Ibaizabal Seis. 

According to Sasemar, the fishing vessel's design and the material of its hull (fiberglass-epoxy composite) made the work of putting out the blaze and rigging a tow a difficult task. Images from the scene taken Monday showed the hull on fire and burning vigorously, including a section near the waterline on the port quarter.

The response team worked through the night and into the following morning in an attempt to extinguish the fire. On Tuesday, despite their efforts, the hulk went down at a position about 10 miles off Cabo Villano in 500 meters of water. 

"The Maritime Captaincy and Sasemar have worked intensively, prioritizing at all times that the operation avoid any risk to people or navigation in the area," said the Deputy Delegate of the Government in Bizkaia, Vicente Reyes, in a message of thanks. 

Image courtesy Salvamento Maritimo

 

Closing the Sanctions Due Diligence Gap for the Shipping Industry

The U.S. Treasury has begun to enforce sanctions on Iran, Venezuela and North Korea by penalizing shipowners and operators (file image courtesy National Iranian Tanker Company)

PUBLISHED AUG 24, 2021 8:17 PM BY AMI DANIEL

 

In May 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the U.S. Coast Guard came out with a revolutionary advisory on sanctions compliance. In short, they set the regulatory bar very high, requiring all stakeholders in the shipping and trading industry to meet enhanced due diligence standards. These new, tougher standards underscored the need to go beyond list matching and towards a more dynamic, behavioral approach for evaluating maritime risk. 

The U.K.’s OFSI followed suit very quickly with a similar advisory. Suddenly terms like “dark activity” (i.e., intentional disabling of AIS transmissions) and ship-to-ship transfers became common terms for compliance analysts worldwide. From a geopolitical perspective, there was a loophole in shipping and trading, which strained the efficient enforcement of sanctions. 

One size doesn’t fit all

In response to this new regulatory environment, market leaders, including major energy companies and financial institutions, have started to implement AI as a tool to meet new global compliance requirements.

However, regulators didn’t level the playing field for every stakeholder. In fact, the unique structure of the shipping market went unaccounted for. The impact? Shipowners are subject to the same compliance measures while operating in a complex environment that looks nothing like their counterparts’. To put this into perspective, it’s important to first understand what shipping compliance processes look like today. Once a trader on a trading floor identifies a cargo to buy and sell, they approach the charterers on the team and ask for a vessel to move the cargo. The charterers on this team usually reach out to brokers and receive proposals for vessels with appropriate location and availability for the laycan, as well as pricing proposals. Before moving forward, the proposed vessels must pass rigorous compliance checks.

Here’s where it gets complicated: The largest tanker pools have some 250 vessels out of the 100,000 vessels in the global fleet. At this capacity, owners would most likely have the means to implement strong technologies to streamline vessel clearance. However, many of the smaller shipowners aren’t yet part of this market. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that compliance standards are any less. No matter your vessel fleet size, there is a good possibility that third parties are screening each of your vessels using AI. This applies every time a vessel is screened for charters, spot charters, ship-to-ship transfers, vessel sales or financing, or renewals at P&I clubs. 

Within reason, the potential fallout can be costly. Unfortunately, many shipowners are working in the dark because they don’t receive enough information about their exposure to compliance risk. This can result in losing out on major chartering deals. Good actors, who represent the vast majority of the industry, shouldn’t have to miss out on business on account of regulations meant to deter bad actors. Plus, most shipowners don’t have the data, budgets, or resources of oil majors or global financial institutions. To what extent can they lean on risk management providers rather than build data system capabilities themselves? How can we as an industry do more to ensure that all stakeholders are benefiting from an efficient due diligence process? 

Easing the compliance burden

When it comes to compliance, the stakes are high. For example, when U.S. sanctions hit Greek shipowners last summer, Chevron’s oil cargo got tangled in U.S. sanctions. In another case, PB Tankers faced bankruptcy when it landed on OFAC’s blacklist for trading with Venezuela. The bottom line? Regulations that go unmet can cost a shipowner hundreds of thousands of dollars in chartering deals.  

This is especially relevant in light of the recent charter party clauses introduced by BIMCO, referring specifically to vessels turning off transmissions. Shipowners are essential players in the maritime ecosystem and shouldn’t have to take on regulations without a strong partner. To ease the burden of compliance, shipowners need a solution to gather insights in one report with compliance scores, allowing them to easily spot risks and opportunities and take immediate action. 

The idea for instant compliance scores is not that far off from credit ratings in the U.S. Credit scores rate your credit risk. And because credit ratings directly impact your interest rate and financial standing, they are made readily available by reporting companies. It’s time for the shipping industry to make a similar move - emphasizing data democratization and transparency for sanctions compliance.

Sanctions compliance came into effect to prevent dealing with select sanctioned entities. It was never meant to disrupt the estimated 70,000 companies that are crucial to the global economy and maritime trade market. Now more than ever, shipowners need to find a partner for the long-term who gets their business and can help them take on whatever challenges the future holds.

Ami Daniel is the co-founder and CEO of the maritime risk management and intelligence company Windward. 

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Tanker Captain Faces Criminal Charges Over Cambodian Cargo Dispute

Indonesian Navy personnel aboard the Strovolos (TNI-AL)

PUBLISHED AUG 25, 2021 9:31 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

The Indonesian Navy has detained the crew of a tanker that was allegedly involved in the theft of hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude from a Cambodian energy project - a charge which her operator vehemently denies.

According to Indonesian authorities, the Singaporean-owned and -managed tanker Strovolos was detained on July 27 at a position off Sumatra. She had anchored without prior authorization (a potentially illegal act in Indonesian waters) and she had turned off her AIS system, the Indonesian Navy alleged. 

The vessel's 19 crewmembers were detained and brought to an Indonesian Navy base in Batam for questioning. The commander of the Indonesian Navy's First Fleet, Adm. Arsyad Abdullah, said in a statement that the legal process for the tanker's case has been handed over to prosecutors in Batam. 

"The Indonesian Navy will not hesitate to take action against any type of crimes committed within Indonesia's jurisdictional territory," said Adm. Abdullah.

The master of the Strovolos, a Bangladeshi national, is suspected of anchoring without prior permission in violation of Indonesian law. If convicted, he could face up to a year in prison or a fine of up to $14,000. 

According to officials in Cambodia, the tanker had been chartered as part of an abortive attempt to produce oil from a field in the Gulf of Thailand. The private E&P partner for the JV project, Singaporean firm KrisEnergy, began production at the new field in December 2020 with a "phase 1A" small-scale pilot, hoping to achieve 7,500 barrels per day. The actual output fell far short of that mark, and in June, just six months after starting up, KrisEnergy folded and filed for liquidation. 

With the tanker's charterer in bankruptcy, a Cambodian government official told AFP, the vessel's day rate went unpaid. The official accused Strovolos and her operator of departing Cambodian waters with the project's oil on board, allegedly for purposes of theft. Indonesian authorities reported that Strovolos was in laden condition when arrested in late July, and was carrying 298,000 barrels of crude.

The Cambodian government had an equity stake in KrisEnergy's project, as well as a deep political commitment to Cambodia's first-ever domestic oil output, and it filed a Red Notice with Interpol calling for the tanker's arrest. On July 24, Cambodian officials sent a diplomatic note to the Indonesian government, asking for its help in arresting the tanker; an Indonesian patrol vessel carried out the intercept and arrest shortly after.

In a statement Wednesday, vessel operator World Tankers Management insisted that Strovolos had transited to Indonesia purely for the purpose of conducting a crew change. The firm said the tanker had loaded the cargo in good faith, but when the charterer failed to pay and allowed the charter to lapse, the tanker departed to refuel and headed to Thailand. As crew change is not allowed in Thailand, the Strovolos then headed for Indonesia instead. The firm protested "wrongful allegations made by the Cambodian government that the vessel and its crew had committed criminal offenses in relation to the vessel’s departure from the Apsara field to refuel."

World Tankers Management added that the crew should not be held criminally responsible for political and commercial circumstances outside of their control. 

Strovolos' itinerary could not be independently confirmed due a lack of AIS transmission data. No AIS signals for Strovolos were received by a commercial satellite tracking service over the eight-month period between November 2020 and the time of her detention in late July, according to data provided by Pole Star.

Talos Secures Lease for Carbon Storage Site in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico

File image courtesy Talos

PUBLISHED AUG 25, 2021 6:56 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

Offshore oil and gas operator Talos Energy announced Wednesday that it has secured a lease off the coast of Texas for a carbon storage site. 

In partnership with carbon capture and storage firm Carbonvert, Talos applied for a Texas General Land Office lease solicitation for a site off Jefferson County, in state waters. After review, the Texas School Land Board determined that Talos and Carbonvert had the only viable bid out of a field of a dozen submissions, and the board voted unanimously to assign them the lease. 

Together, Talos and Carbonvert will negotiate the final terms of a lease agreement with the Texas General Land Office, subject to approval from the board.  Talos will be the operator of this project.

 The site covers about 40,000 acres, and Talos already owns seismic data for all of it. The location is near to a large cluster of carbon emitters (like refineries and petchem plants) along the Texas and Louisiana coastlines. Based on Talos's initial study of the geology of the site, the firm expects it can store about 225-275 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from industrial sources in the area.

"This is the first of several steps in our strategy to build multiple carbon capture and storage sites along the United States Gulf Coast where we can use Talos's core competencies to operate these important projects," said Talos CEO Tim Duncan in a statement. "We want to redefine the role of traditional oil and gas companies, as we recognize the need to responsibly develop and produce hydrocarbons as well as lowering overall emissions in the communities where we work and live."

Talos, formed in 2012 with backing from two private equity firms, has historically specialized in acquiring and expanding on the production assets of larger oil companies. In recent years it has branched out into its own independent E&P operations, including a hotly-disputed find in Mexican waters of the Gulf. 

Earlier this month, Talos announced a new exclusive JV partnership with a different CCS firm - Storegga Geotechnologies - to focus on U.S. carbon capture opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico, including state and federal waters off Texas. Storegga is the lead developer of the Acorn Carbon Capture and Storage and Acorn Hydrogen Projects in the United Kingdom. According to Talos, the bid it submitted with Carbonvert predates its agreement with Storrega.