USTR port fees counterproductive: WSC
The World Shipping Council (WSC) said it has concerns about the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) proposed port fee system, branding the regime “counterproductive” and warning that it risks harming US consumers and businesses “without delivering meaningful progress toward revitalising the US maritime industry”.
USTR published its proposed fee structure ahead of the Easter holiday, a regime which would see Chinese-owned, -operated and -built ships calling US ports paying fees from October 2025 based on the vessel’s net tonnage and/or containers discharged, increasing annually. Further fees were also announced for car carriers, as well as a scheme to force some US LNG exports onto as-yet non-existent US-built LNG carriers towards the end of this decade.
Singapore strait robberies continue
The surge in boardings and robberies is showing no signs of abating in the area around the straits of Singapore and Malacca. The monitoring operation ReCAAP has been raising the concern and now reports two additional vessels were boarded on Sunday and Monday after a two-week lull.
The latest incidents include a feeder containership that MSC recently placed on a new route to serve the Asian region. ReCAAP lists a report of a boarding in the early morning hours on Sunday, April 20, aboard the MSC Tara III (33,232 dwt / 3,300 TEU). The vessel was underway when three perpetrators were spotted at about 0500.
Sea rescue society reports it evacuated injured crew
The Royal Dutch Sea Rescue Society reports it evacuated two injured crewmembers from a privately operated offshore standby safety vessel that had hit the base off an offshore wind turbine in the North Sea. There is no word on the condition of the two crewmembers who were taken to a hospital in the Netherlands while the media reports indicate a third crewmember also voluntarily went to the hospital after the vessel returned to port.
The call for the medical evacuation was issued at around 0700 on Sunday, April 20, with two rescue boats from the station in Egmond in the northern area of the Netherlands the first to respond.
World’s largest LCO2 carrier launches
The first large vessel designed to transport liquified carbon dioxide (LCO2) was launched in South Korea as the industry for the transport and storage of captured carbon begins to take shape. The vessels are being built for Greece’s Capital Maritime Group which in 2023 announced plans to expand into the developing market.
The launch took place at the HD Hyundai Mipo shipyard in Ulsan, South Korea. With a capacity to transport 22,000 cubic meters of liquified carbon dioxide, the vessels have about three times the capacity of the first LCO2 carriers. Norway’s Northern Lights project took delivery at the end of 2024 of two 7,500 cbm LCO2 carriers built in China and which are currently undergoing commissioning.
Technology combo captures carbon and pollutants
Two maritime emissions control companies have demonstrated a combination of their solutions in the Port of Long Beach, adding Seabound’s onboard carbon capture technology to Stax Engineering’s emissions capture and control barge.
The combined technologies serviced a Wallenius Wilhelmsen (WWL) ro-ro ship at berth in the port, capturing exhaust from its stack using a vacuum boom arm for processing onboard. Stax’s mobile emissions control unit removes 99 percent of particulate emissions and 95 percent of NOx, it claims, before the purified exhaust is passed to Seabound’s carbon capture unit, which isolates and stores up to 95 percent of carbon and 90 percent of sulphur before the exhaust stream is released to the atmosphere.
The demonstration of the combined technologies followed three trials which began in March 2025, servicing STAX customers including WWL and NYK. All results were independently verified by Yorke Engineering, an environmental consultancy, said Stax.
Trade heads into a gathering storm: WTO
A World Trade Organization (WTO) report highlights the uncertainty in markets and the gathering economic clouds that threaten to unleash a whirlwind on markets global container trades.
As the major economies battle it out with tariffs, least developed countries (LDCs) are set to benefit from the economic uncertainty, picking up trade to the US in agriculture and apparel that would ordinarily be fulfilled by Chinese exporters.
“Counterintuitively, the recent rise in tariffs and uncertainty is projected to have a positive impact on merchandise trade flows of LDCs in 2025, with export volume growth rising to 4.8 percent in the adjusted forecast from 3.5 percent in the [WTO’s] baseline forecast,” said the report.
In Q1 China’s foreign trade retained stable growth
In the first quarter of 2025, China’s total imports and exports increased 1.3 percent year-on-year; exports grew 6.9 percent to CNY6.13trn ($850.1bn), while imports declined 6 percent to CNY4.17trn.
The imports and exports of the equipment manufacturing sector were up 7.6 percent year-on-year in Q1, accounting for about half of the country’s total foreign trade. Vessel and offshore engineering equipment exports increased 10.8 percent, maintaining growth for the fourth consecutive year.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) maintained its position as China’s largest trading partner in Q1, with trade volume reaching CNY1.71trn, up 7.1 percent from one year earlier, accounting for 16.6 percent of the nation’s total trade value.
Uncertainties abound in worldwide LNG trades
Three months into the Trump administration, experts on energy are still grappling with what might happen going forward, in the face of US policy dictates, international politics, and uncertainties pervading in the broader energy markets. The fortunes of the LNG business, always at the intersection of economics and diplomatic considerations, has been the subject of attention, at a time that energy prices, generally, have continued a three-year slide from their early-2022 peaks at the outbreak of war in Ukraine.