Reserve Oil News

Potential energy shortages in the U.S. northeast this winter have led to arguments that the U.S. Jones Act should be waived. These arguments rarely, however, grapple with what exactly it takes to waive the Jones Act. This is not blameworthy because the Jones Act waiver standard has been a mess. For decades the standard for granting a waiver was interpreted in way as to make it all but meaningless, and now the standard is so strict that waivers are all but forbidden.Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act, 1920, the so called “Jones Act,” is a “if this, then that” kind of law.

Put in financial peril because of NATO bombing against Serbia which literally blocked its source of business, Danube shippers and port operators received good news when it was divulged that Romania's government decided to write off the debts owed to the state by Danube shippers and port operators. The debts included unpaid taxes and contributions to the state and social security budgets over April 1999-June 2000, as well as penalties, the cabinet said in a statement issued after a special meeting. Data put shippers' total debts at some 39 billion lei. Romanian shippers say they have lost some $150 million in trade since April 1999, when NATO destroyed bridges over the Danube in Serbia, on Romania's western border, blocking traffic on the river. The U.S.