SEAVICTORY

McAllister Towing announced Tuesday it has taken delivery of a newly built 6,770-horsepower shipdocking tug, Eileen McAllister, slated to enter service in Port Everglades, Fla.The 34th tractor tug in McAllister’s fleet, Eileen McAllister was built by Washburn & Doughty in Maine and set sail for its new home port following delivery on Monday.The 93- by 38-foot newbuild is powered by 3516E Tier IV Caterpillar engines with twin Schottel SRP 490 Z-drive units and Markey winches, achieving more than 84 metric tons during ABS bollard pull certification. Eileen will soon join sister vessel, Tate McAllister, as the most powerful tug in the Fort Lauderdale, Fla. seaport.

Ships must be allowed to change over overworked and exhausted crews to help to keep trade flowing as coronavirus lockdowns shut many transit points across the globe, shipping industry officials said on Tuesday.About 90% of world trade is transported by sea but a deepening lockdown in many countries and suspended air travel have disrupted supply chains, especially for ship owners who rely on the free movement of crews to keep ships moving.The International Chamber of Shipping association (ICS), and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), said in a letter to the Group of 20 major economies, that there were 1.

Hedge fund managers sensed oil prices were nearing a turning point last week, and for the first time in more than two months started to add long positions in anticipation prices would bounce from an unsustainable low.Overall, hedge funds and other money managers were still net sellers of 19 million barrels of petroleum in the six most important futures and options contracts in the week ending on March 31.But they initiated 40 million barrels of new purchases as well as 59 million barrels of fresh sales, according to position records published by ICE Futures Europe and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

What might not be so obvious in this COVID-19 environment, which we have grown to associate with shortages, is that counterintuitively there are issues beginning to appear dealing with the opposite situation. The Journal of Commerce has reported that “[t]he container shipping industry is marshaling a response to signs of a building import backlog as some retailers and manufacturers fail to pick up containers because warehouses are full or closed due to not being deemed essential service providers responding to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Researchers looking for an ecologically and economically sustainable way to replace fossil fuels are exploring how suitable fuel oils made from biomass and waste plastics are for power plants and ship diesel engines.Internal-combustion engine power plants use natural gas or heavy fuel oil in diesel engines. In order for large diesel engines to be environmentally sustainable both on land and at sea, it is necessary to find bio- and waste-based alternatives to fossil fuels. These will be identified and evaluated in the three-year BioFlex project coordinated by Finland's VTT.