gCaptain has recently expanded into the web design and development business. We recently completed an overhauld of Northeast Maritime Institute’s website and our latest venture is a site redesign for Marine Money International (update coming soon).
While visiting their Stamford Office I was told of a great blog published by traders working for the cargo futures and derivatives firm Imarex. It’s called Ton Mile Trader and while most of the daily posts are of little interest to your average mariner they have two excellent sections called Ask A Trader and Useful Info. Here’s a preview of the questions and answers you can find there:
Where does the term “barrel” of oil come from?
“Barrel” goes back to the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in 1859. The only suitable storage containers in extistence at that time were 40 and 42 gallon wooden barrels. The 40 gallon barrel was used to store whiskey, while the 42 gallon model was used to store wine. Standard Oil preferred the 42 gallon version. Since they dominated the oil market at that stage, their preference became the standard.
Why are cargos usually quoted in metric-tons, while oil is priced in barrels?
When loading oil into a tanker – both the weight and volume of the oil must be taken into consideration. While the ships are built to fit even large amounts of the lightest grades of crude oil into the tanks, there is still only so many tons you can load before the ship is in violation of governing rules. The point being – you can’t load a tanker until it’s almost underwater. The issue, of course, is that barrels are a volume measure while tons are a weight measure. In order to convert one into the other, you need to know some specifics – most notably the temperature of the oil and the specific gravity. Wamer oil will expand, and therefore weigh less per unit volume than will colder oil. With that said – many cargos are referenced in barrels. It’s just a matter of “convention”.
Lots more answers can be found HERE and HERE. Go take a look.
Tags: · cargo, finance, world trade
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We have seen bad loading plans in the past but this one is a true gem. Thanks to AutosUnleased
Tags: · car, cargo
What is it??
A free gCaptain t-shirt goes out to the first person who can correctly identify this cargo.
UPDATE:
We have a winner. Charlie of Sea Wolf Engineering correctly identified the cargo as nuclear fuel casks. The owner of the ship, Pacific Nuclear Transport Ltd tells us:
The special packages in which PNTL transports nuclear material are called “flasks” or “casks”. They are typically made from 25 cm thick forged steel and weigh around 100 tonnes. They can hold up to five tonnes of nuclear material.
The casks facilitate the movement of nuclear material by different modes of transport, protect workers from radiation, dissipate heat efficiently and are designed to withstand severe accidents.
BNFL Cask Maintenance Facility
Casks are monitored for radiation prior to loading onto PNTL ships and during transportation. They are thoroughly cleaned and inspected in maintenance facilities after each shipment.
Cask lids can only be attached and removed using specialist equipment at nuclear facilities.
The casks transported by PNTL belong to customers. Each cask design has to meet safety requirements established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in order to be licensed by national regulatory bodies.
Click HERE to find out more and HERE for video of these interesting nuvlear transport ships.
Tags: · cargo, Nuclear, nuclear ship, nuclear transport, pntl, quiz
CargoLaw.com brings us the 2006 incident photos of the M/V Jeppesen Maersk: [Continue Reading →]
Tags: · cargo, containers, incident photos, maersk, photos
The Library of Congress has announced a partnership with our favorite Web 2.0 photography site Flickr. They tell us:
The first incarnation of The Commons is a pilot project we’ve created in partnership with The Library of Congress. The Library has an enormous photo catalogue, containing over a million photos. The Library team has chosen about 1,500 photos each from two of their more popular collections to show on Flickr. You can see what the streets of Puerto Rico looked like in the 40s, or what King George wore to the trooping of Colors in 1911.
There are two main aims to The Commons project, starting with the pilot: firstly, to increase exposure to the amazing content currently held in the public collections of civic institutions around the world, and secondly, to facilitate the collection of general knowledge about these collections, with the hope that this information can feed back into the catalogues, making them richer and easier to search.
While this is an exciting application of new technology the site needs your help cataloging the historic photos. The power behind flickr is their use of user submitted tags to organize the site’s enormous collection of user photos. Tags are short one or two word descriptions that let you find the best photos of offshore oil rigs or sunsets at sea.
To effectively sort the historic photographs Flickr and the Library of Congress is asking everyone to pick a few photos from the collection and add tags. Once this has been done the photos of ships should emerge HERE.
For the curious… the above photos are of a Hulett automatic unloader discharging coal at the Pennsylvania Railroad docks in Cleveland, Ohio. The set can be viewed HERE.
Tags: · cargo, cranes, flickr, great lakes, Library of Congress, maritime history, pennsylvannia Railroad, ship
Photo By James Rajotte for The New York Times
The New York Times has an interesting article on the desperate situation in the Great Lakes. Rainfall shortages have caused unusually declining water levels in the countries largest lakes. Low levels are bad news for ships designed and built with a draft meeting operational needs and having tight Under Keel Clearances. The problem is causing each ship to take on less cargo thus increasing the number of ships needed to satisfy the regions transportation need.
The NYTimes continues;
“What we need is some rain,” said Mr. Daniels, director of the Port of Oswego Authority, one of a dozen public port agencies on the United States side of the Great Lakes. “The more we lose water, the less cargo the ships that travel in the Great Lakes can carry, and each time that happens, shipping companies lose money,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s people like you and I who are going to pay the price.”
Water levels in the Great Lakes are falling; Lake Ontario, for example, is about seven inches below where it was a year ago. And for every inch of water that the lakes lose, the ships that ferry bulk materials across them must lighten their loads by 270 tons — or 540,000 pounds — or risk running aground, according to the Lake Carriers’ Association, a trade group for United States-flag cargo companies.
As a result, more ships are needed, adding millions of dollars to shipping companies’ operating costs, experts in maritime commerce estimate.
“When a ship leaves a dock, and it’s not filled to capacity, it’s the same as a plane leaving an airport with empty seats: It cuts into their earning capacity,” said Richard D. Stewart, a co-director of the Transportation and Logistics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Superior.
“Because it’s mostly raw materials we’re talking about, the average consumer may see an increase in pennies in the price they pay for, say, a new car or washing machine,” Dr. Stewart said. For major manufacturers or firms managing big projects, however, the increase in transportation costs “is much more significant,” he said. Continue Reading…
The upside for us mariners could possible be more jobs the downside… increased pressure on the Jones Act.
Tags: · bulk_cargo, cargo, Environment, great_lakes, shipping, shipping_industry, under_keel_clearance, water_levels, Weather
Tags: · cargo, Container Ship, time lapse photography
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