Steel Plant News

Maryland Governor Wes Moore on Wednesday announced goals to more than quadruple the state's offshore wind capacity to 8.5 gigawatts - enough to power nearly three million homes - as part of an effort by the state to achieve 100% clean energy by 2035.Moore is working "to establish new lease areas and strengthen the offshore wind supply chain," as well as establish grants to support the effort, the governor's office said in a statement.Maryland is among a growing number of U.S. states to set plans to achieve entirely carbon-free energy in the coming years.

The Italian trade union USB filed a legal complaint against a plan by gas grid operator Snam to set up a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the Tuscan port of Piombino, it said in a press release on Friday.USB alleged Snam had committed serious "environmental crimes" while performing works to build the terminal.USB criticised in the statement the choice to set up the terminal in an area already polluted by an old steel plant, saying regasification processes would increase…

The region of Tuscany has asked for hundreds of millions of euros in investments in exchange for allowing a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the Tuscan port of Piombino, the Italian region said.In a statement on Monday, the region's administration said it had approved the new terminal, adding it was sending a list of requests to the national government.In June Italian state-controlled gas grid operator Snam bought a new floating storage and regasification unit (FRSU) in an effort to boost the country's energy security in the face of dwindling Russian gas supplies.Tuscany President E

Ukrainian forces destroyed a pontoon bridge and parts of Russian armored column as it tried to cross a river in the Donbas region, video footage released by Ukraine's military showed on Friday, and a Russian naval ship was set afire in the Black Sea.Russia has suffered setbacks on the battlefield as Ukraine drives its troops out of the region around the second-largest city of Kharkiv, the fastest advance since forcing the Kremlin's forces from Kyiv and the northeast over a month ago.Reuters journalists have confirmed Ukraine is now in control of territory stretching to the banks of the Siverskiy Donets River, around 40 km (25 miles)…

Thordon Bearings’ founder and polymer materials pioneer George A. (Sandy) Thomson has been awarded the global transportation sector’s most distinguished accolade, the Elmer A. Sperry Award 2019 for “Advancing the Art of Transportation”.Thomson joins a long list of Sperry Award recipients, which was established in 1955, including Donald Douglas, Ferdinand Porsche, Sir Geoffrey De Havilland, Christopher Cockerell, Leonard Hobbs, Perry Pratt, Josef Becker and Malcom McLean.“I am deeply honored and humbled to win this award…

Nouryon (formerly AkzoNobel Specialty Chemicals), Tata Steel and the Port of Amsterdam have joined together to study the feasibility of a large green hydrogen cluster in the Amsterdam region.According to a press release, the three parties consider green hydrogen as vital for reaching climate targets and building a more circular economy, for example by combining it with emissions from steel manufacture to make new products.As a first step, the parties will study the feasibility of a 100 megawatt water electrolysis facility to produce up to 15,000 tons of hydrogen per year as well as oxygen at Tata Steel’s IJmuiden site, near Amsterdam.

In the 29 years that towboat captain Joe Gray has worked flotillas of barges up and down the Ohio River, he has witnessed the decline at the heart of industrial America in what is known as the country's Rust Belt. Gray, 46, spends up to eight months a year doing 28-day stints on the barges carrying coal, corn and gravel between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Cairo, Illinois. Some 600 million tons of goods still flow each year along 25,000 miles of U.S. waterways. But he has seen a growing number of coal-fired power plants being dismantled, from Indiana to West Virginia, and says barges loaded with coal have dwindled in the face of cheaper natural gas and tougher environmental regulations.

The Ruia brothers-led Essar Shipping Limited (ESL) of India has added a Panamax vessel of 74,005 Deadweight Tonnage (DWT) to its fleet of vessels. With this new induction, Essar Shipping now has a fleet of 14 vessels that include VLCCs, Capesizes, Mini-capes, Panamax, Supramaxes and Handysize bulk carriers. Essar Shipping’s total DWT capacity now stands at 1.6 million and its average fleet age has fallen to 12 years from erstwhile 13.5 years, according to a company statement here on Tuesday. This 2000-built Panamax bulk carrier, rechristened 'MV Mahavir', will be deployed for transporting pellets, coal and limestone from Essar Steel's pellet plant in Paradip to the steel plant in Hazira, the statement said.

In ten years, India Shipping Summit held consistently in Mumbai, has sailed on a robust growth course despite the worldwide witnessing recessionary waves buffeting any endeavors to grow and gain. The reasons are not too far to see. From the very beginning it has been reputed to be a mega event of South East Asia. It sought consistently to bring government representatives and the leading lights of the industry on to a common platform thus acting as a beacon for the country’s maritime trade to move on the road to progress. It has continued to garner support from every section of the trade and industry each time the event has taken place. This year the three-day event held last week brought together a bigger gathering of shipping elites and the who’s who in the industry.

Gulf of Oman port bids to become transhipment centre for region; to more than double container capacity by 2017. Part of Oman's drive is to industrialise, diversify beyond oil. An advertisement by the highway outside Dubai's massive Jebel Ali Port tells firms they don't need to ship goods through the Strait of Hormuz, the traditional gateway to the Gulf. Instead they can have goods delivered to a port in Oman, outside the Gulf, and bring them into the region by road. "Why go through the Strait when you can go straight to the Gulf," the billboard reads, in a challenge to Jebel Ali, which has become one of the biggest ports in the world by handling many of the region's imports via Hormuz.

Global trader Trafigura AG is seeking potential investors to buy a stake in its oil terminal and storage facility in Corpus Christi, Texas, a once-quiet port that has become a bustling hub for shipping Eagle Ford shale crude. Trafigura, which like other big commodity merchants has in recent years moved to buy key infrastructure assets to support its trading business, bought Texas Dock & Rail in early 2012, just as Eagle Ford production was emerging as the next big U.S. shale play after North Dakota's Bakken. It has since built the facility, once home to a failed steel plant, into a major gateway for shipping rapidly growing U.S. oil production as far as Canada, with two deepwater tanker berths and an expanding suite of logistical assets.

More than 3,000 Chinese nationals have been evacuated from Vietnam, state news agency Xinhua said on Sunday, following deadly rioting that stemmed from an outpouring of rage over Chinese oil drilling in a disputed area of the South China Sea. The violence was triggered by China's positioning of a $1 billion oil rig in a part of the South China Sea claimed by Hanoi, a move described by the United States as provocative. It is the worst breakdown in ties between the two Communist neighbours since a short border war in 1979. The evacuation followed days of clashes between Vietnamese rioters and Chinese workers. Crowds of thousands massed as rioters turned against Chinese workers and Chinese-owned businesses…

As a thousand Vietnamese rioters stormed his factory on Tuesday night, smashing windows and ripping down Chinese-language signs, Taiwanese executive Henry Yeh hid with a colleague in the back of a fire truck, clutching the only weapon he could find: a golf club. "With that many people surrounding us, it was useless. I was afraid they would kill us," said Yeh, 27, who works for a Taiwan textile company at an industrial park in the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City. Yeh and his colleague eventually escaped unscathed. Others were not so fortunate. What started as heated but peaceful nationwide protests against Chinese oil-drilling in a patch of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam exploded into two days of rioting that left hundreds of Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean factories damaged or destroyed.

U.S. ports reported upticks in tonnage during the normal summer slowdown period. The Seaway’s year-to-date total cargo shipments from March 22 to August 31 were 22 million metric tons, up 3.5 percent from the same period last year. “In addition to the cargo shipments increase, vessel transits are up 9 percent from a year ago with the best performers in August being petroleum products, scrap metal and salt. This number shows that the marine trade, even in today’s tough economic times…

Japan's second-largest steelmaker, NKK Corp agreed with two other Japanese firms to consider future integration of their steel plant operations in a bid to combat severe competition. The alliance with heavy electric machinery maker Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd. and heavy machinery maker Hitachi Zosen Corp. was prompted partly by the emergence of giant overseas rivals, the three companies said. As the first step of the alliance, the companies will set up a joint venture in March, capitalized at $1.74 million, for sales of a variety of heavy machines used in the steel-making process to the domestic and overseas markets. The new company, which plans to launch operations in April, will be owned 34 percent by NKK, 33 percent by Sumitomo Heavy and 33 percent by Hitachi Zosen.

The Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT), which is continuing its supremacy over other ports in cargo handling, is attracting a large number of Panamax vessels after the first phase of deepening in Outer Harbour. The VPT, which was handling vessels with 195 metres LOA (length over all) and 10.21 m draft till recently, has attained the capability to handle Panamax vessels of 230 m LOA, 32.5 m beam and 0.7 m. draft with progress in completion of Inner Harbour deepening. The port is catering to Panamax vessels with 11 m draft. It will have night navigation for Suez max tankers calling at Outer Harbour shortly, once it is widened further. The VPT has undertaken work on augmenting its capacity by deepening the channels in the second half of 2005-06.

The Capesize bulk carrier Anangel Destiny called into Saldanha Bay, Cape Town on Thursday to hand police 155 kg of cocaine that crew had discovered during routine maintenance on a voyage from Brazil. "The vessel's crew were doing routine maintenance on July 23 -- they were changing the sea suction filters -- when they discovered the packages," the ship's chartering manager Colm Nolan, of London-based Agelef Shipping, said. He said that given the location of the packages, they had "undoubtedly been put in from under the hull", probably by scuba-divers. The ship had left Brazil with its 170,000 ton iron ore cargo on July 17. "The moment they discovered it, they reported it to the authorities," said Agelef Chief Financial Officer Dimitri Stylianou.

Posco Group, the world’s third-largest steel manufacturer, will build a hot-rolled steel plant in central Vietnam’s Khanh Hoa province. The factory, to come up in Dam Mon peninsula, will have an initial annual capacity of 4m tons which will later be doubled. Posco has tied up with local shipbuilding giant Vinashin to develop the project. Vinashin, known formally as the Vietnam Shipbuilding Corporation, will contribute 30 percent of the capital required for the project. The plant will be ready after 2010. competitiveness in the production and supply of steel-based products. Source: Dau Tu, Thanh Nien

According to reports, Malaysian conglomerate Lion Group is considering plans to build a $7b steel mill in Vietnam as part of its regional expansion. A Lion Group company has teamed up with Vietnam's state-owned Vinashin to conduct a feasibility study of the project, it said in a statement to the stock exchange late Tuesday. Once the feasibility study is completed and approvals are obtained, a consortium will be formed to undertake the steel plant project, said Lion Corp., the group's main investment holding company in Malaysia. The facility is earmarked for completion in the next 10 to 15 years, the statement said. Source: International Herald Tribune

Close on the heels of announcing its plans to invest in a steel plant in Vietnam, Essar group is now looking forward to investing in the oil and gas exploration sector in the country. According to sources, Essar Energy Holdings Ltd – the group oil and gas outfit – has recently participated in the ‘2nd international bidding round for open blocks in Song Hong Basin’, offshore northern Vietnam. The bid was submitted for one block on a standalone basis, though the name of the block was not given. Vietnam Oil & Gas Group, known as PetroVietnam, had launched the bidding round in June this year. The blocks are located at average water depths of 60-100 meters covering 50 square km area at 50 to 100 km distance from the shoreline.