Caroline Stauffer News

Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday as an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm, forcing those who did not flee to brace themselves for the toughest test yet of the billions of dollars spent on levee upgrades following Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago.Ida came ashore near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, at 11:55 a.m. CDT (16:55 GMT), the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. Hurricane-strength winds extended 50 miles (80 km) out from Ida's eye, forcing New Orleans to suspend…

Harvesting delays in Brazil, the world’s top soybean producer, are prompting buyers led by China to rely on rival exporter the United States for longer than usual in 2021, according to government data and traders.Sustained demand for U.S. soybeans is accelerating an historic drawdown of U.S. supplies of the oilseed and could further drive up soybean prices at a time of rising food inflation as countries hoard staples during the pandemic.Concerns over tight global soybean supplies after China dramatically increased purchases in recent months ignited a 4.5% U.S.

Two of the world's biggest fertilizer producers, CF Industries Holdings Inc and Yara International Asa, are seeking to cash in on the green energy transition by reconfiguring ammonia plants in the United States and Norway to produce clean energy to power ships.The consumption of oil for transportation is one of the top contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, and fertilizer producers join a growing list of companies adjusting their business models…

The devastating explosion in Beirut should be a wake-up call for countries on the dangers of ammonium nitrate, which caused the blast, experts say.Lebanese authorities said 2,750 tonnes of the industrial chemical had been stored for six years at Beirut port without safety measures. That stockpile exploded on Tuesday, killing more than 150 people, injuring thousands and leaving about a quarter of a million people homeless.Commonly used in fertilizers and as an industrial explosive…

Some 93 cargo ships were waiting to load soy and corn from Argentina's main exporting hub of Rosario on Friday, more than a week into a truck owners strike, the spokesman for an industry group said. That was up from just over 60 on Thursday, said Andres Alcarez, spokesman for export company chamber CIARA-CEC. Truck owners went on strike last week in a bid to force the adoption of mandatory minimum grains hauling rates. The work stoppage also slowed the unloading of beans at soyoil and meal manufacturing sites. Argentina is the world's top exporter of soybeans and soymeal and the No.

Port workers in Greater Rosario, from where 80 percent of Argentina's grains is shipped, suspended plans for a 24-hour strike on Thursday after a truck driver ran over and killed a protester, a union leader said. The driver drove through a line of protesters and had been drinking alcohol, according to local television reports. The workers had started a strike at midnight to protest recent layoffs and demand higher salaries in a range of professions related to port operations. "We are going to suspend the day of fighting that we had planned for today," Edgardo Quiroga, a delegate for the CGT union in San Lorenzo, north of Rosario, said in an interview with local radio.

The entrance to Brazil's largest  reopened on Thursday, after rough seas prevented ships from entering or leaving for more than 30 hours during peak soy export season.   Around 20 ships were delayed entering or leaving the channel, port authority Codesp said.   Santos is the world's largest sugar exporting port and Brazil's top exporter of soybeans. (Reporting by Gustavo Bonato; Writing by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Meredith Mazzilli)

Maersk Line, the world's largest container ship operator, said on Wednesday it was consolidating operations in Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay to cut costs amid falling freight rates. Maersk Line, part of Denmark's Maersk Group, said shipping volumes should not be affected by its decision to put operations in four different countries under one director. "We will maintain capacity and offer a more consistent frequency," Antonio Dominguez, the new director of operations for the east coast of South America, told Reuters. Maersk Line expects demand for container shipping to remain weak in 2016, with growth of 1 percent to 3 percent, due to ample offer. Latin America accounted for around 12 percent of Maersk Line's global volumes in 2015.

Logistics firm Hidrovias do Brasil plans to start exporting grains from a new terminal with up to 6.5 million tonnes annual capacity in the Brazilian Amazon in July, serving international grain merchants, CEO Bruno Serapião said.   Noble Agri and Holland's Nidera, both controlled by Chinese food giant COFCO, as well as Multigrain, a Brazilian subsidiary of Japan's Mitsui, signed long-term contracts to use the terminal on the Tapajos river in Para state, he said in an interview.     (Reporting by Gustavo Bonato; Writing by Caroline Stauffer)

Up to a dozen containers carrying chemicals caught fire at a terminal at Brazil's largest port of Santos on Thursday, restricting ship movement, representatives of the port authority Codesp said. The fire at the container terminal operated by logistics company Localfrio in Guaruja, on the eastern side of Santos, started around 3 p.m. Brasilia time (1700 GMT) and continued into the evening, sending plumes of smoke across the shipping channel at the commodity exporting port. The port authority said in a statement it had stopped ships from docking at a terminal operated by Santos Brasil next to Localfrio's Alfandegado terminal because of smoke, but otherwise the port was operating normally. Santos Brasil also said its operations were stopped indefinitely.

Brazilian steelmaker Cia Siderúrgica Nacional has received 10 offers for its Sepetiba Tecon container terminal in Rio de Janeiro's Itaguai port, newspaper Valor Economico reported on Friday. Singapore's PSA International, Chile's SAAM, Wilson Sons and LOGZ, among others, have made non-binding offers, Valor reported without citing its sources. The terminal is valued at 1.2 billion reais ($296 million) to 1.5 billion reais, it said. CSN did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reporting by Caroline Stauffer

Brazilian prosecutors on Thursday charged 12 people with a bribery scheme involving Dutch firm SBM Offshore NV, the world's top leaser of oil production ships, and state oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA . Police said they had four arrest orders as part of the scheme, dubbed "Operation Black Blood," though two of them involved suspects already in jail in the southern city of Curitiba, the epicenter of a broader investigation into price fixing and bribery on Petrobras contracts with engineering firms. Former Petrobras executives Pedro Barusco, Jorge Zelada and Renato Duque were charged with corruption along with former SBM sales agents Julio Faerman and Luis Eduardo Campos Barbosa da Silva, according to a statement from federal prosecutors.

Brazil canceled an auction to lease a port terminal area in the northern state of Para due to lack of interest but will auction three other areas in its largest port of Santos on Wednesday, a spokesman for the port secretariat said on Tuesday. The government, facing its worst recession in 25 years, is counting on private investment to upgrade its strained port infrastructure as exports of soybeans, sugar, coffee and beef soar due to Brazil's weakening currency. Fewer terminals on auction mean fewer potential funds for President Dilma Rousseff's cash-strapped government. The three areas in Santos, in the Southeast, will be offered at an auction in Sao Paulo starting at 9 a.m. (11 GMT) on Wednesday.

A ship carrying corn was scheduled to leave Brazil for the United States on Monday, three shipping agents said, as a strong dollar and plentiful South American supply makes importing corn attractive to U.S. buyers. The ship owned by Bunge Ltd, carrying 54,000 tonnes of corn, was scheduled to depart Itacoatiara Port on the Amazon river, data from Williams Shipping agents and Brazil-based Cargonave showed. A third source, who declined to be named, said the cargo was bound for the port of Wilmington, in North Carolina. Bunge did not respond to a request for comment. The sale reflects the increasing competitiveness of grains from Brazil, which has drastically increased output over the past decade and more recently has improved shipping logistics. Brazil, the world's No.

Thousands of cattle owned by beef producer Minerva SA are thought to have died when a boat leaving a port in northern Brazil overturned, the company and Williams Shipping Agents said on Tuesday. Minerva said in a securities filing that a ship transporting its cattle had tipped over after departing from the Vila do Conde port in Barcarena. There were no human victims, it said. Local news site G1 showed images of some cattle escaping from the side of the ship and swimming at the water's surface while most remained trapped. Williams Shipping Agents said the ship was carrying 5,000 cows, though a Minerva representative could not confirm the number. Minerva said in the filing that once the cattle left the dock they became the responsibility of the shipping firm, which it did not name.

A Brazilian judge sentenced Nestor Cervero, former international chief of state-run oil firm Petrobras, to just over 12 years in prison on Monday for corruption and money laundering related to a bribe allegedly paid to the speaker of Brazil's lower house of Congress. Cervero and two other defendants are accused of organizing bribes from Korean shipbuilder Samsung Heavy Industries in exchange for two drillship contracts, the Petrobras 10000, which was leased jointly by Petrobras and Mitsui in 2006, and the Vitoria 10000, hired by Petrobras in 2007.

Brazilian prosecutors plan to file criminal charges stemming from the lease of an Ensco Plc offshore oil-drilling ship to Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras "in due course," they said. The plan to prosecute over the Ensco-Petrobras charter was mentioned in a Thursday statement presenting corruption charges stemming from the 2009 lease of another drillship, Vantage Drilling's Titanium Explorer Rig. In the Vantage case, prosecutors formally charged six people, including Petrobras' former international-unit chief Jorge Zelada. Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras, chartered the DS-5 in 2008, when it was owned by Pride International, a company London-based Ensco purchased in 2011.

Two soybean cargoes have recently departed from a new terminal in northeast Brazil operated by VLI and local trader Multigrain, the latest option in the region as exporters look for alternatives to Brazil's overcrowded southern ports. A third ship carrying 27,800 tonnes of soy contracted by Multigrain is anchored in the Barra dos Coqueiros terminal in Sergipe state, according to shipping agencies and Thomson Reuters data. The first known soy terminal in Sergipe will export just 150,000 tonnes of soy per year, but it is part of a broader trend to increase capacity and cut costs for exporters in Brazil by developing new shipping routes closer to the Panama Canal. International giants like Glencore, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge Ltd.

A Brazilian judge sentenced a former international director at state-run oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA to five years in prison for money laundering on Tuesday, the second company executive convicted in an ongoing corruption probe. Federal Judge Sergio Moro said there was ample evidence to support charges by prosecutors that the former director, Nestor Cervero, used bribe money stolen from the company to buy a luxury apartment in Rio de Janeiro. Cervero was fired from Petrobras, as the company is known, in 2014 and arrested in January as he stepped off a plane from Europe. He is also suspected of receiving bribes in exchange for awarding drilling ship contracts.

Access to Brazil's largest port, Santos, was fully restored for cargo and passenger vehicles on Monday after one entrance had been partially blocked for a week due to a fire at a nearby fuel-tank facility, highway operator Ecovias said. Authorities had blocked the entrance due to its proximity to the fire at the fuel-tank facility operated by Ultracargo, a unit of Brazilian chemical and fuel-distribution company Grupo Ultra. An entrance on the opposite side of the port's shipping channel, in Guaruja, was not affected.

Truck access to Brazil's main port of Santos will increase over the weekend as work to control a week-old fire at a neighboring fuel tank facility winds down, the local mayor's office said. The fire was mostly extinguished by Friday morning, with fire fighters working to cool the tanks and snuff out any flames still forming in the released gas. It should be completely burned out by Saturday, the mayor's office said. Authorities blocked an entrance to the port for cargo trucks near the Ultracargo facility for a fifth day on Friday, but trucks have been able to access the Santos side of the port at night. The other side, in Guaruja, has not been affected.

Trucks will be able to access a blocked entrance at Santos, Brazil's largest port, at night while firefighters finish extinguishing a blaze at a nearby fuel-storage facility, city and port authorities said. The more flexible rules will provide some relief for grain exports that have slowed since Monday, when authorities restricted truck access to terminals on one side of the port while flames are extinguished. The firefighters' office in Sao Paulo state said via Twitter that one of six fuel tanks at the facility operated by Ultracargo, a unit of Brazilian chemical and fuel-distribution company Grupo Ultra, was still on fire. Highway police are escorting truck convoys past the blocked entrances, and 750 passed through in a convey on Tuesday.

Trucks delivering grains and other goods to Brazil's largest port of Santos will be restricted through at least Wednesday, the port authority said on Tuesday, as a nearby fuel-storage facility burned for a sixth day. Three confirmed days of restricted arrivals will likely slow exports from the port responsible for moving one third of Brazil's soybeans, two sources with operations at the port told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Brazil, the world's No. 2 soybean producer, is finalizing the harvest of a record crop. Trucks heading to the right side of the port through the city of Santos on the Anchieta Highway were prevented from entering from midnight (0400 GMT) on Monday.