Weekly News Summary for March 9-15, 2009:
New regulations and new money are coming at the waterways industry in waves. Those two topics dominated the Inland Waterways Conference, held in Nashville, Tenn. March 3–5 and co-sponsored by the Army Corps of Engineers, Coast Guard and industry.
In his welcoming remarks, Craig Philip, chief executive officer of Ingram Barge Company, pointed out that in contrast to previous downturns, the barge industry “is not necessarily overbuilt” this time. The industry is “on the threshold of a new world of vessel inspections, and we’re proud that we championed it.”
Under the recently passed economic stimulus package, the Army Corps of Engineers received most of the money allotted to the inland waterways. Brig. Gen. John Peabody said that the Corps’ $4.6 billion (in addition to its regular budget) was to be used “across all business lines.” The Corps calculates that each $1 billion of investment will generate about 8,000 jobs, with roughly 20,000 jobs in total created by extra stimulus money. The Corps will soon put up a Web site where the public can track its stimulus expenditures, Peabody said. Its final list of projects will be finalized within a month, although it will undoubtedly include projects like Chickamauga Lock and Dam and other crumbling locks. Most of the stimulus money is intended for projects that can be executed within three to six months.
The Corps’ Asset Management Program has tried to maintain the entire system at the same level of efficiency—it’s basically a controlled triage program, in which insufficient and diminishing resources are spread as evenly as possible. But “risk is increasing faster than reliability” in the system as a whole, Peabody said….
American Commercial Lines last week reported a fourth-quarter decline in revenues of 4.2 percent from the same period a year earlier. But for the full year of 2008, the company’s revenues rose 13.9 percent from 2007.
The company reported EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) from continuing operations for the fourth quarter of $56 million, up from $54.5 million for the fourth quarter of 2007. Annual EBIDTA for 2008 was $155.8 million, down from $159.9 million for 2007.
“In 2008 we faced multiple challenges from many different fronts, including economic uncertainty, fuel price volatility, and operational disruptions due to weather events,” said Mike Ryan, president and chief executive officer. “I am very proud that our team rose to these challenges by focusing on reducing costs, improving productivity and growing the business in profitable markets.
“In the fourth quarter we delivered a $1.5 million improvement in EBITDA from continuing operations over the prior year quarter, our third consecutive quarter of quarter-over-quarter EBITDA growth. For the full-year, we delivered EBITDA that was just short of our 2007 amount, despite significant weather disruptions, which reduced productivity by approximately $16 million….
Industry officials are hopeful their requests for a wider navigation gate on the GIWW West Bank Closure Complex will meet with more success than the 150-foot gate on the surge barrier on the East Bank.
Col. Alvin Lee, commander of the New Orleans Engineer District, signed the decision record for Individual Environmental Report (IER) 12, an “environmental document that addresses the human and environmental impacts and benefits expected from construction of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West Complex.”
After nearly 2-1/2 years, the Corps selected a plan to provide major improvements to the risk-reduction system on the West Bank of the Mississippi River. The Corps consulted with officials from the navigation industry, environmental groups, regulatory agencies and officials from Jefferson, Orleans and Plaquemines parishes.
“This plan to reduce risk for approximately 245,000 people on the West Bank was developed through communication with area residents, government agencies and local industry,” said Lee. “It is the most effective approach to prevent storm surge inundation from an event that has a 1 percent chance of occurring each year.”…
Concerns that plans by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to establish a critical habitat for the Alabama sturgeon in the Alabama and Cahaba rivers may limit dredging and, in turn, commercial navigation, were featured at the annual meeting of the Coosa-Alabama River Improvement Association (CARIA) held in Monroeville, Ala.
Designation of the critical habitat is expected in May. The Alabama-Tombigbee Rivers Coalition, CARIA and other stakeholders submitted comments on the proposed listing, said Jerry Sailors, CARIA president.
Troy University’s Center for International Business and Economic Development analyzed the proposal and concluded the proposal, if approved as written, has a potential “$1.6 billion impact on the ACT (Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa) basin.”
As part of the Alabama sturgeon comments, the Alabama-Tombigbee Rivers Coalition expressed strong support for a white paper prepared jointly by the FWS and Corps.
“The white paper concluded generally that listing the Alabama sturgeon as an endangered species would not significantly impair annual maintenance dredging, river flow patterns, state water quality standards, coalbed methane production and gravel mining,” said Ralph O. Clemens Jr., president of the Alabama-Tombigbee Rivers Coalition….
Erik Salén, a valued member of Higman Barge Line’s board of directors, may not have his name on one of the jet planes that his Swedish company owns, but he now has it on a new towboat.
Higman christened the mv. Erik Salén February 11 at the Lakewood Yacht Club in Seabrook, Texas.
Salén is a third-generation member of a prominent shipping family in Stockholm, Sweden. From his grandfather forward, the Salén family has been engaged in virtually every sector of the international maritime industry, ranging from tankers, dry cargo vessels and refrigerated containers to the offshore oil and gas service industry, all under the umbrella of a company named Largus (US) Inc.
In the 1980s, the family’s interests included an offshore oil and gas drilling firm named Salén Offshore Company in Houston, Texas. George Thomas and John McMahan—now president and vice president of finance, respectively, of Higman Barge Lines—held the same titles at Salén at the time, and it was through that connection that they were brought together with Largus.
Largus, Thomas and McMahan acquired Higman in 1986….
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