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Several companies that certify vessels are seaworthy and ship insurers have withdrawn services to tankers involved in the Venezuelan oil trade as the United States targets the maritime industry to tighten sanctions on the Latin American country.U.S. sanctions have driven Venezuela’s oil exports to their lowest levels in nearly 80 years, starving President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government of its main source of revenue and leaving authorities short of cash for essential imports such as food and medicine.The sanctions are part of U.S. efforts to weaken Maduro’s grip on power after Washington and other Western democracies accused him of rigging a 2018 re-election vote.

COSCO SHIPPING has signed a cooperation agreement with e-commerce company Alibaba and its FinTech affiliate Ant Financial to digitalize the shipping supply chain.The Chinese firms will research and promote the deployment of shipping blockchain in China, working to facilitate the connection of shipping, ports, logistics and finance based on the technology, and to realize data connectivity through cross chain cooperation to build a platform for systematic cooperation between the upstream and downstream industrial chains.

The U.S. Coast Guard said medevaced an ailing mariner from a towing vessel approximately 28 miles south of Sabine Pass, Texas, Friday.The agency's watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector Houston-Galveston received a report of a mariner experiencing severe sickness and consulted with the duty flight surgeon who recommended the medevac.A Coast Guard Station Sabine Response Boat-Medium boat crew was launched to the scene and transferred the patient to awaiting emergency medical services personnel at Station Sabine.The mariner was reported to be in stable condition.

Resolve’s Lindsay Malen-Habib takes the helm to become the American Salvage Association's first woman presidentLindsay Malen–Habib has been named president of the American Salvage Association (ASA) effective immediately, the trade group's executive committee announced Monday. She becomes the first woman to assume the role.Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Malen-Habib is currently Resolve Marine Group’s manager of client services, and she has been an active ASA member for more than 10 years, having most recently served as ASA secretary-treasurer and vice president.

Libya's National Oil Corp (NOC) on Sunday accused the United Arab Emirates of instructing eastern forces in Libya's civil war to reimpose a blockade of oil exports after the departure of a first tanker in six months.The UAE, along with Russia and Egypt, supports the eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA) of Khalifa Haftar, which on Saturday said the blockade would continue despite it having let a tanker load with oil from storage."NOC has been informed that the instructions to shut down production were given to (the LNA) by the United Arab Emirates," it said in a statement, resuming force majeure on all oil exports.