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)
Thursday, April 27, 2023
IMO: Critical Gap in Safer Salvage Plan Needs Spill Response Equipment
IMO is seeking equipment in case of an oil spill from the FSO Safer before the transfer is completed (UN supplied photo)
An urgent call has gone out for the contribution of a broad range of equipment to manage an oil spill as the final stages of preparedness planning proceeds in advance of the salvage efforts to remove oil stored aboard the decaying FSO Safer. The International Maritime Organization is reporting that a “critical gap” has been identified in the precautionary efforts before the complex and inherently risky ship-to-ship transfer begins in May.
The IMO is providing expertise in oil spill preparedness and response as part of the contingency planning for a possible spill from the FSO Safer before the transfer operation gets underway. In a circular sent to all member states dated April 21, the IMO reports it has been involved in the UN-wide effort since 2019 and that contingency planning efforts are intensifying in preparation for the upcoming transfer operation. The IMO says it is considered of great importance to address the necessary measures for any required immediate response in the event of an oil spill from FSO Safer.
The FSO Safer built in the 1970s as a supertanker has been providing floating storage since 1988 approximately 4.8 nautical miles off the coast of Yemen. The vessel is believed to be decaying rapidly with limited ongoing maintenance and beyond repair. It is holding an estimated 150,000 metric tons (1.1 million barrels) of crude oil.
The UN Development Programme office in March acquired the VLCC tanker Nautica from Euronav to replace the Safer as long-term temporary storage for the oil. The tanker was prepared at a shipyard in China and earlier today departed Malaysia where it has been anchored making final preparation. The tanker is expected to arrive off Yemen by mid-May. According to the salvage plan, it will be brought alongside the Safer after teams have inspected the FSO and stabilized its tanks, and prepared the inert gas system and pumps for the transfer.
Last Thursday, April 20, Boskalis’ offshore vessel Ndeavor departed Rotterdam bound for the Suez Canal and then Djibouti after having loaded equipment and supplies for the mission. Boskalis’s SMIT division will be undertaking the transfer operation for the UN. The offshore vessel is expected to reach the region in early May, make final preparations, and embark the salvage crew in Djibouti. It will then depart for Yemen to begin the inspections and preparations on the Safer for the ship-to-ship transfer.
“One of the critical oil spill preparedness gaps identified in Yemen refers to the lack of specialized oil spill response equipment within the country,” writes the IMO. As such, the IMO is seeking used or near end-of-life spill response equipment that can be transferred to the region within weeks. They are taking this route noting the lengthy lead times normally required for the manufacture and acquisition of oil spill response equipment.
The IMO is seeking a long list of materials that can be transported to the region within weeks. The circular has a three-page outline of materials ranging from tanks, dispersants, and containment equipment to booms, skimmers, pumps, blowers, and hoses.
The UN would welcome in-kind contributions of spill response equipment, the IMO says as final preparations are made for the operation. In the plan summary presented by Boskalis, they anticipate that the operation will take approximately 52 days. The first two weeks will be spent on inspections and stabilizing the tanks on the Safer, followed by three weeks for the ship-to-ship transfer. Then they will clean the tanks of the Safer and prepare the vessel to be removed for recycling.
Russian Yacht Disappears in Red Sea After Apparent Attack
The yacht 30 Minutes was last spotted near Farasan Island, top center (NASA)
A yacht with five people aboard has disappeared after an apparent attack in the Red Sea, according to its owner and to Russian officials, and inquiries are under way to determine its fate.
Last week, the Russian-owned yacht 30 Minutes was transiting the Red Sea en route to Djibouti when it disappeared off the coast of Yemen, according to its owner. The 62-foot yacht was last spotted near Jazan, Saudi Arabia on April 19. The waters to the south of Jazan are patrolled by Yemen's Houthi rebel faction, but Houthi forces have not claimed responsibility for the vessel's disappearance.
The yacht had three Russian nationals and two Egyptians on board. On Sunday, the Russian Embassy in Saudi Arabia confirmed that contact with the ship has been lost, and said that its staff is working to find out more about the yacht's fate and assist the Russian citizens on board.
The owner, Dmitriy Chuguevskiy, told the Associated Press that the yacht's skipper had managed to get a distress call out. In the call, the master said that the yacht was under attack by "armed pirates," according to Chuguevskiy. "Our assumption is they got kidnapped," he said.
U.S. Fifth Fleet did not receive a distress call from 30 Minutes, a spokesman told AP. EUNAVFOR, UKMTO and Fifth Fleet have all told press that they are investigating the case.
The area off Yemen's northwestern coast is outside of the historical range of Somali pirate action groups. Within their historical range, Somali pirates have been substantially suppressed in recent years by security hardening practices and naval patrols.
Greenpeace Wins Court Approval for Lawsuit Against UK E&P Leasing
A UK court has allowed Greenpeace to proceed with a judicial review of a planned auction round for North Sea oil and gas leasing, the environmental group announced Wednesday. The approval is the first step in the British legal process for a lawsuit challenging a government decision.
In December, Greenpeace UK filed a lawsuit with the London High Court in an attempt to reverse government plans to issue up to 130 new E&P licenses in the UK North Sea. By law, the government is required to perform an environmental assessment before issuing new licenses; Greenpeace contends that it shortchanged the review process by ignoring emissions that would be generated downstream by burning the oil and gas extracted from the lease blocks. Instead, according to the advocacy group, the government based its environmental impact assessment solely on emissions from production - a segment which accounts for only 20 percent of the total lifecycle emissions profile of the projects.
On Wednesday, the High Court granted permission for Greenpeace to pursue a full judicial review of the government’s decision to omit the effects of combusting the oil and gas that would be extracted in the new licensing round.
“This verdict is the first real setback for the government’s reckless oil and gas licensing round. Ministers will now be forced to justify in front of a judge why they want to unleash a new drilling frenzy in the North Sea against the advice of leading scientists and the UN chief, without assessing the climate impact," said Philip Evans, Greenpeace UK's climate campaign chief.
Friends of the Earth and Uplift have filed similar lawsuits.
The UK government began a course change on oil and gas in the spring of 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent prices soaring. The administration of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a "new lease of life" for offshore E&P, with a particular eye towards substituting imported LNG with domestically-produced natural gas. An estimated 560 billion cubic meters of gas remains in the UK North Sea, and the government announced plans to actively support its use. Planned support measures included an offshore licensing round; an accelerated permitting process to "take years off the development" for new offshore projects; and investing in carbon-capture clusters to offset the climate impact of the activity.
The prime minister has changed twice since Johnson's announcement, but the commitment to leasing remains. Under current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the North Sea Transition Authority held a massive lease round on January 15, receiving 115 bids for more than 250 lease blocks.
In addition to its direct climate impact, accelerated oil and gas development could have unintended negative effects for the UK's ambitious offshore wind plans, according to Andrew Reid of the Institute for Energy Economics and Analysis. "About 40% of the oil and gas supply chain has synergies with offshore wind. Both rely on a limited pool of available ports, vessels, and personnel. Stimulating both sectors at the same time will create competition between increasingly scarce resources, limiting availability and driving up costs," he warned in a recent analysis.
Prospects for Larger Vessels on the St. Lawrence Seaway
ATB tug Joyce L. VanEnkevort and barge Great Lakes Trader (Pete Markham / CC BY 2.0)
The only feasible way by which to sail higher capacity vessels along the St. Lawrence Seaway would be to extend the interior length of each of the navigation locks between Montreal and Lake Erie. There is proven tug-barge technology sailing on the Upper Great Lakes today which could sail between Lake Erie and Montreal if the navigation locks were to be lengthened.
Introduction
Some 20 years ago, discussions revolved around modifying the navigation channels and navigation locks along the St. Lawrence Seaway to transit the earlier generation of Panamax ships built to 105-ft beam and 1,000-ft length. Environmentalists responded by vehemently opposing proposals to deepen the navigation channel to transit the wider and deeper draft vessels between Montreal and the Upper Great Lakes. As well, the cost of widening and deepening the navigation locks was prohibitive. The combination of environmental opposition and high cost of reconstruction resulted in the proposal having been abandoned.
Events that occurred over the years that follow that abandonment now invite discussion about lengthening the navigation locks along the St. Lawrence Seaway, to transit extended length vessels. Proven tug-barge technology that sails on the Upper Great Lakes is built to the same beam as Seaway-max size ships and includes vessels such as ERIE TRADER with a barge built to the maximum Seaway width of 78-ft by 740-ft length.
Tug-barge technology increases payload capacity by transferring the volumetric space required by the engine and fuel tanks into the tug. These vessels are well proven sailing the Upper Great Lakes, including during storms that produce ocean size waves on Lake Superior. While present tugs are powered by diesel fuel, future extend tug length tugs could operate on any of a variety of low-carbon and carbon-free propulsion systems that include battery power. Converting a tug-barge to carbon-free operation retains full payload capacity in the barge in terms of both weight and volume.
Extended length tugs could carry any of a variety of green power options, like grid-scale batteries, insulated tanks of liquefied air, thermal storage tanks or tanks of hydrogen. Concerns about carbon emissions provide opportunity to explore possible future operation where extended length tugs push and navigate Seaway-max size barges on the Upper Great Lakes, and also to evaluate structural stresses at the articulation coupling. There is scope for computer-based structural analysis software to explore possible extending barge length to increase payload capacity and provide background information to determine the possible future interior length of Seaway navigation locks.
Environmental Impact
Future extended length tug-barges would include the identical draft, identical beam and identical bow profile as existing Seaway-max ships and produce the identical bow wave while sailing at the same speed as shorter Seaway-max ships. The environmental impact of the extended length vessel would therefore be negligible compared to wider vessels that sail at deeper draft. The presence of power dams near several Seaway navigation locks provides opportunity to recharge grid-scale size of batteries on battery-electric tugs during scheduled delays encountered when future extended-length tug-barges transit through each of several Seaway navigation locks.
The Seaway’s three-month annual closure would allow for winter time construction to lengthen Seaway navigation locks. During the closure, locks would be drained of water. Such a change would initially allow diesel-powered and later carbon-free tug-barges to sail between the Upper Great Lakes and Lake Ontario and eventually to the Lower St. Lawrence River. The barges would mainly carry agricultural dry bulk that would undergo ship-to-ship transfer to ocean-going vessels at locations downstream of Montreal. There may be scope for tug-barges to carry containers from Montreal or Halifax to any of Hamilton, Cleveland or Duluth.
Competition
The railway system has for decades been the main competitor to the St. Lawrence Seaway insofar as providing a link between coastal Atlantic cities and inland cities. Rail traffic volumes have grown while the long-distance intercity railway network has barely changed over several decades. A large proportion of main railway lines across the United States now operate near peak capacity, with the combination of head-end and mid-train groups of locomotives working extended length freight trains. There is much reserve capacity available along the inland waterway system, allowing for future operation of larger and more frequent vessels.
Expanding the intercity railway network in the United States and even in heavily populated areas of Eastern Canada may no longer be an option. It may actually be less costly to increase the length of navigation locks along both the St. Lawrence Seaway and American inland waterway system to transit extended length tug barges. Such a change on the American inland waterway system would result in barge tows of 3 by 8-arrangement of 24-barges to transit navigation locks instead of tows of 15-barges. Seaway locks could be lengthened to transit extended length tug-barges.
Transportation Costs
During 2010, a study undertaken by University of Michigan revealed that a tug-barge carrying 100-containers along America’s inland waterway was cost competitive against railway transportation. Waterway transportation proved more cost competitive as numbers of containers increased. A ship of under 500-feet length carrying containers between Antwerp, Belgium and Cleveland USA proved cost competitive against a mega-size container ship sailing across the North Atlantic to Newark followed by railway transportation to Cleveland. Future railway transportation costs will increase as future demand for container and bulk transportation increases as future main-line railway transportation capacity increases only slightly.
Extended-length tug-barges operating along the inland waterway system and the Seaway would incur lower transportation cost per ton when carrying bulk freight as well as lower transportation cost per container when carrying containers. The combination of changing future weather patterns along with improved future agricultural advances could increase future crop yields and increase the volume of future bulk freight on the inland waterway system. Extended length tug-barges would be capable of carrying future increased export crop yields, at competitive transportation costs. The prospect of lower transportation costs could transfer more freight on to the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Conclusions
There was a time many years ago when government officials considered modifying the St. Lawrence Seaway to transit wider and deeper-draft vessels, except the environmental opposition scuttled such plans. At the present day, proven extended-length vessel technology sails regularly on the Upper Great Lakes and could sail through to Montreal after extending the interior length of Seaway locks. The absence of wildlife habitat and aquatic spawning immediately upstream and downstream of each lock minimizes environmental opposition to lengthening each of the locks.
According to marine technology company Ocean Infinity, remotely controlled vessel operations - and in future, autonomous vessel operations - will become standard practice, even for complex offshore tasks.
Few maritime industry commentators would question that autonomous shipping will be one of the fastest growing areas of shipping in the coming decades. The technology is already there for certain tasks. The waters of Norway, for example, are seeing ever-increasing numbers of inter-island ferries and small cargo vessels making their way safely on fixed routes without a captain or crew on the bridge. But this represents the low-hanging fruit of maritime autonomy, because much of human activity at sea requires more input than steering a vessel from point A to point B without running over any yachts.
Compare a typical survey vessel to a ferry. Unlike the ferry, which follows a regular timetable in and out of familiar ports, the survey vessel will operate in different locations for every job. Its work will likely be remotely located, and it may need to launch and recover a range of fragile and expensive assets like towed sonar arrays and ROVs in a wide range of sea states.
Complexity and its challenges
With so many more variables to consider, it is no surprise that there are those who argue that working offshore in more complex ways - especially those tasks involving interaction with the seabed - will continue to require a number of offshore workers. It is true that complex operations have more scope for requiring the kinds of tweaks and workarounds that humans onboard carry out today. Even simple things like wiping weeds off the camera lens of an inspection class ROV between dives can be remarkably challenging for robotic systems, but something of a non-issue for an offshore worker armed with a roll of paper towels.
However, there are three compelling reasons for increasing the proportion of offshore vessel operations that are conducted remotely, according to Josh Broussard, Chief Technology Officer at Ocean Infinity.
“Operations at sea have a high HSE exposure. With more automated operations we can remove humans from potential areas of harm. Less dramatically, we can also remove humans from repetitive, dirty and often, consequently difficult-to-recruit roles that come under the three Ds - dull, dirty or dangerous," says Broussard. "On the environmental side, consider a typical support vessel working offshore with ROVs. If it has a crew of 60, it needs to be a large vessel with suitably large engines, generators and all the necessary facilities for this large group of people. But we also need to consider all of the aspects that are more indirect - a crew of 60 could potentially mean 120 people flying all over the world for change over, perhaps every four weeks. Thirdly, most faults that occur in offshore operations can be traced back to human error. When we reduce the human presence on the vessel, we can reduce the prevalence of human error.”
Naysayers could argue that much of what Ocean Infinity does, at least in these early stages of the company’s development, simply moves the human operator from the deck of a vessel to a control room ashore. If there is still a human operator, how can that reduce human error? Broussard identifies two important considerations.
“Conducting operations remotely forces you to automate multiple aspects aboard the vessel, looking more thoroughly than ever before at systems and processes. There are of course bugs and errors at the start of such new automations, but once you’ve got rid of the errors you are left with a highly efficient repeat task," he says. "There is also the matter of working on a vessel offshore, versus working on the same vessel remotely, onshore, in the worker’s town or city. Consider when you would be more likely to make a mistake - after a rough, fitful night’s sleep in a vessel offshore, or after a night at home in your own bed and a short commute.”
Remote control
This aspect will be made real by Ocean Infinity with the opening of its first remote control center (RCC) in Southampton, UK in May 2023.
The RCC enables multiple ships operating in a range of maritime jurisdictions to undertake complex tasks "lean crewed" (and in future, un-crewed). It is the first location in a worldwide roll-out of RCCs for Ocean Infinity, complementing the firm's new fleet of purpose-built work ships of up to 280 feet in length - the Armada fleet.
The RCC is equipped with 20 individual control pods, or "bridges," each fitted with a helmsman’s seat and specific controls. Managerial staff work on more conventional office-type workstations inboard, overseeing multiple vessels and operations anywhere in the world.
Keeping the same look and feel of a vessel's bridge is more than a gimmick for the RCC. The operators in the RCC are as much as possible conducting the same job they would conduct on the vessel itself, with the same qualifications and the same experience. A skilled and suitably qualified operator in the RCC could be operating one vessel or ROV in one ocean for one hour and a different vessel in a different ocean the next. This presents opportunities for customers to reduce unnecessary, unplanned, and costly downtime. For example, if an RCC-managed ROV launch happens to be delayed by bad weather, the RCC-based ROV operator, instead of finding other tasks to perform aboard a loitering ship, can switch to another ROV operation in another ocean.
Of course, there are limits imposed in controlling vessel operations from the other side of the world. Bandwidth is one of them, particularly when it comes to underwater vehicles.
“We work with commands rather than direct controls,” explains Manuel Parente, Chief Information Officer at Ocean Infinity. “With a tethered ROV, our operators don’t control it in perfect real time - the lag between, say, steering input and the ROV reacting, then its new position being picked up by its navigation and camera systems and relayed back to the operator would be very difficult to work with. Imagine walking into your house wearing a VR headset and playing a video of the same process one to two seconds delayed- you’d most likely fall over in the hallway. Instead, our operators use asynchronous communication, issuing commands to a smarter generation of subsea vehicles, such as ‘move forward one meter and hover’, or ‘return to mothership.'"
Walking before running
For good reasons, Ocean Infinity is not rushing headlong to deploy autonomous vessels without a single soul aboard (although its latest crop of Armada vessels will support this). At the moment, partially due to legislative lag in some parts of the world, Ocean Infinity is onshoring more of the crew responsible for operating and managing the vessels’ payloads than it is reducing the vessels’ navigational and command crew numbers. Crews required to navigate vessels are legally mandated and already small, so the benefits of reducing them further are smaller than the benefits available by reducing all the other workers aboard a typical survey vessel, for example.
According to Andre Reinlert, Ocean Infinity’s Data Innovation Manager, it is in onshoring these data-related workers that the real benefits lie because onshoring operators require the data to be moved from vessel to RCC straight away. “Our operations get insights through to stakeholders more quickly than traditional methods ever did. Formerly data would arrive with the stakeholder through digital deliveries, sometimes weeks after a survey," he says. "Now thanks to edge processing, both on the underwater vehicle and onboard the vessel equipped with banks of servers for storage and computing, insights from data can be provided within minutes."
Stakeholders may come to expect the benefits that such lean crewed, remotely-controlled and significantly automated operations have brought to the industry. In Ocean Infinity's view, it is unlikely that traditionally crewed vessel operators will be able to offer the same advantages, as it is only through the challenges of making these operations work with lean crews that the necessary systems and methods are uncovered.
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.
Russian Navy Eyes Early Retirement for Rare Nuclear Cruiser
Pyotr Velikiy (background) escorted by the much smaller Royal Navy destroyer HMS Dragon (Royal Navy)
The Russian Navy may retire the Cold War-era nuclear cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, despite previous plans to overhaul her and restore her to service.
The Velikiy (ex name Yuri Andropov) is one of the last members of a rare species of warship: the nuclear-powered cruiser. While several powers operate submarines powered by nuclear propulsion, and two nations operate nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, only Russia still maintains nuclear-powered "line of battle" surface combatants. The U.S. Navy built nine nuclear cruisers over the course of the Cold War, but retired all of them in the 1990s because of their high operating costs.
The same fate may await Pyotr Velikiy, according to state media outlet TASS. Velikiy is the fourth and last of the Kirov-class nuclear cruisers ordered by the Soviet Navy. The Kirov-class are the largest surface combatants in operation, weighing in at 28,000 tonnes - about three times the displacement of a typical destroyer. They were designed to carry 20 massive S-700 Granit anti-ship missiles, each weighing seven tonnes. This outsized munition is capable of delivering an optional nuclear payload.
Velikiy was laid down before the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the dissolution of the USSR and the economic disruption of the years that followed put the brakes on her construction, and she was delivered a decade behind schedule in 1998. By the time Velikiy entered service, all of her sister ships were already in layup or nearing it. The first and second have since been scrapped, and the third, Admiral Nakhimov, was brought out of storage in 2006 for a six-year modernization refit. That project has been hit by decadal delays and is currently on track for completion in 2024.
Pyotr Velikiy has had a more active record in service than her sisters. In 2008, she transited to Venezuela and then circumnavigated Africa on a long-distance diplomatic voyage. In 2010, she steamed all the way to Vladivostok and back for a series of exercises. And in a rare combat mission in 2016, she escorted the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov during a notorious transit to participate in the Syrian Civil War.
Velikiy has performed well, but she may be retired when sister ship Nakhimov finally returns from her decades-long refit, according to state news outlet TASS. The Velikiy was slated to take Nakhimov's place at Sevmash Shipyard and undergo the same upgrades, but this now appears to be off the table.
"It seems that the experience of repairing and modernizing the Admiral Nakhimov of the same type has shown that this is very costly," a Russian Navy source told TASS. "Currently, the issue of withdrawing Pyotr Velikiy from the Navy is being worked out."
Kodiak Enterprise Dewatered and Defueled, But Ship's Fate Undecided
The U.S. Coast Guard has stood down the unified command for the fire aboard the factory trawler Kodiak Enterprise, and the initial response is effectively complete.
The trawler Kodiak Enterprise caught fire at the Trident dock in Tacoma on April 8. Multiple fire units from the Tacoma Fire Department responded to the scene. An early attempt to battle the blaze with an onboard fire team was abandoned, and the responders applied cooling water to exterior as the fire burned through.
According to Tacoma Fire, most of the flammable material on board was consumed, and the fire largely subsided within four days. After the blaze reduced in intensity, firefighters again boarded the ship to eliminate the last hotspots.
The vessel took on a list during the response due to accumulation of firefighting water, but a dive inspection confirmed that the ship's hull integrity was intact below the waterline. The ship's intakes were sealed from the outside as a preventive measure.
Last week, salvors boarded the vessel and alternated between pumping off fuel and pockets of water to maintain stability. All of the diesel left aboard the vessel was successfully removed, and no fuel spills or sheening were observed during the defueling operations. Now that the pollution threat has been minimized, the Coast Guard has stood down the response command.
“This was a dangerous operation that could have resulted in loss of life, harm to the marine environment from the fuel onboard, or capsizing of the vessel,” said Cmdr. Kira Moody, the Coast Guard incident commander. “On behalf of the Unified Command, I share immense gratitude and appreciation for the responders from Tacoma Fire and Resolve Marine. Their steady and professional approach made this response a success.”
The fate of the Kodiak Enterprise has not yet been decided, according to the Coast Guard. The fire burned through a substantial share of the vessel, including the accommodations block and the wheelhouse.
The fire aboard Kodiak Enterprise is the second to affect a Trident Seafoods fishing vessel in two years. In February 2021, the Trident fish processor Aleutian Falcon caught fire at a shipyard in Tacoma during maintenance work. The damage was extensive, and the Falcon was declared a total loss.
“This has been an incredibly challenging time and we are grateful for the support and collaboration of all the agencies and parties in fighting the fire,” said Joe Bundrant, the CEO of Trident Seafoods. “We also appreciate the patience of the surrounding Tacoma community throughout the incident response. The Kodiak Enterprise is more than just a fishing vessel to the Trident family, especially to her crew.”
WATCH OUT FOR LEAPING WIND FARMS
Cargo Ship Arrives in Germany with Large Hole After Striking Wind Farm
German police believe the vessel struck a wind farm while sailing in the North Sea (Wasserschutzpolizei)
Germany’s water police are investigating what they believe may be the first case in which a working merchant ship underway struck a North Sea wind farm. The captain of the vessel according to the police has so far not explained how his vessel received a hole the “size of a barn door” forward on the starboard side of the ship.
The general cargo ship Petra L. (1,685 dwt) is registered in Antigua and Barbuda for a German owner which is listed as MP Shipping of Hamburg in the Equasis database. The 39-year-old vessel departed Szczecin, Poland on April 22 loaded with 1,500 tons of gain bound for Antwerp. Three days later early on the morning of April 25, she arrived in Emden, Germany, and port authorities noticed the gapping hole and reported it to the police.
Media reports said the water police were initially investigating the incident on the theory that the vessel had hit a floating object. Police reports are saying that the hole measures approximately 10 feet by 16 feet (3 meters by 5 meters) penetrating the hull. They reported that there were three officers and three crewmembers working aboard the vessel. None of them were injured.
Petra L. was sailing in the North Sea (Baltic Shipping Company)
German authorities made inquiries with the wind farm operators and said that Ørsted which operates the Gode Wind site approximately 25 miles off the German coast in the North Sea reported that its sensors at the wind farm had not detected any issues. However, on Wednesday morning a further survey of the wind farm, which has been operating since 2017 and consists of 97 turbines located in two sections, was undertaken by helicopter. Ørsted reportedly then confirmed to the German authorities that the visual survey detected “a small amount of damage,” in the field. The reports did not provide details.
A review of the vessel’s data and AIS position shows that it was miles off course according to the German authorities. They are speculating that the ship was on autopilot and for unknown reasons drifted or deviated from its course. The data is reported to show that the vessel also slowed speed dramatically before altering course. Weather conditions were good in the North Sea which they believe is why the vessel was able to proceed to port without reporting the incident.
The Russian captain of the vessel is promising a full statement after speaking with lawyers. Currently, the German authorities are reporting that he is facing charges for failing to report a maritime accident. Additional charges could be added pending the outcome of the investigation.
They are citing this as the first instance of a vessel underway striking a wind farm. Three years ago, a support vessel servicing another wind farm in the North Sea struck one of the towers and injured three people aboard the vessel. In that instance, investigators blamed the captain for being distracted, not maintaining a proper lookout, and deviating from the normal course used while servicing the Riffgrund wind farm which is located approximately 28 miles from shore.
Dutch authorities also reported an accident during a North Sea storm that caused a cargo ship at anchor to drift into an under-construction wind farm striking and damaging one of the foundations. An urgent salvage operation needed to be mounted to save the vessel before it drifted on shore during the storm.
Germany fights to green production of most important commodity Bloomberg News | April 22, 2023 Völklingen Ironworks in Germany.
In Germany’s industrial heartland, a slender spire of tubes rises amid a cluster of smoke-belching foundries. Owned by Salzgitter AG, Germany’s second-largest steelmaker, the installation is an ambitious attempt to revolutionize the steelmaking process, and ultimately, secure a critical piece of the country’s economy.
Steel is the most important material for Germany’s manufacturing sector, going into everything from Volkswagen AG automobiles to the advanced machinery made by Siemens AG. The metal is “the starting point of any value chain that you can think of,” Salzgitter chief executive officer Gunnar Groebler said in a Bloomberg TV interview, describing it as “an important factor in any industry in any economy.”
Yet steel is also one of the worst offenders in terms of carbon emissions. Its production techniques, which have remained unchanged for over a century and a half, rely on fossil fuel-burning furnaces that generate over one ton of carbon for each ton of steel created — more than the cement or chemicals sectors.
Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Gateway Europe conference outside Dublin this week, Rachel Muncrief, deputy director of the International Council on Clean Transportation, singled out steel for not getting enough attention as a “massive polluter.”
With Germany racing to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045, the switch to green steel is an early test of what kinds of heavy industry Europe will be able to retain – and adapt — in the transition to a cleaner economy.
It’s also a deeply personal question in steelmaking regions like Lower Saxony, the Ruhr valley and Saarland. If beleaguered German steel companies Thyssenkrupp AG, Salzgitter and Dillinger Hüttenwerke falter, firms like Mercedes-Benz AG and BMW AG will have to turn elsewhere for supplies. That could potentially lead manufacturing supply chains to drift overseas, and would close a chapter on a key part of the country’s industrial heritage.
“Not managing to achieve this transformation to clean technologies means the end of steel here,” said Juergen Barke, economy minister of Saarland, which witnessed the closure of an ironworks factory that produced steel helmets for the Kaiser’s armies in World War I. “It’s a question of survival.”
Salzgitter’s site in the gentle hills of Lower Saxony is a case study in real-time structural change. While molten metal streams from the bowels of the three coal-fired blast furnaces on one edge of the sprawling facility, elsewhere on the site, a twist of pipes uses power from nearby wind turbines to convert water into hydrogen, which then gets pumped into chambers to refine raw iron ore into purified pellets, known as sponge.
In contrast to traditional foundries, iron used in the green steel process doesn’t need to be melted. To complete the conversion, the purified ore is combined with other elements in an electric-powered furnace akin to a giant pressure cooker. The process eliminates some 97% of carbon emissions but implementing it doesn’t come cheap: while Salzgitter has already secured nearly €1 billion ($1.07 billion) in state aid, the first phase of the transition alone is expected to cost the company as much as €2.4 billion.
To make green steel production work over long haul, Salzgitter needs to ensure that it has enough renewable power and the right infrastructure to convert energy into hydrogen – and that customers, or governments, are willing to cover the potentially greater costs.
Under pressure from investors and regulators, steelmakers across Europe are pouring resources into the challenge. Salzgitter aims to convert all three of its traditional foundries by 2033, and other competitors are getting ready as well. ArcelorMittal is investing in facilities in France and Belgium, while in Sweden, SSAB and startup H2 Green Steel are working on projects that would tap the country’s hydropower resources.
All this is just a small window into Germany’s larger struggle to prove that it has a future both as a net-zero country and an energy-intensive production location. The imperative of hitting climate goals means abandoning coal, the fuel around which Germany’s steelmaking regions originally sprang up, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has meant the end of its reliance on cheap natural gas. Moreover, as green energy executives eye the Middle East and North Africa for future production sites, Germany’s capacity to produce renewable resources is limited by its relatively small coastline and dark winters.
For the steel industry, these challenges are forcing them to consider options that would have once seemed far-fetched. Thyssenkrupp is mulling a plan that could see it reduce upstream steel production and instead import foreign steel blocks into Germany, where they would be processed into higher-value products.
While this would reduce the manufacturer’s carbon footprint, the Duisburg-based company may have little choice in the decision: to make the enough hydrogen for a year’s worth of green steel, it would need a year’s worth of power from 3,800 wind turbines — about 13% of Germany’s current capacity.
The weeds sprouting between the rusting pipes of the Voelklingen ironworks in western Germany indicate what can happen if this transition goes wrong. Once among the mightiest metal producers in Europe, the plant closed down in 1986 after failing to adapt to the onset of globalization.
At its peak in the 1960s, more than 17,000 workers labored in around-the-clock shifts to melt and mold metal at the Voelklingen factory. Now, more than three decades on, what was once a sprawling array of blast furnaces, ore conveyors and coking plants has been transformed into an art space and destination for fans of industrial history.
In a cavernous hall that used to house giant blowers to keep furnaces blazing, a video work called “When We Are Gone” by Julian Rosefeldt explores the demise of the capitalist system. Playing in a loop amid silent machinery, the film follows scientists who have returned to a barren earth to research the legacies of now-vanished cultures. It’s an unsettling critique of Germany’s existing industrial economy, and a reminder of how much work the country must undertake to adapt this economy to a net-zero future.
But the people on the front lines are optimistic.
“We need to be courageous in order to overcome the huge challenges facing German industry,” Saarland’s Barke said. “We’re working hard to make this transition a success.” (By William Wilkes and Chris Reiter, with assistance from Lucy White)
Indigenous woman wins prize for campaign against mining firms in Amazon
Reuters | April 24, 2023 | Alessandra Korap Munduruku (pictured) organized community efforts to stop mining development by British mining company Anglo American in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. Credit: The Goldman Environmental Prize
Alessandra Korap Munduruku, who headed a campaign that led mining corporations to respect her people’s Indigenous territory in the Amazon rainforest, has been awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize.
She is among six 2023 winners from different parts of the globe to win the prize for achievements and leadership of grassroots environmental activists awarded by the San Francisco-based Goldman Foundation.
“The prize recognizes our struggle and tells the world ‘We are here’. Multinational companies cannot come in without consulting Indigenous people,” she told Reuters by telephone.
The British miner said it has engaged with the Brazilian Indigenous Peoples Association (APIB) and environmental NGO Amazon Watch in recent years to address their concerns.
“Anglo American does not hold any exploration permits in primary forest or on Indigenous lands in Brazil. Nor do we have any plans to do so,” the company said in a statement to Reuters.
Following Anglo American’s decision, other major mining companies announced they were also dropping prospecting permits on Indigenous lands in Brazil, the foundation said, a fact corroborated by the Brazilian mining lobby Ibram.
In 2022, for the first time in decades, none of its 130 companies had mining applications in indigenous territories, a spokesman for Ibram said.
“Alessandra’s successful campaign represents a significant shift in private sector accountability around destructive mining in Brazil amid an intense government push for extraction in the Amazon,” the Goldman Foundation said in a statement.
What made her campaign more remarkable was achieving its goal during the administration of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who reduced environmental protections and advocated allowing commercial mining and agriculture on Indigenous lands.
International mining companies have stopped prospecting on Munduruku lands, but Alessandra said her people still face the threat of illegal gold miners who invaded her territory in growing numbers under Bolsonaro, while destruction of the Amazon rainforest soared to the worst level in 15 years.
