BOURBON LIBERTY 104

The United States, Britain and Australia are working together to develop unmanned undersea vehicles as part of their trilateral AUKUS defence pact, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters on Saturday.AUKUS said in a joint statement that delivery of the vehicles will start in 2027.The program will improve the three nations' reconnaissance and strike capabilities, "and bolster superiority in anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, mine countermeasures, electronic warfare, and contested littoral manoeuvre," the statement added.

Norwegian shipbuilder Vard has signed a contract with research organization Inkfish for the design and construction of a deep-sea research vessel based on the VARD 9 42 design, in a deal valued at nearly $810 million (€700 million).The company said the contract is the largest order ever secured by Vard for a single vessel and the largest order of its kind for a Norwegian shipyard.The vessel, known as RV11000 during the project phase, will be 162 meters long with a beam of 28 meters. It follows Inkfish's first purpose-built research vessel, RV6000, which was contracted with Vard in 2025.

DEME, through its Japanese joint venture Japan Offshore Marine (JOM), has secured a contract for the Oga–Katagami–Akita Offshore Wind Project, covering engineering work and vessel charter services for the offshore installation of 21 wind turbines.The contract forms part of an agreement between Oga Katagami Akita Offshore Green Energy and Penta-Ocean Construction.JOM will install 21 Vestas V236-15 MW turbines, marking the first deployment of 15 MW-class wind turbines in Japan and the first application of turbines of this size outside Europe, excluding China.

Cheniere Energy Partners has signed a lump-sum turnkey engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with Bechtel Energy for the first phase of the Sabine Pass LNG Expansion Project in Louisiana and issued a limited notice to proceed allowing early engineering and procurement work to begin.The agreement covers Phase 1 of the expansion project, including Train 7, a boil-off gas re-liquefaction unit and supporting infrastructure connected to the existing Sabine Pass LNG terminal.Phase 1 is expected to have LNG production capacity of more than 6 million tonnes per annum (mtpa), including estimated debottlenecking opportunities.

Since the Iranian Revolution and overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979, the Strait of Hormuz has been a geographic constant as a choke point for which closure has been threatened from time to time but never truly closed.  The longstanding assumption of the continued openness of the strait collapsed on February 28, 2026.  In the weeks since Iran effectively shut the strait to commercial shipping in response to U.S. and Israeli military strikes and the U.S. established its own blockade, the global maritime transportation system has been forced into a rerouting effort of historic proportions.