Ruth Pitchford News

Shipping tycoons Sohmen Pao, Fredriksen battle over DHT; Sohmen Pao's BW Group becomes top DHT owner with 33.5 percent to surpass Frontline as DHT's top shareholder. The move likely ends Frontline's ambitions to take over DHT, as DHT had twice rejected Frontline's advances. Privately-owned shipping firm BW Group became the top shareholder in tanker firm DHT Holdings on Thursday, in a surprise move that will probably end Frontline's ambitions to take full control of DHT. BW Group…

Borr Drilling, founded by former executives of financially troubled Seadrill, has snapped up Transocean's fleet of shallow-water drilling rigs for $1.35 billion. The rig market deal is Borr's biggest since it was set up last year by Tor Olav Troeim and other executives who had left Seadrill, once the jewel in the crown of Norwegian-born shipping tycoon John Fredriksen but now battling with $14 billion in debt and liabilities. After years at Fredriksen's side, Troeim split with him in 2014. Since then Troeim has re-established himself as an independent player in the global shipping market with a high profile and a reputation for successful capital raising. Transocean, executives at Borr Drilling and Troeim were not immediately available for comment.

Oil prices will not reach "levels desired" by Iraq before the end of 2018 or 2019, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday in Baghdad.   "Demand has increased and this has helped raise the prices but it won't return to the level of 2013" when crude exceeded $100 a barrel, he told a news conference.   "Oil will not reach a desired level before 2018 or 2019," he added, without indicating Iraq's desired price.   Iraq is OPEC's second-largest crude producer, after Saudi Arabia. (Reporting Saif Hameed; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

Oil exports from Iraq's southern ports in the first nine days of January have held steady at December's record high, according to loading data and an industry source, despite the start of an OPEC agreement to cut production. Shipments so far this month have averaged above 3.50 million barrels per day (bpd), according to the loading data tracked by Reuters and by the industry source. In all of December, Iraq's southern exports reached a record high of 3.51 million bpd, Iraq's oil ministry said on Monday. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries started implementing an agreement to cut production on Jan. 1. Iraq has said it will cut production by 200,000 bpd as part of the deal.

Novatek, Russia's second biggest gas producer, said on Friday it had signed agreements with Japan's Mitsui & Co, Mitsubishi Corp and Marubeni Corp to cooperate in liquefied natural gas and other energy sectors. Japan, lacking fuel resources, is the world's largest importer of the gas while Russia wants to boost its global LNG market share, currently less than 5 percent. Novatek's Chief Executive Leonid Mikhelson said the agreements focused on potential gas production, gas liquefaction and liquefied natural gas transport. Novatek is interested in LNG trading with the three Japanese trading companies, he said. Marubeni said in a statement that it would explore opportunities to develop upstream and midstream areas for the Arctic LNG-2 project which Novatek is newly implementing…

The worst is over for the dry bulk shipping sector, after years when too many ships chased too little cargo, yet the extent of the lost business means a full recovery is still some way off, leading ship owners said on Wednesday. Dry bulk shipping, which transports commodities including coal, iron ore and grain, has been among the worst performing shipping segments in recent years, partly due to worries over the health of top industrial goods importer China. Some companies have…

Royal Dutch Shell has resumed crude exports from the Forcados terminal in Nigeria's restive Niger Delta following repairs after a militant attack, the Nigerian presidency said on Tuesday.   "The Shell Director, Mr. Andrew Brown, informed the President of the resumption of oil exportation through the Forcados terminal following its restoration," the presidency said after a meeting between Brown and President Muhammadu Buhari.   (Reporting by Felix Onuah; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

The United States will ship its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargo through an expanded Panama Canal next week. The waterway shaves distances between export plants dotted along the Gulf of Mexico and Asia to 9,000 miles from 16,000, allowing U.S. producers to better compete in one of the world's biggest gas consuming markets. The size of most LNG tankers had previously prevented them from squeezing through, forcing them to sail around South America instead. Royal Dutch Shell's Maran Gas Apollonia tanker loaded up at Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass LNG export plant in Louisiana and will arrive at the Panama Canal on July 25, according to Kpler LNG, a shipping analysis firm. Shipping data shows the vessel to be heading in the direction of Panama.

The dry bulk shipping industry may not emerge from a protracted downturn for another two years and some smaller firms will be squeezed out, the chairman of France's Louis Dreyfus Armateurs said on Tuesday. The dry bulk sector that transports commodities like coal and iron ore has suffered from oversupply of vessels and faltering global industrial demand, pushing freight rates to a record low this year. Some ship operators had taken heart from signs of a pick-up this year in the Chinese steel sector, but the dry bulk industry needs to be prudent given the overcapacity to be cleared, Philippe Louis-Dreyfus told Reuters. "I don't see the end of the tunnel for another 18 months to two years," he said on the sidelines of a shipping conference.

The European Central Bank has urged German state-owned lender Bremer Landesbank to shore up its capital resources against non-performing loans in shipping, three sources familiar with the matter said. Bremer (BLB) needs another 700 million euros ($800 million) in equity, weekly magazine Focus reported earlier on Saturday, citing talks between the city-state's finance chief and parliamentary leaders. "There are close discussions with the ECB," one of the sources told Reuters. Strengthening BLB's capital is a "matter of intense talks," a second source said. Germany was one of the world's main centres of global ship finance before the 2008 financial crisis, and the five German banks with the closest links to the shipping industry still have around 80 billion euros on loan to the sector.

A cyclone battered coastal Bangladesh on Saturday, killing at least 21 people and injuring many more, but has now weakened into a depression that the weather office said could still bring brief periods of violent wind or rain. Authorities in low-lying Bangladesh have moved about 500,000 people into 3,500 shelters, the disaster minister said. Cyclone Roanu has killed people in house collapses, landslides and a storm surge that broke embankments at two places in the Chittagong port city in the southeast. "We've shifted most of the people who are vulnerable," said Disaster Management and Relief Minister Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya, adding that people were working "all-out" to contain and tackle the damage.

France's CMA CGM, the world's third-largest container shipping firm, reported a first-quarter net loss on Friday and targeted $1 billion in cost cuts to keep operating margins positive during the current market downturn. Weak freight rates in the past year have left many lines operating at a loss. The Marseille-based company is in the process of acquiring Singapore's Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) for $2.4 billion in its biggest-ever deal, and last month announced a global vessel-sharing alliance with three Asian lines.

Two Pakistani coast guards were killed on Saturday when a bomb exploded under their vehicle, police officials said, in a town in the southwest which has been hit hard by years of separatist violence. The blast, which also injured three coast guards, completely destroyed the vehicle during a patrol on the outskirts of Jewani town in Baluchistan province, the police officials said. No one has claimed responsibility for the explosion. Jewani lies in Gwadar district, whose port is at one end of the proposed $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor stretching from the Arabian sea to China's Xinjiang region. Separatist groups in Baluchistan…

About 10 countries, including Egypt, are interested in buying two French helicopter carriers whose planned sale to Russia has been cancelled due to the Ukraine crisis, a source familiar with the situation said. A second source, a French diplomatic source, said that other countries interested include Brazil, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Canada, which could be the most suitable candidate for the ships because they were designed for cold waters. France, whose navy already operates three of the Mistral helicopter carrier warships, has no use for the two ships and will have to pay Russia nearly 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) for cancelling the contract. The first source also said that Egypt is negotiating the possible exercise of its option to buy two Gowind corvettes.

China's eastern coast took less of a battering than feared after Super Typhoon Chan-hom changed course and lost much of its strength shortly after making landfall near Shanghai late on Saturday. Chan-hom, which Chinese government meteorologists feared would be the powerful typhoon to hit China in decades, packed winds of 162 kph (101 mph) as it landed on the coast of Zhejiang Province but soon veered back to sea and toward the Korean peninsula. Meteorological agencies in China, South Korea and Japan downgraded Chan-hom to a tropical storm on Sunday, warning it would continue to lash surrounding coastal areas with heavy rainfall and gales as it moved across the Yellow Sea. No casualties had been reported by midday Sunday, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Oil-market watchers are struggling to reconcile the large estimated oversupply in the market with the much smaller buildup of reported inventories and narrowing contango in futures prices. Some blame the barrel counters who compile official statistics on supply, demand and stocks. But the truth is that information on the world oil market is incomplete and it is easy for hundreds of millions of barrels of oil to disappear from the supply chain without being counted. According to the three main statistical agencies, the global market has been oversupplied by between 1.5 million and 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) since the start of the year. Stockpiles should have increased by between 200 million and 350 million barrels, according to the International Energy Agency, OPEC and the U.S.

A migrant boat pushed back to sea by Southeast Asian nations over the weekend has not been heard from for two days, raising concerns about what has happened to the 300 people on board, rights groups said on Monday. The boat was pushed backwards and forward between Malaysian and Thai waters last week in what the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has described as "maritime ping-pong". It is one of many vessels adrift in the Andaman Sea after human traffickers jumped ship when a crackdown by Thailand's junta made it difficult for the criminals that prey on Bangladeshis and stateless Rohingya from western Myanmar to land on Thai shores.

Maersk Line lost market share in container shipping in the first quarter, disappointing analysts who said A.P. Moller-Maersk's  forecast-beating results on Wednesday had been helped by one-offs. While the world's largest container shipping business reported a jump in net profit to $714 million from $454 million, due largely to lower bunker fuel prices, analysts noted the Danish conglomerate failed to announce divestments or investor perks such as share buybacks and additional dividends, as it had in recent quarters.

Greece's government is considering selling stakes in its two largest ports as a concession to reach an agreement with its lenders and unlock bailout funds, a government official said on Wednesday. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's new leftist government had sought to cancel significant terms of Athens' bailout programme, calling it a "crime" to sell off strategic national assets. But hard-pressed for cash and with its euro zone partners and the International Monetary Fund demanding policy concessions before they agree to release remaining bailout aid, the government has softened its stance. "The negotiating team wants a deal with lenders and we are willing to sell Piraeus and Thessaloniki ports, 51 percent stakes," a government official told reporters.

Italian officials boarded a cargo ship carrying hundreds of migrants on Tuesday after it left Greek waters and headed towards the coast of southern Italy, the navy said. Three coast guard officers were landed from a helicopter to assess whether the Moldovan-flagged Blue Sky M was able to navigate safely. The vessel, which the navy estimates is carrying around 600 migrants, was spotted close to the coast of Corfu earlier in the day after authorities got an alarm call about a potential incident on board. Greek state television said the alarm had been raised because armed men were on board, but there was no confirmation from the defence or shipping ministries.

Australia's defence minister has said he would not trust state-owned Australian Submarine Corp (ASC) "to build a canoe", fuelling expectations that most work in a A$40 billion ($34 billion) program will go offshore. Reuters reported in September that Australia was leaning towards buying as many as 12 off-the-shelf stealth submarines from Japan. Responding to questions in the Australian Senate on Tuesday, David Johnston highlighted cost over-runs on other projects and a lack of experience in submarine design at ASC. "You wonder why I am worried about ASC and what they are delivering to the Australian taxpayer. Do you wonder why I wouldn't trust them to build a canoe?" Johnston told lawmakers. "Let's get real here ...

Man-made greenhouse gas emissions have become the dominant cause of melting in glaciers from the Alps to the Andes that is raising world sea levels, a study said on Thursday. Human emissions accounted for an estimated 69 percent of loss of ice from glaciers from 1991-2010, overtaking natural climate variations that had been the main driver of a retreat since the mid-19th century, researchers wrote in the journal Science. Until now, scientists have struggled to quantify the impact of human behaviour on glaciers because the frozen rivers of ice take decades…

China wants to invest in Greek airports and railways as well as the busiest port, officials said on Friday, as the country where the euro debt crisis began seeks a role as China's gateway into Europe. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is on a three-day trip to Greece to boost economic ties between the nations, who have drawn closer since China's Cosco Paficic won a 35-year concession in 2009 to upgrade and run two cargo piers at the Piraeus port. Greece, which relies on bailout loans from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund…