By Karl Plume and Rod Nickel May 17 (Reuters) - The upper Mississippi River fully reopened to boat and barge traffic this week for the first time since November as shippers scrambled to move a backlog of overdue fertilizer barges to farmers racing to sow corn before the end of the month. Some fertilizer shipments had been parked on river banks near St. Louis and further … [Read more...]
Opinion: The Missouri River Is Just Going to Keep On Flooding
By Justin Fox (Bloomberg Opinion) -- The Missouri River used to be out of control. “It cuts corners, runs around at nights, fills itself with snags and traveling sandbars, lunches on levees, and swallows islands and small villages for dessert,” is how the humorist George Fitch (pretty accurately) described it in 1907. It was also hugely variable in size and shape. Below … [Read more...]
Long Drought Puts Pressure on Dutch Inland Shipping Sector
By Bart H. Meijer AMSTERDAM, July 24 (Reuters) - The longest drought in decades is drying out rivers in the usually wet Netherlands, hitting cargo traffic and threatening a shortage of bulk supplies ranging from hops for beer brewers to cement for the construction sector. The summer of 2018 looks set to overtake 1976 as the driest one on record in the Netherlands, with … [Read more...]
Four Rescued, Two Missing After Boat Collides with Oyster Barge and Tug in Virginia
The U.S. Coast Guard and other state and local agencies are searching for two people missing after their recreational boat, with six people aboard, collided with an oyster barge being pushed by a tug on the James River near Newport News, Virginia. Good Samaritans recovered four of the people in the water and they were taken to a local hospital where they are … [Read more...]
U.S. Barge Operator Tidewater Reportedly Put Up for Sale
By Gillian Tan (Bloomberg) -- Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, a $15 billion firm led by former Blackstone Group LP dealmakers, is seeking to sell barge and terminal operator Tidewater Holdings Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. Tidewater could fetch a price around $500 million, said some of the people, who asked not to be identified because the sale … [Read more...]