WILSON DVINA

Three years after bulk carrier MV Wakashio ran aground on a coral reef off Mauritius, spilling 1000 tons of a new type of marine fuel oil, Curtin University-led research has confirmed the oil is still present in an environmentally sensitive mangrove forest close to Ramsar conservation sites.Lead researcher Dr. Alan Scarlett, from Curtin’s WA Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Center in the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the chemical ‘fingerprint’ of the oil found in the mangrove sediments was a near-perfect match for the Very Low Sulphur Fuel Oil (VLSFO) spilled by the Wakashio in 2020, the first recorded spill involving this type of fuel.

Sweden is asking a Chinese vessel to return to Swedish waters to help facilitate the Nordic country's investigation into recent breaches of undersea fibre-optic cables in the Baltic Sea, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Tuesday.Two subsea cables, one linking Finland and Germany and the other connecting Sweden to Lithuania, were damaged in less than 24 hours on Nov. 17-18, raising suspicions of sabotage, countries and companies involved said.Denmark's military said soon afterwards that its vessels were staying close to Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3, which travelled through the Baltic Sea at the time and now sits idle in international waters but inside Denmark's exclusive economic zone.

Washington comes to grips with the reality that the domestic intermodal equation includes four modes. One of them is by water. It’s about time.One of the great things about spending five years in retirement (I mean, aside from being blissfully idle while you toiled) is that, when you do come back to work, you enjoy a truly fresh perspective in all aspects of your job. Not only does this provide new energy, more importantly, a half decade of change is much easier to discern. Nowhere is this more apparent than the state of American ports today.

President-elect Donald Trump's support for the fossil fuel sector and climate scepticism have sparked dismay throughout the global climate tracking community, and fears that his policies may reverse global energy transition momentum.His campaign speeches included pledges to boost domestic oil and natural gas output and to remove mandates on electric vehicle production, but he has yet to publish many specific new energy policies.This lack of clarity has spurred despair among the climate community as it braces for the worst.But a look back at the trends across the U.S. energy landscape during Trump's first term suggests there could be some bright spots.

A climate change protest off the coast of Australia's New South Wales State forced an inbound ship to turn back from the country's largest terminal for coal exports on Sunday, the port operator said.New South Wales police said 170 protesters were arrested on Sunday for refusing to move from the shipping channel near the Port of Newcastle.The port, some 170 km (105 miles) from the state capital Sydney, is the largest bulk shipping port on Australia's east coast.A Port of Newcastle spokesperson said disruption due to the protest was "minimal" but that an inbound vessel "aborted due to people in the channel and has been rescheduled to come in".