It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, December 26, 2021
X-Press Pearl's Insurer Releases $2.5M for Environmental Cleanup
Partially-burned plastic beads on a beach near Colombo (Asha de Vos / WHOI / Oceanswell)
The insurer of the X-Press Pearl has agreed to pay an additional $2.5 million in compensation for environmental harm in connection to the vessel's sinking off Colombo, Sri Lanka in May.
Sri Lanka's Marine Environment Protection Authority announced Wednesday that the insurer will be compensating the government for some of its cleanup expenses. The payment applies to costs incurred in June, July and August, and covers most - but not all - of the government's claims for the period. MEPA chairperson Dharshani Lahandapura told local media that the total expenditures come to $3.9 million, but more documentation is required first.
The new payment is in addition to a previous tranche of $3.6 million, which covered the cost of the government's initial salvage and environmental response. Separate talks are under way on compensation for fishermen, who were affected by a closure in the affected coastal area. According to Colombo Page, the discussions are proceeding well and the insurer is receptive to the claim.
X-Press Pearl spilled an unknown quantity of chemical cargo into the water when she went down, along with about 1,500 tonnes of plastic nurdles - the small bead-shaped bulk commodity used to make everyday plastic items. It was the largest "plastic spill" on record, according to the UN Environment Programme, and tonnes of this waste have been recovered from nearby beaches.
In a recent study published in the journal ACS Environmental Au, WHOI scientist Anna Michel and Sri Lankan conservationist Asha de Vos reported that the cleanup has a unique challenge. The plastic cargo from X-Press Pearl was released after a raging fire, and a substantial portion of the waste is in a partially-burned state. This makes the assessment and cleanup effort more complex, as the burned particles are variable and harder to spot. Some "don't even look like plastic anymore," according to the authors, and the impact on the environment is not fully known.
"The burnt nurdles span a continuum of colors, shapes, sizes, and densities with high variability that could impact clean-up efforts, alter transport in the ocean, and potentially affect wildlife," the study cautioned.
Taylor Energy Liquidates All Assets to Settle Suit Over Giant Spill
Oil sheen coming from the former Taylor site in the Gulf of Mexico (file image courtesy USCG)
The U.S. Department of Justice announced a proposed resolution to lawsuits related to the country’s longest-running oil spill, which began in 2004 and continues to leak oil to this day. The United States filed a civil complaint against Taylor Energy in the U.S. District Court in New Orleans in 2020 seeking removal costs, civil penalties, and natural resource damages under the Oil Pollution and Clean Water Acts arising from the discharge of oil from the company’s former oil production facility offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. The proposed settlement would resolve that case as well as several brought by Taylor Energy.
Under the proposed consent decree, Taylor Energy will transfer to the Department of the Interior (DOI) a $432 million trust fund dedicated to plugging the subsea oil wells, permanently decommissioning the facility, and remediating contaminated soil. The consent decree further requires Taylor Energy to pay over $43 million for civil penalties, removal costs, and natural resource damages (NRD). The State of Louisiana is a co-trustee for natural resources impacted by the spill and the NRD money is a joint recovery by the federal and state trustees.
“Offshore operators cannot allow oil to spill into our nation’s waters,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “If an oil spill occurs, the responsible party must cooperate with the government to timely address the problem and pay for the cleanup. Holding offshore operators to account is vital to protecting our environment and ensuring a level industry playing field.”
The spill began in 2004, when a Taylor Energy production platform located in the Gulf of Mexico about 10 miles off the coast of Louisiana collapsed during Hurricane Ivan, resulting in an ongoing oil discharge that continues to this day. Since April 2019, the vast majority of the leaking oil has been successfully captured by a containment system installed and operated by the U.S. Coast Guard through a contractor.
“For the last three years, the Coast Guard, along with our federal partners, have committed to the challenging mission of containing and removing more than 800,000 gallons of oil discharging into the Gulf of Mexico,” said Captain Will Watson, Sector Commander of the Coast Guard New Orleans. “This settlement will provide significant financial resources for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Coast Guard to permanently secure the wells.”
Under the settlement, Taylor Energy will pay over $43 million — all the company’s available remaining assets — allocated as follows: $15 million as a civil penalty, $16.5 million for NRD, and over $12 million for Coast Guard removal costs. Taylor Energy also will transfer to DOI’s Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM) $432 million currently held in a trust for decommissioning the Mississippi Canyon (MC)-20 site, and the company will be barred from interfering in any way with the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s (BSEE’s) decommissioning work.
The settlement also requires the company to dismiss three lawsuits it filed against the United States. Between 2016 and 2020, Taylor Energy filed several lawsuits against the United States, including challenging the Coast Guard’s decision to install a spill containment system and appealing the Coast Guard’s denial of Taylor Energy’s $353 million spill-cost reimbursement claim submitted to the U.S. Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. The settlement resolves the United States’ environmental enforcement claims against Taylor Energy and requires the company to drop its remaining lawsuits against the United States.
In addition, Taylor Energy may not interfere with the Coast Guard’s oil containment and removal actions. Taylor Energy will turn over to DOI and the Coast Guard all documents relating to the site to assist in the decommissioning and response efforts. When Taylor Energy liquidates after court approval of the settlement, it will make a final payment to the United States of the value of its remaining assets.
Rystad: 2021 May be Worst Year Since 1946 for Oil & Gas Discoveries
Promising offshore finds like the PTTEP/Petronas Nangka-1 well have cushioned the decline (PTTEP image)
Reflecting reduced investment in E&P in the COVID-19 era, the global energy industry is on track to record its worst year for new oil and gas discoveries since 1946, according to the analysts at Rystad Energy.
“Although some of the highly ranked prospects are scheduled to be drilled before the end of the year, even a substantial discovery may not be able to contribute towards 2021 discovered volumes as these wells may not be completed in this calendar year. Therefore, the cumulative discovered volume for 2021 is on course to be its lowest in decades,” says Palzor Shenga, vice president of upstream research at Rystad Energy.
No big discoveries have been announced yet in December, and over the course of the year through November, only 4.7 billion boe worth of newly discovered volumes have been reported worldwide. This puts the industry on track to report less than half of last year's total, when - despite the pandemic and a sharp drop in oil prices - oil and gas firms announced 12.5 billion boe worth of new discoveries.
The monthly average for the year has been low, at about 425 million boe. November was particularly quiet, with just 220 million boe announced, and December has been nearly silent so far. Offshore finds have been the largest source in recent months: Lukoil discovered 75 million boe of oil and gas off Mexico; Thailand's PTTEP and Malaysia's Petronas discovered a promising gas reservoir in shallow water off Baram Province, Malaysia; and Norway continues to yield a steady flow of smaller offshore finds with tieback development potential.
Rystad chalked up the low overall results to an absence of big discoveries. Large individual finds typically make up an outsize portion of the annual total. Worldwide, just 900 giant oil and gas fields account for 40 percent of all petroleum ever discovered, and each new giant adds 500 million boe or more to the annual total.
According to Rystad, the global oil and gas industry reacted to the pandemic-induced price crash of 2020 by cutting upstream spending by more than a quarter. That translated to an investment reduction of $145 billion in 2020 and a projected reduction of $140 billion in 2021, and the firm predicts that upstream investments will remain well below previous levels for years to come. For 2022, a healthy share of producers' capex budget increases may simply go to covering the effects of inflation, not drilling extra wells, according to S&P.
NGO Sues UK, French Coast Guards Over Fatal Migrant Boat Sinking
British and French rescues services were named in the lawsuit (file photo)
A French humanitarian group announced that it has filed a criminal lawsuit against the British and French coast guards and various authorities responsible for shipping in the English Channel over an incident on November 24 during which 27 migrants drowned. At the time, authorities blamed an unnamed containership for causing the inflatable dingy the migrants were in to deflate.
“We must learn the lessons and consequences, including on the criminal level of the sinking of November 24, 2021, so that, never again, do these tragedies happen,” said the charity Utopia 56. They said the goal was to have a full investigation into the circumstances that caused the tragedy and the response by the British and French authorities.
Among the parties named in their legal action are Her Majesty’s Coastguard, the French maritime chief for the English Channel, and the French regional coastguard on charges of “involuntary manslaughter,” and a “failure to help people in need.” They also said the suit would include any other accomplices to the tragedy.
The two survivors from the incident told the authorities that they had set out in a small inflatable dingy from near Calais, France. The dingy was designed to hold a maximum of 10 people but it was believed that there were at least 30 adults and children who were being smuggled across the Channel. They said a large ship hit their dingy causing it to deflate. Media reports at the time said the first response came from a fishing boat that came upon the bodies in the English Channel.
According to the charity, the two survivors said their group made emergency calls asking for assistance from the British and French rescue services when their boat began to deflate. Utopia 56 alleges that this is not the first instance in which the rescue services ignored calls for assistance from migrants in the English Channel. Four days before the November 24 incident they said another group called for assistance and was told by the British that they needed to call the French and got a similar response from the French who said it was the British responsibility. “Both are laughing at us,” the charity said reporting the experience of the migrants in the Channel.
After the incident, which was reported as possibly the single largest loss of migrants in the Channel, both the British and French reported a crackdown on the smugglers seeking payment from the migrants camping on the French coast and seeking a way to reach Britain. Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the French demanding a crackdown or suggesting England send its forces on to the French beaches. France arrested individuals that it said were involved in the smuggling operations.
Utopia 56 further accuses the British authorities of failing to start a broader investigation into the allegations and the loss of the migrants. They also said that France is only focusing on the smugglers and not investigating the circumstances that led to the loss of the migrants. They reported that 27 bodies were retrieved from the Channel including three children. Media reports indicated the individuals had been identified as being from Iraqi Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and Somalia.
A British law firm has also reportedly filed paper work with the UK Home Office on behalf of one of the two survivors. They are calling for public inquiry into the tragedy.
The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency said it was not appropriate for it to comment on the incident due to the legal action. They, however, reported that they received over 90 alerts and emergency calls that day alone from the English Channel and investigate each one and sent search and rescue teams when it was deemed appropriate.
BC
Second Fire Breaks Out Aboard Boxship Zim Kingston
Zim Kingston at anchor after the first fire, October 2021 (Transport Canada)
Two months after a container fire broke out aboard the boxship Zim Kingston in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a second blaze started during salvage efforts at a pier in nearby Port of Nanaimo.
According to local CHEK News, a fire started at about 1300 hours on Tuesday while the vessel was alongside at the port's Duke Point breakbulk terminal. The Zim Kingston is in port for salvage and cargo offloading, and the Nanaimo Port Authority told Nanaimo News Bulletin that the blaze was started in insulation in a damaged container. Photos from the scene showed smoke emanating from a container stack near the stern, far away from the location of the first fire.
Port authority president Ian Marr told the Bulletin that it is believed that sparks from hot work got into the damaged container, setting off the fire. It took about 90 minutes for the salvors and first responders to put out the blaze, and it did not spread. An investigation into the cause is under way.
According to the port, the process of unloading damaged cargo from the boxship is very carefully controlled. A safety assessment is conducted for each lift, and salvors are only making about 8-10 lifts per day. Once the work is finished, Zim Kingston will transit to another port to finish unloading the undamaged portion of her cargo.
Zim Kingston lost 109 containers over the side in a storm off the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca on October 22. After reporting the cargo loss, she transited into the strait to a safe anchorage.
Once she had reached calm water and dropped anchor, a stack of damaged containers on her foredeck caught fire and began to burn vigorously. Several tugs responded and provided boundary cooling, preventing the fire from spreading, and the crew abandoned ship. The last hot-spots took days to extinguish but the vessel and the majority of the cargo were saved.
A small number of lost containers from Zim Kingston washed up on the northwestern shore of Vancouver Island, along with a quantity of spilled cargo. A beach cleanup effort alleviated the worst of the litter, and the stray containers were removed.
Three Ships with Fake Identities Seized at Indian Scrapyards
Ships beached at Alang, India for recycling (file photo)
Indian officials are reporting that they are detaining three vessels that arrived at the scrapyards in Alang earlier this month under false pretenses. Government officials said on December 20 that they are planning to confiscate the vessels that are currently in the anchorage at Bhavnagar where vessels are checked in and cleared for beaching. It is unclear what India will do with the vessels now that it has decided to seize.
Three years ago, the European Union passed stricter requirements covering the demolition of vessels owned or registered within the EU. All ships over 500 gross tons must be processed through licensed recycling sites which currently are limited to mostly the yards at Aliaga, Turkey for larger ships and a few specialized recycling operations in Europe. Recently, plans were announced to launch a recycling operation in Scotland, but the yards in India have not gained EU licenses.
EU shipowners either deal with the limited number of licenses yards or in many cases sell ships to intermediaries that often purport to be working on behalf of buyers that will operate the ships or say the ships will be resold. They frequently make brief stops in the Middle East before arriving in India and beaching, despite the protests of NGOs and environmental groups calling on the EU for better enforcement of the regulations. Recently, prosecutors in Iceland seized documents from a shipowner’s offices investigating the sale of two ships that ended up at the yards in India.
Officials from India’s Customs Department and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) reported on Monday that their review of documents showed that three ships arrived at the beginning of the month with falsified documents. One of the vessels, arrived at the anchorage of December 5 under the name Coral, an 18-year-old crude oil tanker that had until recently been registered in Liberia. It arrived under the flag of convenience from Sao Tome Principe after a voyage from the Persian Gulf.
Inspecting the documents from the Coral, Indian officials said the ship arrived using an incorrect IMO identification number as did a second vessel the Sea Golden that also came to the anchorage on the same day. In at least one case, the vessel was using the identity of a sister ship that had been scrapped several years ago.
Three days later, the third vessel, the Harriet, arrived in the anchorage. A review of the documents revealed the ship is “under UN sanctions,” although officials declined to provide details. They said that all three ships arrived using forged documents and were being confiscated.
The Ship Recycling Industries Association which oversees the operations at Alang told the Indian Express that it is difficult to check a vessel’s documents during the bidding process to acquire tonnage. They compared it to buying a secondhand car where you have to trust the seller. “No ship-recycler will knowingly buy a vessel with forged documentation,” Haresh Parmar, joint secretary of SRIA and a ship-recycler at Alang told the newspaper. He said these issues only surface when the documents are reviewed by the authorities when the vessel reaches the anchorage.
The association noted increased competition for ships due to the strong scrap prices earlier in the year. They said the market had been strong with a steady pace of ships arriving each month in 2021. They reported that more than 200 ships had been acquired for demolition and this included a record number of passenger ships this year. They are however concerned that iron ore prices are declining and mills are closing in India, which they speculate could lead to a slowdown and decline in the business in the future.
Royal Navy Sailors Find Themselves Chasing Monkeys
RFA Wave Knight had a "monkey problem" arriving at Grand Turk (RN file photo)
[Brief] No one would ever accuse Great Britain’s Royal Navy of “monkeying around,” but according to U.K. tabloids, a ship of the fleet had a monkey problem to sort out recently. It might have been just a sea shanty if the Royal Navy had not released a photo and replied to inquiries telling the media, “We take our responsibility to wildlife seriously and try to help.”
The story reportedly began in Barbados, where the RFA Wave Night, a fast fleet tanker that supplies vessels with essential supplies around the world, made a brief port call. The vessel is currently on deployment as part of the Atlantic Patrol working in the Caribbean to provide aid and support other ships on the mission.
After departing Barbados, the crew reported spotting a green monkey dashing about their ship. They believed the primate had come aboard as a stowaway in Barbados. The animal was spotted running about the outer decks and at one point high atop the bridge. It was also discovered that the monkey was carrying a child around with it on the vessel.
Officials on Grand Turk Island, an island in the Turks and Caicos, however, learned that the monkey was aboard the vessel. They informed the ship, which was due to make a stop in their port, that it would not be permitted to arrive for “biological safety reasons.”
The British tabloid, The Sun, which first reported the incident, said that is when the problems began. The tabloid reported, “It all went wrong when the crew was trying to trap,” the monkey. “It was really bad.” By all accounts, the sailors were given a net to capture the animal and were chasing it all about the outer decks as it dashed from point to point outwitting them.
When the animal finally seemed to be cornered, it dove over the side of the ship to the water some 80 feet below while holding its child. Last seen, the sailors reported, the monkey was doing the doggie paddle to shore after its stowaway voyage.
When the sailors of the RFA Wave Knight are not chasing a monkey, they provided aid earlier this year both to St. Vincent after its devastating volcanic eruption and to Haiti after the earthquake in August. As part of the task force working with the U.S. Coast Guard and another mission with the Dutch Royal Navy, they also recently assisted in the capture of millions of dollars of cocaine, one of several drug seizures by the task force on their current deployment. The U.S. Coast Guard reported earlier this month that the RFA Wave Knight crew seized about 1,200 pounds of cocaine. Following the three interdictions, they reported that nine suspected drug smugglers from the Dominican Republic and Columbia were apprehended.
Regulators Order Shell's Prelude LNG to Shut Down for Safety Review
After a Australia's National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) has ordered Shell to keep its massive Prelude LNG offshore gas facility shut down until it can prove that it has made safety improvements.
Earlier this month, a small fire in an electrical compartment knocked Prelude's power supply offline, forcing a shutdown and a rush to get generators back up and running. According to NOPSEMA, that restart effort failed repeatedly, and Prelude's power kept shutting down for three days. With HVAC offline, heat exhaustion from rising temperatures inside the vessel put two workers in Prelude's hospital bay.
According to WA Today, Prelude's automatic safety systems shut down all production systems and began flaring gas when the fire was detected. This took out the gas supply for the facility's steam-fed turbine generators. An emergency diesel generator failed to start, and two backup diesel generators kept tripping and failing as well.
The power failure briefly took down all comms on the platform, and the crew reportedly had resort to calling a nearby support vessel over VHF to get messages out. The support vessel served as a relay station, using a satellite phone to send text messages back to management on shore.
“What happened on the Prelude under Shell’s watch earlier this month is unforgivable,” said Brad Gandy, spokesman for the labor group Offshore Alliance and local secretary for the Australian Workers Union. "This is not the first time similar failures have occurred on the Prelude and clearly Shell has not learned from its past mistakes.”
NOPSEMA's inspectors boarded Prelude on December 9-10, and their report was not favorable. "The Inspectors concluded that the operator did not have a sufficient understanding of the risks of the power system on the facility, including failure mechanisms, interdependencies and recovery," NOPSEMA said.
The inspectors found that the loss of power knocked out comms, access to the ship's safety documentation, evacuation systems for helicopter or boat transfer, lighting, potable water, safety systems, HVAC, sewage treatment and some of its core process equipment.
Crewmembers told WA Today that they were managing human waste manually because the sewage system was shut down, and without power for transfer pumps, they had to shuttle cans of diesel around by hand to keep a backup generator running.
The problems aboard Prelude could not have affected a more sophisticated ship. Along with the $13 billion aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, Prelude is a top condender for the title of the most complex and expensive vessel ever built: though its final cost has not been disclosed, it is estimated at between $12-17 billion. After the heavy-lift ship Pioneering Spirit, Prelude is the world's second-largest vessel by displacement.
Concluding that Shell has not shown an ability to manage such a complex asset, NOPSEMA ordered that Prelude must be shut down until the operator can convince regulators "that the facility can safely recover essential power and associated essential services following a loss of power, and that the safety systems and essential support systems operate to maintain safety of personnel."
Regulator Orders Shell to Keep Prelude FLNG Output Shut Until it Can Prove It Is Safe
OE StaffDecember 24, 2021
The Prelude FLNG facility, with the Valencia Knutsen berthed side-by-side (File Photo: Shell)
Australian oil and gas industry safety regulator NOPSEMA has ordered Shell to keep the giant Prelude FLNG facility off W. Australia shut until it can convince the regulator that it can keep the facility properly powered and that the safety systems are operational.
The order comes after production from the floating facility was shut earlier this month after a sudden loss of power, and subsequent failed attempts to re-establish reliable power aboard.
In its report on Thursday, NOPSEMA said: "At around 22:40 on 2 December 2021, the Shell Australia Pty Ltd owned and operated Prelude FLNG facility experienced an unplanned event that resulted in a complete loss of power at the facility, which subsequently led to unreliable and intermittent power availability over 3 days. Multiple attempts during this period were made to re-establish reliable power."
NOPSEMA said that the loss of power had impacted the habitation and working conditions of the personnel on the facility, and that by December 6, 2021, the failure to restore reliable power was seen to represent an ongoing impact and risk to the health and safety of the person on the facility and NOPSEMA arranged to visit the facility.
"The Inspectors were mobilized at the first available opportunity on 8 December 2021, returning on 10 December. The Inspectors concluded that the operator did not have a sufficient understanding of the risks of the power system on the facility, including failure mechanisms, interdependencies and recovery," NOPSEMA said.
Lightning, Comms, Safety Systems all affected
According to NOPSEMA, the power failures directly impacted emergency response capability, operation of safety-critical equipment (e.g., communications, access to safety-critical documentation and information, Permit to Work System), and evacuation of personnel by helicopter or boat.
Essential services such as lighting, safety systems, communication systems, potable water systems, sewage treatment and HVAC were affected, too, with seven people treated for heat-related conditions).
The functionality of process equipment required to effectively manage the LNG inventory was also affected.
NOPSEMA thus ordered Shell to keep the LNG production from the Prelude FLNG unit shut, until it can "demonstrate to NOPSEMA’s satisfaction that the facility can safely recover essential power and associated essential services following a loss of power, and that the safety systems and essential support systems operate to maintain safety of personnel."
NOPSEMA also ordered Shell to develop a detailed plan, schedule, and commitment to timely implementation of all necessary corrective actions, and present the plan to NOPSEMA once complete.
Under the orders by NOPSEMA, Shell is expected, on the first business day of each month starting March 2022, to provide an update to NOPSEMA detailing progress under the orders made by the regulator.
The 488 meters long, Shell-operated Prelude FLNG unit forms part of an offshore development that produces natural gas from the remote namesake field approximately 475km north-northeast of Broome in Western Australia.
The first LNG shipment from the project - originally sanctioned in 2011 - was shipped back in June 2019, via the Valencia Knutsen LNG tanker to customers in Asia. Shell is the operator of the project, with other partners being INPEX, CPC, and KOGAS.
This Is a Do-or-Die Moment for Chile’s Incoming President Dec. 24, 2021 Credit...Javier Torres/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Cristian Farias Mr. Farias is a Chilean-American journalist who writes about law, justice and politics.
“Today, hope triumphed over fear,” declared Chile’s new president-elect, Gabriel Boric, a leftist lawmaker and former student activist, in a speech Sunday celebrating his victory over far-right rival José Antonio Kast.
The refrain took on a life of its own, and all week Chileans, on social media and on the streets, repeated it, if only to serve as a reminder that fear-mongering and polarization should have no place in electoral politics.
But hope alone will only get Mr. Boric so far. The 35-year-old leader immediately faces the challenge of helping those struggling in a Covid economy, including older Chileans crushed by meager or no pension benefits. But the biggest test of his presidency, the one that will not only cement his place in Chilean history but define society in a post-dictatorship nation, will be his leadership ahead of a referendum next year on a new Constitution that would enshrine rights and values for a more equal, inclusive nation and break with the charter birthed under Augusto Pinochet.
In 2020, Chileans voted overwhelmingly to leave the old text behind, and less than a year later, they selected 155 drafters to write the new one. But weariness from the pandemic, funding controversies, and frictions over procedure and substance inside the constitutional convention — the body tasked with drafting the charter — could easily erode its public support. And if those are the challenges now, there’s no telling what challenges lie ahead once the framers approve the text of the new Constitution and it is up to the citizenry to debate and ratify it. A torrent of fake news around the constitutional process shows that bad actors are hard at work seeking to delegitimize it.
Any misstep in the process could undermine the credibility of a new Constitution — and provide fodder for supporters of the old order, including figures like Mr. Kast, to rally around rejecting it.
This is do-or-die for Mr. Boric.
With history as a guide, Mr. Boric starts off with reason to hope that Chilean society, at a pivotal moment for its democratic project, will choose wisely. Mr. Boric was only 2 years old when Chileans, in a historic plebiscite in 1988, rejected the military rule of Mr. Pinochet, setting Chile on a path to democracy and self-determination. Then, nearly 56 percent of voters said no to the dictator’s brutal regime, opening the door to a modern era of democracy and institutional growing pains.
More than 30 years later, by a similar margin, Mr. Boric’s message of hope and change prevailed over Mr. Kast’s dire warnings that Chile was on the precipice of abandoning this political and economic model, and descending into Communism. Fifty-six percent of the Chilean electorate rejected that message and voted for Mr. Boric, making him the youngest president to reach La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace, and the candidate to receive the highest number of votes in a presidential contest in the nation’s history. Turnout likewise shattered records. Mr. Boric’s mandate is clear.
Yet the president-elect, for all his youthful energy and commitment to dignity, equality and the internment of neoliberalism, is keenly aware he’ll need more than just rhetoric to govern and make a reality the social promises that propelled him to power. In his same acceptance speech on Sunday, Mr. Boric was candid in his assessment that the future of his campaign promises — among them access to quality health care for all and overhauling Chile’s privatized pension system — will require consensus, meeting others in the middle, and taking “short but steady steps” in the face of a closely divided national Congress.
This is not the discourse of a onetime student leader who cut his teeth organizing marches for better public education and, in the process, found himself in the cross hairs of President Sebastián Piñera’s first administration nearly a decade ago. Mr. Boric’s newfound pragmatism is a promising early sign for the constitutional process, as the approach holds appeal for those voters who are neither highly progressive like him nor far-right sympathizers like Mr. Kast. But as he juggles forming a cabinet and leading a government on one hand, he will also need to blend intellectual rigor, communications skills, and a solemn urgency about future milestones in the constitutional process on the other. Nothing can be left to chance — and every person in his team, no matter their role, must make the new Constitution their true north in everything they do.
Mr. Boric has no room for error in this constitutional moment. After the social protests that rocked and nearly broke Chile in October 2019, he was a key signatory to the document that set in motion the process toward Chile’s new founding charter. Mr. Boric broke from his own party, and risked his own political future, when he took that visionary step.
In the presidential seat, Mr. Boric will have to walk the fine line of championing the new Constitution — which could inevitably circumscribe his own power — and not alienating that part of the electorate that doesn’t share the progressive values of the drafting committee members who themselves are still debating key provisions. These include the enumeration of fundamental rights, the role of government in protecting them, and the state’s responsibilities to Indigenous peoples, political minorities and the environment.
All of these issues can be highly divisive. And they explain why Mr. Boric, during his victory speech, urged all Chileans to guard the constitutional process. The new Constitution, he said, must be one of encuentro — a meeting place where all Chileans agree on fundamental values and agree to disagree on everything else.
Setting this constitutional project on a firm foundation — or to a “safe harbor,” as he put it on Tuesday — is the key to Mr. Boric’s political legacy. His greatest challenge, beyond making it past his honeymoon with voters and responding to specific demands, will be to show that he’s the president of not just the here and now, but also of Chile’s imminent next founding — the first chief executive who’ll chart the nation’s future course based on the first charter ever written by Chileans themselves.
NYT
Opinion: A clear and present danger for the continued efficiency of rail transportation in Canada
DECEMBER 23, 2021 Smoke rises from a derailed Canadian Pacific Railway train near Guernsey, Sask, on February 6, 2020. TCI is the largest shareholder in Canadian Pacific Railway Limited.
Matt Smith / The Canadian Press
Pierre Lorty is a Senior Business Consultant at Denton Canada LLP.
The Government of Canada is facing a very unhealthy situation in which a foreign hedge fund holding significant equity positions in both CN and CP engaged in anti-competitive behavior affecting Canadian Railways and then In an effort to revamp the board, it has increased its stake in CN. And redirect your business strategy.
The stakes are high.
The saga in which the Canadian National Railway Company is embroiled involves a relatively new and unresolved competition policy challenge. The issue has been brought to the fore by the overlapping share ownership and conduct of TCI Fund Management Limited, an active investor in Canada’s only two national railways. A growing body of empirical work indicates that, even when possessed by passive institutional investors, common stock ownership in concentrated markets more often leads to higher prices, lower market output, and lower product and service quality than would otherwise be the case.
Will happen. TCI is the largest shareholder in Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, and in the midst of the bidding process to acquire the Kansas City Southern Railway, TCI attempted to block CN’s bid and from interfering in regulatory proceedings related to CP’s proposal from the company. urged to escape. , In September, TCI announced that it had increased its stake in its outstanding shares in CN to 5 percent in order to gain the right to convene a special meeting of shareholders under the Canada Business Corporation Act. It also said that it was starting a proxy battle with CN over the election of a slate of directors and the appointment of a new chief executive officer to be nominated by TCI. The basic premise of Canada’s Competition Act is that competitive markets offer lower prices, better product quality, and the greatest opportunities for business innovation, which benefit not only individuals, but the economy as a whole. While transactions that may substantially reduce competition are prohibited, law enforcement is less straightforward in minority-owned situations. However, the merger provisions of the Act should be explicitly used to deal with such anti-competitive behaviour. In a seminal 2018 paper, researchers found that the higher the concentration of common ownership by institutional funds in the airline industry, the lower the competition, and the higher the fares. Subsequent empirical studies in the United States and other industries in Western Europe reached the same conclusion. The point is, if common ownership of competing firms by passive investors has anti-competitive consequences, what should be expected of an activist hedge fund, which, given the high management fees, tends to compensate its investors on a risk-adjusted basis. should generate sufficiently high returns. do they charge? We don’t have to look very far for answers. In applying the US antitrust law, the Federal Trade Commission describes six types of conduct—all of which apply to TCI’s campaign against CN, including nominating candidates for election to the board—that it deactivates. Moves out of the realm of investment a more proactive mode which would guarantee regulatory intervention.
If TCI gets its nominees elected to the board of CN, it will be in a position to have a significant impact on the management of the company. Since TCI’s interests in CP and CN overlap, there is no reason for them to be pro-growth, as the increase in the growth rate of one company will be largely at the expense of the other.
Despite TCI’s remarks in a statement that CN should be “the fastest growing railroad in the industry”, TCI remains focused on increasing margins. In TCI’s view, “CN has a pricing problem.” In these circumstances, both the management teams of railways may be motivated to pursue anti-competitive and self-service strategies, whereby we can achieve high level of profitability to increase profitability in the short term without jeopardizing each other’s market position. Can expect prices and low investment. One possible consequence is that TCI’s influence on both companies may be positioned to advance the interests, not of one railway over the other, but at the expense of both shippers, rail safety, resilience, and the public.
Officers should not be swayed by the argument that directors are bound by their fiduciary duty to all stakeholders. There is, of course, no reason to expect TCI-nominated directors to engage in serious work. However, many studies show that the behavior and objectives of a company are dependent on its owners and that even in the absence of a coordinated mechanism with common shareholders, management may, on its own initiative, pre-empt its conduct. Formally aligns with what it considers to be the most influential shareholder’s interest. There is no valid reason why the turmoil should not be subject to an antitrust investigation by Canadian authorities because of short-term financial objectives affecting a significant piece of Canada’s infrastructure.
