SHIPPING

SLPA to renovate outdated oil pipelines

Hiran H. SENEWIRATNE

The Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) is now in the process of upgrading old bunker fuel storage facilities. This will taking over from a private firm, senior officials said.

SLPA plans to put in place to replace the old pipelines by the year end. The pipelines leading from the storage tanks to the port are outdated and need urgent repair.

The SLPA had planned take over the facility on September 10 from Lanka Marine Services (LMS), the biggest bunker supplier in Colombo port falling in line with a Supreme Court order, SLPA sources said.

The SLPA is taking all measures to invite expressions of interest from companies by year end to replace the old pipelines and modernise the facility in the Colombo Port.

The judgement, delivered in a case that challenged the privatisation of LMS and its acquisition by John Keells Holdings, called for the facility to be used by all licensed bunker suppliers to ensure more competition. SLPA officials said it has already drawn up a set of interim tariffs for the facilities use by future successful bidders. The SLPA held talks with all eight holders with valid bunker licences who have formed an association of bunker suppliers to decide how to use the tanks and pipelines.

The SLPA approach is to have a cost-based tariff to encourage the facilities use by suppliers and ensure greater competition supplying ship fuel in Colombo port, its sources said.

Regional nations plan shipping route

China, Japan, Russia and South Korea plan a joint shipping route around the Sea of Japan, a move expected to boost trade after trial operations next month, Chinese state media said.

The four nations signed an agreement on setting up the 800-nautical-mile (1,480-kilometre) route Thursday (11) in the northeast Chinese city of Changchun, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The service will run from Huichun, a key Chinese port on the Sea of Japan, to Niigata in Japan and then on to the Russian port of Zarubino and the South Korean port of Sokcho, according to the agency.

“The move is in the interest of the four sides and can promote trade and tourism in Northeast Asia,” Yu Guozheng, an economist with Changchun-based Northeast Normal University, told Xinhua.

The route will cut the travel time for cargo from northeast China’s Jilin province to Japan. Until now cargo has had to be taken hundreds of kilometres (miles) by truck before being loaded onto ships.

The route will also be able to handle 15,000-tonne cargo vessels and passenger ships carrying as many as 500 people, according to Xinhua. It will be operated by a joint venture to be located in South Korea, the agency said. AFP

Hanjin to start Japan-Korea dedicated feeder

The KJS (Korea-Japan Service) is a dedicated feeder using one 400-TEU vessel with a once weekly rotation of Busan, Tokyo, Osaka and Busan.

“The main purpose of this service includes promoting sales within Asia and reducing vessel operation time while transshipping the Japanese local cargo to Europe and the US,” the Korean carrier said in a statement.

“Hanjin Shipping expects that the introduction of this new KJS will minimise the bottleneck situation at Asian ports for the services that call Japan. Also, transshipment at the company’s dedicated terminal in Busan will be another benefit for the company as well as its customers.”

Hanjin said operating a dedicated feeder would be particularly beneficial to its shipper customers who ordinarily have to “secure vessel space from feeder lines case by case.”

Hanjin also said it plans to further expand its dedicated services. It operates dedicated feeders in the Middle East, Singapore, Bangladesh and North China.

SC grants time to remove LMS tank farm

Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court has given time for bunkering unit of John Keells Holdings (JKH) till tomorrow to vacate a tank farm, and the company has been ordered to pay compensation to workers, quoting the lawyers, its sources said.

Lanka Marine Services (LMS), a unit of JKH, was ordered by court to hand over a land with a tank farm to Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA), following a ruling in which the group was faulted over the privatisation of the bunkering unit.

LMS also has to pay compensation as determined by the Commissioner of Labour for workers whose services are terminated.

The company has to deposit compensation in a bank.

Earlier reports had indicated that LMS workers would be absorbed by the Jaye Container Terminal of the SLPA.

The order further states that any oil remaining in the tanks after September 12 would remain with Sri Lanka Ports Authority, lawyers had told.

LMS earlier sought and received time till September 10 to take away its oil stocks as worker unrest prevented management from moving the stocks. Workers have also been asked to co-operate in moving oil stocks, an official said. SLPA is planning to convert the tank farm for common use.

JAL Shippers help underprivileged students

JAL Shipping and Logistics (Pvt) Ltd., celebrated the first anniversary recently carrying out a valued community project to help the underprivileged children in Thelambiyagama Vidyalaya in a remote area of Kekirawa by donating articles required for the daily use in the school.

Though the name JAL Shipping and Logistics (Pvt) Ltd., is a new entity to the shipping and freight forwarding market, JAL Shipping is a professional outfit lead by most respected and experienced personnel, who have experienced for more than two decades in shipping.

Arctic shipping set to explode

As the Arctic ice cap melts away, shipping in the environmentally fragile region is expected to balloon, but there is virtually no legal framework to regulate the new activity, experts cautioned Monday.

“The problem is that the ice is going to recede and we are going to see an increase in the economic activity in this area. There is going to be a huge expansion of shipping,” said Tatiana Saksina of the WWF’s International Arctic Programme.

When the Northwest Passage becomes free of ice in the summer months, something scientists say could happen in a matter of years, “there will be an invasion of alien species, we’re going to see over-fishing, we’re going to see an expansion of petroleum development ... Far stricter rules are needed,” she told AFP.

Saksina is one of around 40 legal experts gathered at the University of Akureyri in northern Iceland for a three-day conference aimed at staking out a new legal framework for the fragile and changing polar regions.

While commercial activities in the Arctic have so far been limited by the region’s inaccessibility and its extreme weather conditions, scientists now say it is a question of “when”, not “if,” the ice cap will vanish during summer.

An ice-free North Pole holds the promise of far shorter shipping routes between Europe and Asia and of making the region’s untold wealth of natural resources, including oil and gas, more accessible.

Yet as governments and companies line up to get in on the action, experts warn there are still virtually no laws regulating their activities in a region with one of the world’s most fragile ecosystems. AFP