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Shipping News – Floating Storage/Tanker Rates & Pirate Update
For years there has been a large supply of crude floating on big oil
tankers. A significant portion of this is not under contract and does
not have a specific delivery date. Typically these vessels head for Asia
or the Americas. They do it at slow speed. They wait for contact from
the owners that the crude has been sold and a delivery date has been
set. When that happens the ship picks up speed and heads to the intended
port.
It is my understanding from talking to some shippers that this is
happening in a very big way as I write. It makes perfect sense. If you
were China Inc. and worried this morning about the predictability of
supply, the first thing you would do would be to secure as much of the
floating crude that was out there. We saw this same pattern in the early
days of Egypt. Back then the rush was to bulk up on supplies of wheat.
Today it is crude.
Two consequences from this. First a minor one. The cost of chartering an
oil tanker has falling from a high of $200,000 per day to as low at
$20,000 of late. We are going straight up on this number. Transportation
is part of the cost we pay to import the 10mm barrels of oil a day we
consume. This increased cost will flow very quickly into the cost of
gas.
More importantly is that the cost of spot crude (not futures) is going
to skyrocket. It already has. Look at the price being paid for spot
crude at the Gulf of Mexico. It opened this morning at $112. There is a
$20 premium for physical crude versus WTI Should the current
uncertainties on supply continue (or worsen) $4 gas in the next few
months is a foregone conclusion.
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PIRATE ACTION
So the Somali pirates killed the four Americans on the sailing ship.
This appears to have been prompted as a result of some effort by US
forces to liberate the ship before it made land. As of now the report is
that all of the pirates were captured or killed.
This is a terrible result. I wrote about this on February 11th. I concluded that report with the following:
Military action is not far off.
The apparent failure of US Special Ops to save the Americans confirms my prior observation. The only solution is boots on the ground. Keep
in mind that the pirates are sitting on (at least) 2 million barrels of
crude. Enough to despoil a good chunk of the African coastline for a
very long time.
»
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Oil to $140 on any saudi unrest.........the world is screwed...
http://nakedempire.wordpress.com/
There is a big difference between drug dealers and pirates. A more apt comparison for Somali pirates are Indian "thugs" who practiced the art of "thuggee".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee
British solved the problem with a combination of "intelligence/infiltration", a special judical system, and ruthless punishment and gained the respect of common Indian people. "Thuggee" was harder to solve than piracy because "thugs" mingled easily with normal people and were masters of camouflage. A first step will be to create an international naval force in the region with the mandate to apply military law to captured pirates right there in the middle of ocean. Then the following steps from British trickbook can be adapted (from Wikipedia):
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The Thuggee cult was suppressed by the British rulers of India in the 1830s.[2] The arrival of the British and their development of a methodology to tackle crime meant the techniques of the Thugs had met their match. Suddenly, the mysterious disappearances were mysteries no longer and it became clear how even large caravans could be infiltrated by apparently small groups, that were in fact acting in concert. Once the techniques were known to all travellers, the element of surprise was gone and the attacks became botched, until the hunters became the hunted.
Civil servant William Henry Sleeman, superintendent, 'Thuggee and Dacoity Dept.' in 1835, and later its Commissioner in 1839.
Reasons for British success included:
The initiative of suppression was due largely to the efforts of the civil servant William Sleeman, who started an extensive campaign involving profiling and intelligence. A police organisation known as the 'Thuggee and Dacoity Department' was established within the Government of India, with William Sleeman appointed Superintendent of the department in 1835. Thousands of men were either put in prison, executed, or expelled from British India.[2] The campaign was heavily based on informants recruited from captured Thugs who were offered protection on the condition that they told everything that they knew. By the 1870s, the Thug cult was extinct, but it led to the promulgation of the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871.
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The campaign was heavily based on informants recruited from captured Thugs who were offered protection on the condition that they told everything that they knew.
By bribery and co-oping basically. Not necessarily through the threat of a long drop with a short stop.
All things being equal though, technology and newly developed processes of police work allowed that battle to be won. The 18th century versus a Somali pirate with a rocket with a LAW missle and AK-47 in tow would appear to have the same ability as super man.
While the training isn't remotely near that of a marine, Seal or even the galley cook, the Somali pirates do have one thing going for them. An endless supply of people dumb enough to jump on a boat, measure the risk and reward of the situation and execute a basic plan.
"See boat, get boat, sell ransom"
The technology either side uses is fairly indistiguishable from one another. I know there are lots of munane reports about advanced technology that militaries have at their disposal, but I put them in the same bucket as showcase cars at auto shows. They are for bars and stars to have something to talk about. Want to see technology done by a backyard engineer? Check this out.
http://www.neogentronyx.com/
He builds really interesting, functional 60 foot high mechanised attack robots from junk yard crap and v8 engines. Why does he do it? Because the industry of robotics is full of snotty morons that make shit like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55hOEw0Tx70
That's DoD funding behind that btw. That's the advanced technology tax payers are paying for with millions of dollars. How much did the functional 60 foot attack mech cost? Time and scrap yard rights which is around a grand.
What I am saying is the point of escalation and the optics of the problem is a little overblown. When an over reaction comes from a military strike point, I can only say this once. The pirates will respond with a higher degree of initative and focus, next time it won't simply be a hijacking and random, it'll be beheadings on youtube, opening the slush gates to the oil tanker and then setting the oil on fire. People will wonder "why did they do that." Repeat the cycle of retardation until eventually one pirate figures out how to make something from nothing, like the backyard engineer in Alaska did with his 60 foot attack mech.
Bribery and cooping the problem isn't a solution but I don't see how military objectives over a couple of million dollars in insurance money is anyone's problem except the insurance companies. The fact that the Marines assigned to the task of getting 4 people out of harms way fucked up baddly is really point. Up until that point there hadn't been any un-necessary killings during the hijackings.
What isn't being discussed is what happened.
Personally dropping a nuke on the coast and letting the world turn to glass would be my first option, but appearently that would be the genocide of people living in Somalia.
The Pet Man is rather cool. Imagine how stable/agile people would be with two joints below the hip. I guess this extra pivot point makes the thing work.
Sad thing is it's reversed engineered from the Honda Asimo from 15 years ago, abeit poorly. At least the Asimo can do things like cook, clean, walk up stairs, have a basic conversation, see, touch and do what it was intended to do when it was built. Act as a nurses aid to change diapers, take blood pressure, monitor vitals, answer calls, act as a hospital operator, feed residents, etc.
Japanese build things that will benefit Japan because of the obvious short handed labour problems. North America builds things in research divisions to keep grad students too stupid to get a job or build a business busy with idea work. Sad what north american engineering has come to, almost as bad as China sometimes. The Pet-man, I can almost smell that 2 HP generator sitting on top of it running the taxpayers that fund it through DoD around 1 million per semester for a pair of legs.
The pivot is a hack to keep the weight of the generator from crushing the legs, it acts like a shock absorber. In the human body we have a similar pivot. We call it a glutious maximus and coxa, our bum and hips. Acts the same way. Spreads the weight of our upper torso on our legs . The design flaw is when someone has too much weight on top and you end up with a pinched sciadic nerve adn you go to the chiro to crack the back.
In a robot, it just breaks and falls down.
Very enlightening! Thanks.
Robotics is less of a push into technology than it is art to replicate how life works and how to develop it to so it simply "works". Anything less is garbage. It is a point where science and art overlap, to completely offer the idea of robotics without art and understanding the function the robot is going to perform is pointless. The best form of North American robotics comes from the basement hackers and backyard engineers (I swear I would give them all iron rings if I could). Imagination first, then hammer the technology into the function. Some cool stuff coming out of people heads and being built from nothing out there.
I'm surprised that the engineer dreamers haven't been building like crazy in unemployment. Economic downturns usually are pivot points for economical design jumps in engineering historically. Haven't seen them yet though. Scanning the usual places like instructables.com and zero innovation other than recycling or repairing.
CPL, you also forgot to mention that drug runners have a 40,000% mark up in their goods.
Not sure. Near as I can figure a pirate starts with zero dollars in their pocket, 10-13 guys capture a boat and wait for a million dollars to show up in ransom a month or so later, each guy is making 35k a month.
Not a bad racket if you understand that their job is to really answer the phone, say everyone is okay and give back a boat after they get a briefcase full of money.
Ooh, kinda like Moody's...
You don't have to be facing starvation to be attracted to drug running or piracy. Whether you're selling coke at a college party or taking private yacht passengers hostage it all comes down to a bet that the potential reward outweighs the risks involved. Morality is a much softer and malleable deterrent to the extent that its a deterrent at all.
18th C. Atlantic piracy (which came after the privateer era) was ended by the relevant governmental authorities the same way all successful campaigns against pirates are won: by hunting them down and killing them and otherwise tilting the risk/reward far out of the pirates' favor.
Privateers and pirates...Hudson Bay company and the Dutch west indies company were never really open mouthed about who was pirate and who was profiteer even after the era. As shipping merchants I doubt that each country didn't keep privateers/pirates available to do the dirty work of their respective homeland at that time.
Most of what is written from a British angle is as much fairy tale and half truth as the privateer/pirate fairy tales told by the Dutch or Portugal or Spain. I wouldn't place much faith in the history of the era. Shit, even read history from a Jamacian historian's perspective and appearently piracy continued into 1910 with excellent results, and they weren't pirates, they are labeled are privateers.
Which of these statements is true, I am borrowing from Vonnegut on this so bare with me.
In 1492 Colombus sailed the ocean blue and discovered
a) The Americas.
b) The year sea pirates started their four hundred year sea raids on the millions of people living happy, independant, tax free lives with cheating, lying and killing.
See how that works?
Yeah, in college I sat around on couches with people who wore berets and rolled their own cigarettes too.
Nonetheless, by the 1720's or so Atlantic piracy ceased to be a serious threat to English and English colonial shipping and interests because the English and English colonial powers did what (from their perspective) needed to be done.
Which was bribe Spain and Holland. England while a power of colonization at the height of it was a force to be recognized, but like the current world power of the US. England also understood the use of bribes and the idea of a soft hand approach. The idea of England conquering the pirate scourge of the seas is as silly as believing in the Queen is next to God above all others in England because she is the head of the church of england.
Fairy tales and folklore, History is an interesting thing. Amazing no one has brought up the worlds most successful pirates and scourge of the seas. The Vikings. Somehow mentioning Vikings nowadays and comical representations of guys in crazy hats, furry vests and broad axes on boats pop up. However 1300 years ago, if a dragon boat rowed or sailed into harbour, the residents were pretty much up shit creek. Only time the residents weren't up shit creek is if they had some form of family on that boat.
Yet some how we accept it as cultural history and ignore the fact they were butchers and pirates.
//You were in Engineering? I knew a zillion guys with berets/ball caps and rolled their own because it was cheaper.
I think I'm comfortable maintaining my position that if you were an Atlantic coast pirate plying your trade between say, 1680 and 1720, your chances of being bought off by a government or interested party in a position to buy you off were pretty damn slim.
Cotton Mather alone must have personally hanged a score of captured pirates himself.
True, but most of the pirate trade had moved back into Malta after the "pirate/privateer" window. I'm not giving these guys super human powers, but piracy, like business moves. And each pirate/privateer venue shifted where there was "commerce" and their trade to be plied. All of Europe that was trading and shipping maintained their own privateers for at least 200 years after the fact.
There isn't much difference between the "pirate law" and the Merchant Marine code 400 years later for the reason they are one of the same history and lineage.
And yes Cotton Mather hung many Dutch, French and Spain privateers for the crown, he was also a huge fan of burning witches as would any goodly man of the cloth at the time. But so did the Spanish port authorities in Trinidad, mainly British, Dutch and if needed, French privateers. Well until the Crown rolled into town and bombed the hell out of it with the Dutch because a half nobel was killed. And that wasn't until close the 1800's.
Ching Shih is probably going to be your best example of a very successful pirate who had near-superhuman powers (or at least overcame tremendous odds), was also bought off by authorities and lived a long life.
I haven't got to my Chinese history section book stack yet other than the proxy associations. Now I'm looking forward to it, just have to finish feudal India first.
Obviously there are a million other things that are interesting in Asian history but my favorite is always how historical douche bags manage to escape with a handful of cuts and bruises. I made postits on the box to check it out.
+1000
Can't believe the US Ind/Military complex hasn't created room through lobbying for them to supply and install pirate deterent missile systems.
All centrally monitored and managed by a room full of the world's best RPG gamers sitting in the Raytheon basement. Also, able to be run and managed with a laptop from the bulletproof safety of the bridge. See boat full of wanna be ganstas, lock on target, blow fuck to sky. Staff could train on Halo or Medal of Honour in the vast amouints of spare time they have sailing the ocean blue in case the internet went down.
And should some cheeky pirate sea dog actually make it aboard the deterent system is rendered useless electronically allowing the special ops to stroll as usual.
These ships are worth a fortune, surely they are going to get laws changed especially if crude keeps the rocket under it we are seeing now.
1000 lashings that you actually bothered to type that
Apologies... now imagine somebody trying that joke in London, now that was funny to see..
Only 208 days until "International Talk Like A Pirate Day 2011".
I can't wait. The ZH threads alone will be worth the pain.
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html
Oh what wonderful bawdy sea shanties I have to share!!!!
http://www.gearfuse.com/the-keyboard-for-pirates/
The beatings will continue until morale improves! Arrrr!
argv! argc!
A software pirate I be!
abort();