Tag Archives: ports

Terminals in Ports of L.A., Long Beach move container chassis fee to September 1

Again the container chassis issue creates controversy.  Leasing companies created a ‘pool of pools’ in the LA/Long Beach area but are not paying port operators for services and storage performed on or by the port operators.  The $5 fee on a loaded chassis (whether the container is empty or not) is supposed to cover this work.

It’s another example of how hard it is to get a pool to work well.  Normal ways of compensating participants are not usually fair to all parties; nor do they usually act to keep the pool together.  But here the issue is simply that the pool is skimming profits by benefiting from free work by a non-participant; or we could look at the terminals as a dummy participant that contributes no chassis but pays anyway.

We have a talk on a related aspect at the IAME 2016 annual conference in Hamburg later this month.

LONG BEACH, Calif.–The West Coast MTO Agreement (WCMTOA) has extended the implementation date of a new tariff rule for chassis services by one month.

Source: Terminals in Ports of L.A., Long Beach move chassis rule to September 1 – Canadian Shipper

A taste of irony: LNG tanker transits new Panama Canal locks

LNG is an area in which we can expect the new bigger Panama Canal to make a great difference in trade patterns. The major source of US export LNG will be in the deep south, the US Gulf Coast. There are also major LNG processing and storage facilities in the Caribbean island nations.  Transit times to Asia and to South America will be substantially improved, making US LNG exports competitive from a transportation standpoint.  And it appears the canal is accomplishing that.

So why hasn’t the flow of tankers happened yet?  The Canal management expects it to happen soon.  But wait a minute!  Just as for container ships, it appears that the Gulf Coast tanker ports cannot handle the larger vessels. They need operational and infrastructure improvements to support the larger ships’ needs for berthing, loading, and unloading.

Isn’t it ironic?  All the angst over dredging East Coast ports for container ships and rigging terminals to unload big ships fast, and no one thought of the same issues for tankers? Is no one in shipping thinking about supply chains?

Here’s the nice story by Deepa Vijiyasingam of Platts.

Platts Source: First LNG tanker transits new Panama Canal locks; 54 vessels through: ACP – Shipping | Platts News Article & Story

Terminal partnerships may respond to larger container shipping alliances?

And why shouldn’t port terminals form alliances?  The rationale is the same as for liners: it might save capital expense for the ports and terminals when it isn’t being used.  And the problems are the same: how can we keep an alliance together for long enough for realized gains to  be seen by everyone, at lest enough so they won’t depart the alliances.   It’s a classic cooperative game scenario.  I don’t believe it’s been looked at yet.  One thing you can be sure of:  a pricing scheme will not guarantee stability of any alliance coalition.  There will need to be side payments, or a scheme based on some other algorithm than easily measured price.

I have a paper to be presented at IAME2016 in Hamburg on a similar problem with equipment pools for ports.

   The creation of larger container shipping alliances is proving a headache for terminals as the deal with growing volatility

Source: Could terminal partnerships answer the challenge of larger container shipping alliances? – The Loadstar