Seaborne Transportation Research Articles

Iron ore and steel production trends and material flows in the world: Is this really sustainable?

Material flow analysis is an analysis of the flow of a material into and out of a particular region. The flow analysis also includes estimation of energy expended and of environmental emissions at each stage of the material life cycle, i.e. from extraction, processing, consumption and recycling to disposal. This analysis informs resource policy, energy planning, environmental and waste management. This paper reports on a historical material flow analysis of the world iron ore and steel industry in which the material flow of iron ore and of crude steel products are quantified for the period from 1950 to 2005. On the basis of this analysis, the future production of iron and steel for the world is estimated. The historical analysis shows that the world iron ore production increased from 274 million tons (Mt) in 1950 to 1554 Mt in 2005, whereas the steel production increased from 207 to 1259 Mt. In addition, it is found that at the current level of production the world's identified iron ore reserves containing 230 billion tons of iron would last for nearly 50 years. Global CO 2 emissions from steel production from the different manufacturing routes are estimated to be 3169 Mt from approximately 1781 Mt of steel production by 2020, whereas the specific energy consumption is estimated to be 14.43 GJ/tcs. The analysis of historical production trends of iron ore and crude steel for the major iron ore and steel producing countries indicates that, incidentally, the major iron ore producing countries are not the major steel producing countries and vice-versa. For example, in 2005, Brazil's iron ore production was 322 Mt whereas its steel production was approximately 10% of its iron ore production. For the same period, Japan's steel production was 124 Mt though; it had no domestic iron ore production. The world flows of iron ore and steel clearly indicate that the weak end of the iron and steel industry is the time, cost and environmental emissions associated with the sea borne transport of materials. Further, a substance flow model for the year 2006 indicating the net flows of iron ore, crude and finished steel products across the continents demonstrates that these flows of materials is not environmentally sustainable, and the iron and steel sector could do a lot to contribute to sustainable development.

Maritime Transport and Trade: The Impact of European Transport Policy: An Overview of Maritime Freight Transport Patterns

In order to unblock major transport routes and to ensure sustainable mobility, the changing of freight road to rail or maritime transport is an European Union objective. The increasing seaborne transport, the growing process of containerization and building an infrastructure for regular maritime lines and increasing Short Sea Shipping draws a scene with maritime sector of companies of major size, as a result, in many occasions, of mergers and acquisitions. These dynamics seems to draw a new stage, with more concentrated markets. In this paper we intend to make an approach to the levels of concentration of maritime transport in Europe, trying to find a possible connection between new market structure in the maritime transport sector and the new economic situation promoted by European Transport Policy rules.

Prospects for renewable energy for seaborne transportation—Taiwan example

This paper highlights the need for the development of a renewable infrastructure for marine transportation. The result of a survey performed in this study serves as information for public policy makers on the degree to which policy can or should attempt to provide guidelines and incentives in shaping the attitude or behaviors of the industry towards the application. There is a high degree of preference for renewable over fossil as energy source for both ship power and household electricity. While solar is the most favorable energy type for household electricity, hydrogen combustion (80%) is the most supported alternative for powering commercial shipping. The fuel cell (FC) is the next highly favored (64%) alternative energy that is applied onboard ship as perceived by the Taiwanese maritime industry. The result also indicates that the preference of a specific energy type onboard ship is also based upon other factors such as feasibility rather than the respondents’ personal preference.

Diocletian's Prices Edict: the prices of seaborne transport and the average duration of maritime travel

Diocletian's Prices Edict: the prices of seaborne transport and the average duration of maritime travel

Energy economics and trade for the European Union: The role of seaborne transport

Energy is a driving force of economic development in the modern world, while as a commodity group it holds the greatest share of the world seaborne trade. Oil, natural gas and coal are the three most important sources of energy for the European Union which, as a bloc, represents 17% of the total energy consumption. The aim of the present paper is to explore the economics and trade issues of these three major energy commodities and investigate the role of the maritime transport in the energy trade within the context of the EU-25. A number of factors are considered in order to discuss contemporary opportunities and challenges that arise in this context for the shipping business. The examination reveals the critical dependence of EU-25 energy supply on seaborne trade and the considerable reliance of the maritime transport on such commodities for the generation of shipping business within the realms of the EU-25. Among the parameters regarded as conducive to the demand of shipping services in the context of the EU energy trade are the energy demand factor, the import dependency factor, the cost effective production element, and seaborne trade related parameters while consideration is also given to environmental issues.

外航貨物船の運航実績値に基づくLCAのための海上輸送データ：単位輸送量当たり燃料消費量と大気環境負荷ガス排出量

Data for LCI analysis associated with seaborne transportation are very limited although a great quantity of natural and energy resources are imported and various kinds of manufactured products are exported by oceangoing cargo-ships in Japan. Therefore based on logbooks of typical oceangoing cargo-ships, fuel oil consumptions and gaseous exhaust emissions per unit transportation were studied. The studied ships comprise of eight ships, which are categorized in five types of ships, namely, two oil tankers, two bulk carriers, two container ships with different sizes, a pure car carrier and an LNG carrier. Averaged fuel oil consumptions per unit transportation were compared and evaluated with the ones derived from nominal data. Averaged data of navigation were provided such as distances, service speeds, cargo loading factors, and averaged load factors of main engines, diesel generators and auxiliary boilers. The gaseous exhaust emissions per unit transportation derived from the averaged fuel oil consumption include carbon dioxide, sulfur oxides and nitride oxides.

How Russia Is Not Ruled: Reflections on Russian Political Development

The state remains as important to Russia's prospects as ever. This is so not only because, as in any society, an effectively functioning state administration is necessary to the proper functioning of a complex economy and legal system, but also because, in Russian circumstances, factors of economic geography tend to increase costs of production compared to the rest of the world. These mutually reinforcing factors include: the extreme severity of the climate, the immense distances to be covered, the dislocation between (European) population centers and (Siberian) natural resource centers, and the inevitable predominance of relatively costly land transportation over sea-borne transportation. As a result, it is questionable whether Russia can exist as a world civilization under predominantly liberal economic circumstances: in a unified liberal global capital market, large-scale private direct capital investment will not be directed to massive, outdoor infrastructure projects typical of state investment in the Soviet period.

Experimental Study on Self-preservation Property of Gas Hydrate for Natural Gas Sea-borne Transport

Gas hydrate is generally formed at comparatively high pressure or low temperature. But, in recent years, some researchers reported that CH4 hydrate remains meta-stable even under some conditions outside its stability region. If the meta-stable property of gas hydrate can be utilized economically, it is possible to store and transport stranded natural gas at higher temperature, compared to conventional LNG method.Although the‘self-preservation’property of gas hydrate has been gradually clarified, its mechanism has been still poorly understood. There is a disparity among the obtained experimental data, and the reason for the data gap has not been still elucidated. In order to understand the‘genuine’self-preservation property of gas hydrate, we made gas hydrate samples from small ice particles and CH4 with hydrate particle size controlled and with no pelletization processed, and experimentally examined their self-preservation property at 0.1 MPa. We compared the results with our previous data obtained for both‘non-pelletized’and‘pelletized’CH4 hydrate samples, and pointed out that there was a possibility that we observed such the data gap mainly owing to several factors of differences in both manufacturing method and thermal history of the hydrate samples, besides influence of pelletization process.

Integration and Causality in International Freight Markets: Modeling with Error Correction and Directed Acyclic Graphs

1. IntroductionIn January 1985, the Baltic Exchange developed the then known Baltic Freight Index (BFI), which, in May 1985, would become the underlying asset of the Baltic International Freight Futures Exchange (BIFFEX) contract, a contract designed to hedge uncertainty associated with volatile freight rates. On the basis of their exposure to the risk of adverse freight-rate fluctuations, ship owners and cargo owners (charterers) could buy or sell BIFFEX contracts to protect their freight-rate revenue or control their freight-rate cost, respectively. In addition to its once use for futures trading, the BFI is also considered to be the leading indicator of the condition in the dry-bulk shipping markets. On a daily basis, it provides accurate information about the level of freight rates across a variety of shipping routes worldwide. This information is extremely valuable for shipping market agents and is an invaluable tool in their decision-making process. This is so because in an industry such as shipping, where trades are being concluded across the globe, there is not a central reporting place to record and monitor the level of activity in the markets.The principal objective of this article is to assess the degree of interconnectivity between the major shipping routes that constitute the BFI, across different time horizons, reflecting the typical trading patterns in this market. To this end, we employ directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) (Spirtes, Glymour, and Scheines 1993), which enable us to assess this issue in a dynamic manner. Based on an error correction model (ECM) of freight rates, we also develop a framework for estimating forecast error decompositions by employing DAGs. From a practical standpoint, the information provided by innovation accounting techniques, coupled with DAG analysis, provides an intuitive method for assessing the information flows from the shipping markets and allows us to make an assessment on whether the underlying freight index, on which the futures contract is traded, is correctly composed.The current article, therefore, makes significant contributions to the literature from several angles. To date, research has not estimated the relationships in a truly dynamic manner and has, as such, failed to discuss the implications for derivatives and physical trading. In addition, the application of innovation accounting in this study is different from most other studies in the sense that we use the causal ordering of variables, as indicated by the estimated DAGs, for the orthogonalization of the contemporaneous innovation covariance; as suggested by Swanson and Granger (1997), this step is crucial in providing sound inference in innovation accounting techniques. Finally, investigation of this issue has important implications for the purposes of futures trading, as the BIFFEX contract was eventually delisted in April 2002. In this article, we identify whether the index is correctly composed and whether there are any obvious patterns or redundancies within the index that may have led to the demise of the futures contract. Indeed, our analysis provides a mechanism for deciding upon the correct index and has obvious, yet profound, implications for other research in the area of index construction.The rest of the article is as follows. Section 2 offers a brief discussion of freight indices. Section 3 outlines the methodologies employed in the article, including an introduction to DAGs, and section 4 describes the underlying properties of the data series. Section 5 presents the empirical results, and section 6 concludes.2. Freight Indices and Freight FuturesGiven uncertainty surrounding freight rates, the benefits of providing a futures market in freight rates has been recognized by market practitioners for a long time. However, the freight futures market was eventually established only in 1985. The reason is that the underlying asset of the market--the service of seaborne transportation--is not a physical commodity that can be delivered at the expiry of the futures contract. …

A NEW DIMENSION TO STUDIES OF SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION OF COAL

Spontaneous combustion of coal is a hazard frequently encountered in coal mining. It has been researched extensively but the actual mechanism by which it occurs is not completely understood. Under suitable conditions, the spontaneous combustion hazard manifests itself in all major aspects of coal mining, namely, underground coal mining, surface mining, stockpiling of coal at the pithead, power stations and ports, during sea-borne transport and stacking of reject material. In underground coal mining, the most difficult situation occurs when spontaneous combustion takes place in the presence of an inherently explosive atmosphere which may promote a local spontaneous combustion incident into an explosion hazard involving the entire mine. Such an incident at the Moura mine in Central Queensland resulted in greater pressure on mine operators for the safe management of spontaneous combustion in their underground coal mines than ever before. As not all coal mines are equally liable to spontaneous combustion due to the different propensities of different coals to self-oxidation, the risk assessment for spontaneous combustion is a primary requirement for the development of a spontaneous combustion management plan for a mine. Once the coal seam has been classified into various categories of spontaneous combustion risk, it is necessary to determine a fire ladder for the coal seam. This should be followed by detailed planning of the mine layout including the mine ventilation system and a spontaneous combustion monitoring program before devising a spontaneous combustion management plan as required by the Coal Mines Underground Regulations 1999. In this paper, a case history is presented which includes the development of a spontaneous combustion management plan for a high-risk coal seam in a greenfield site, from the risk assessment stage to the outbreak stage of a spontaneous combustion incident. It is concluded that the risk assessment, evaluation of the fire ladder, comprehensive monitoring by a tube bundle system and trending of carbon monoxide/oxygen deficiency ratio (Graham's ratio) and CO levels were the main elements in an effective spontaneous combustion control system for the mine.

Shipping in the Regime of Oceans

This paper highlights two problems in respect of the management of the oceans in the South Pacific. The first is the lack of understanding on the part of many people of the role of Shipping and that sector’s inclusion in an overall strategy for managing all uses of the ocean in the 21st century. The second cautions against the knee-jerk reaction of Prohibition in response to concern within the region in respect of the seaborne transportation of dangerous goods, hazardous substances and wastes. It suggests that Permission, subject to demanding pre-conditions, and escort through a country’s ocean space is a much preferred alternative.

REVIEW ON THE SEA-BORNE TRANSPORT AND THE SHIPBUILDING TECHNOLOGY

REVIEW ON THE SEA-BORNE TRANSPORT AND THE SHIPBUILDING TECHNOLOGY

The seaborne transport of automobiles: Growth, change and adjustment

The seaborne transport of automobiles began in the early 1950s and has consistently reflected the mutual relationships worldwide between economic developments, trade policy and maritime transport. The industry has expanded over the decades and is now of large proportions. This article examines that growth and the related technological changes, as well as methods for remaining competitive.

Prospects for intercontinental seaborne transportation of hydrogen

Large quantities of hydropower are available in many parts of the world which are separated from Europe by the sea. The production of hydrogen by electrolysis using hydro-electricity is the cleanest way to obtain an energy supply to Europe, but hydrogen, after liquefaction, must be transported by ship. Various types of special ships for liquid hydrogen transportation are investigated and compared. The corresponding transportation costs are calculated and some possible solutions for the boil-off problem are proposed.

MIZEX East 83/84: The Summer Marginal Ice Zone Program in the Fram Strait/Greenland Sea

A marginal ice zone (MIZ) occurs where polar and temperate climate systems interact and result in an edge of pack ice cover. As a geophysical boundary zone the MIZ is unique in the complexity of the vertical and horizontal air‐sea‐ice energy interactions that take place there. In response to these, the ice edge moves hundred of kilometers north and south on a seasonal cycle. Successful modeling and prediction of variations in ice edge position and ice concentration would be of great value in furthering man's activities in the region in areas such as offshore Artie oil exploration, seaborne transport of Arctic resorces, further development of the rich fisheries close to the ice margins and for naval operations.

Middle Bronze Age trade between Britain and Europe: a maritime perspective

This paper is derived from chapters of a PhD dissertation by Keith Muckelroy which was partially completed at the time of his death in September 1980. Publication of sections relating to work on two Bronze Age wreck sites was thought appropriate since the maritime context of the material and Muckelroy's assessment of its significance related to Bronze Age studies in general as well as the more specific focus of Middle Bronze Age maritime archaeology which formed the core of the research. In these chapters Muckelroy discussed the individual artefact types and their continental relationship and assessed the implications of the Langdon Bay and Moor Sand cargoes in terms of Bronze Age seafaring and the seaborne transportation of goods. His detailed discussion of the bronze forms has been summarized here; and it is upon the maritime aspect that this paper concentrates, this being the area in which Muckelroy's work at the two sites was making its unique contribution.The two sites under examination, Langdon Bay and Moor Sand, are well-enough known through various interim statements (Baker and Brannigan 1978; Coombs 1976; Muckelroy and Baker 1979; Muckelroy 1980) to require little detailed introduction other than a short description here. Both are important not so much for the particular objects found, but for the implications of the associations and contexts and as a result of the briefest consideration it can be asserted that in the later second millennium BC there existed vessels of size and quality sufficient to transport bulk materials across the channel, probably at regular intervals, and certainly guaranteed of receptions which warranted the organization of Bronze Age shipping by a community or segment of a community.

The Tribute Transportation System of the Medieval Manors of the Ise Jingu Shrine

In medieval Japan a number of feudal manors were developed in certain parts of the country, and from those manors the tributes were despatched to the nobles' residences, temples, and shrines in Kyoto-Nara area and their vicinity. The interest of the author in this paper is focussed on sea-borne transportation of tributes from feudal manors in Aichi and Shizuoka areas to Ise Jingu Shrine in the present Mie prefecture, during the period from the 11th to the 15 th centuries. Since the manors in these areas were not linked directly with Kyoto, the sea-borne transportation routes have not been studied so far.The author made an examination of the following manors. Numbers (i) to (iii) were situated in the medieval province of Totomi, western section of the present Shizuoka Prefectue, and (iv) to (vi) in Mikawa, eastern section of Aichi Prefecture.(i) Hamana-Kanbe Manor(ii) Miyakoda-Mikuriya Manor(iii) Kamata-Mikuriya Manor(iv) Atsumi-Kanbe Manor(v) Akumi-Kanbe Manor(vi) Irako-Mikuriya ManorKanbe was a kind of manors which had originally been establihed in the ancient times, from which sake wine, silk, textiles, etc. as well as rice were sent as sacred tributes to Ise Jingu Shrine. The tributes from Mikuriya manors consisted mostly of rice and fish, whereas those from Misono manors were a variety of upland field products. In any case the medieval manors were developed either on the sea-coasts or along the river courses, and it is easily imaginable that some sort of facilities for water transportation were generally available to most manors.Through a study of selected manors, several points of interest seem to be disclosed. They are summarised below.1) Feudal manors of Ise Jingu Shrine situated in Mikawa and Totomi most probably depended on the sea-borne transportation as a means of despatching tributes.2) The tributes from Kanbe manors, which had been established earlier, were very much ceremonial in nature, and there remains a doubt as to actual importance of despatching goods.3) There were several newly developed Misono manors surrounding Kanbe. Harvests in Misono were sent to storehouses in Kanbe manors to be accumulated there.4) Each of Mikuriya manors had a group of fishermen, and these people were engaged in transporting tributed goods on board to Ise Jingu.5) A tribute transporting system covering those manors was formed at this early stage, and dispersed manors were organised in a network which was ultimately connected with Ise Jingu.