Weekly News Summary For March 28–April 3, 2005:
The 2005 Inland Waterways Conference, held in Nashville, Tenn., from March 15-17, brought together the Army Corps of Engineers, Coast Guard and industry personnel to discuss numerous topics including high water and recent accidents on the Ohio River, current and future construction or rehabilitation projects for locks and dams, new security and safety guidelines, new technology and its applications and safety and labor issues from a Captain’s perspective.
Brig. Gen. Bruce A. Berwick, Commander, Great Lakes and Ohio River Division discussed the events on the Ohio River System, including the loss of life and loss of pool, in its impact to all agencies involved.
In his opening remarks, Rear. Adm. Robert F. Duncan discussed the opportunity for progress to be made out of the tragedy on the Ohio River.
“We led off this afternoon’s presentation with reference to the Ohio River system and all 981 miles affected by events that tragically took loss of life and loss of pool, something we need to be concerned about and work together to solve,” he said.
Through the River Industry Executive Task Force, Duncan said work is being completed to ensure that existing successful elements in action plans throughout the inland waterways system are highlighted and replicated by others to ensure consistency and experience are paramount….
One of the new technologies that created interest from all parties at the Inland Waterways Conference was Smartlock. The technology was developed by Concept2 Solution and the Port of Pittsburgh Commission with the cooperation of the Army Corps of Engineers and Coast Guard. It holds the potential to provide the ability to transit a lock in fog, provide cost savings by reducing locking times by industry, increase safety by reducing the number of accidents at lock and provide a cost savings to the Corps from the reduced number of tows damaging locks.
Smartlock is a lock navigation aid that assists pilots in their lock approach by supplying near-real time information of essential distances between the tow and the lock and conditions at the lock.
Joe Franz, project manager with Concept2 Solution, said currently the program is being tested at Emsworth Lock with a Corps vessel. Although slightly delayed due to high waters this winter, Franz said he expects testing trials to continue for two weeks to as long as one month before installing the necessary equipment and software aboard a commercial tow from Campbell Transportation Company, who has agreed to test the program….
The Singapore-flagged ship Star Drivanger, hauling lumber, rebar and steel beams, collided with a loaded coal hopper barge in tow of the mv. Christy in the Mobile Ship Channel just east of McDuffie Island Coal Terminal on March 21.
Lt. Michael Adams, spokesman for the Coast Guard Marine Safety Office-Mobile, said the mv. Christy was transiting from the Arlington Ship Channel to the Mobile Ship Channel when the collision occurred. Adams also indicated that the two vessels had been in communication.
The two vessels did receive extensive damage, but no pollution is associated with the collision….
Conrad Industries Inc., Morgan City, La., announced March 22 that it intends to voluntarily delist its common stock on or about March 30 and become a privately held company.
Conrad, which was listed on Nasdaq market under the symbol CNRD, traded at $2.14 at the time of the announcement. The next morning when trading resumed, the stock was trading in the $1.60 range, about 25 percent lower.
Conrad said it was eligible to reregister by filing a Form 15 because it had fewer than 300 holders of record of its common stock.
The firm cited the expense of filing SEC reports as a reason for going private….
Maryland Marine Inc., the Houston-based subsidiary of Higman Marine Inc., took delivery recently of the last of a trio of identical towboats built by Kody Marine Inc. The company named the vessel Decatur after the city in Alabama, on the Tennessee River, to which the vessel regularly delivers chemicals.
Maryland uses the 2,000 hp. boat to ship xylene, paraxylene and light and heavy aromatics, in a unit tow of two 30,000-barrel, 297- by 54-foot tank barges, between the Texas Gulf coast and a BP Chemical plant in Decatur. The 2,400-mile round trip takes about 20 days, said Mark Flynn, vice president of operations and marketing. The route to Decatur is along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway to the Tenn-Tom Waterway and then to the Tennessee, returning down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers back to the GIWW.
The other two towboats are the Sandy Point, named after the Sandy Point Light in Chesapeake Bay, and the Skipjack, named after the state boat of Maryland, which is the Chesapeake Bay skipjack, a one-mast sailing vessel.
The addition of the three new boats gives Higman one of the youngest fleets of vessels in the industry, having grown from 10 boats and 22 tank barges in 1986 to 37 pushboats and 80 tank barges today. The firm is currently constructing two additional 2,000 hp. pushboats and eight 30,000-barrel-capacity tank barges for delivery in 2005….
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