FAA lifts U.S. grounding order
U.S. airlines were forced to halt domestic departures after the Federal Aviation Administration said it had suffered an outage of a system that alerts pilots and crew to advisories and information for flights.
The agency said it was making progress restoring the system. It said some departures are resuming and that it expected other departures to restart at 9 a.m. ET.
President Biden called for an investigation into the causes of the outage, his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a tweet.
The Wall Street Journal
U.S.-bound imports are heading back to pre-pandemic numbers
Keeping in line with its previous edition, the new Port Tracker report, which was issued this week by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and maritime consultancy Hackett Associates, the theme of lower retail container import volumes, for the end of 2022 and into 2023, remained fully intact.
The ports surveyed in the report include: Los Angeles/Long Beach; Oakland; Tacoma; Seattle; Houston; New York/New Jersey; Hampton Roads; Charleston, and Savannah; Miami; Jacksonville; and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Port Everglades.
Authors of the report explained that cargo import numbers do not correlate directly with retail sales or employment because they count only the number of cargo containers brought into the country, not the value of the merchandise inside them, adding that the amount of merchandise imported provides a rough barometer of retailers’ expectations.
Supply Chain 24/7
Traffic in Suez Canal normal after ship breakdown
Shipping traffic in the Suez Canal was proceeding normally on Monday after tugs towed a cargo vessel that broke down during its passage through the waterway, the Canal Authority said.
The breakdown was expected to cause only minor delays, with convoys of ships resuming regular transit by 11:00 local time (09:00 GMT), shipping agent Leth said.
The M/V Glory, which was sailing to China, suffered a technical fault when it was 38km into its passage southward through the canal, before being towed by four tugs to a repair area, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said in a statement.
Marine Link
U.S., allies prepare fresh sanctions on Russian oil industry
The U.S. and its allies are preparing their next round of sanctions on Russia’s oil industry, aiming to cap the sales prices of Russian exports of refined petroleum products in a step some market watchers warn could squeeze global supply.
In meetings across Europe this week, Treasury officials are discussing the details of the coming sanctions on Russian oil products, which are set to go into effect on Feb. 5. The penalties will set two price limits on Russian refined products: one on high-value exports such as diesel and another on low-value ones such as fuel oil, according to people familiar with the plans.
The Wall Street Journal
Major Chinese ports container volume up 5.8% in early December
Export container volume increased 5.5% year-on-year, while the inland container volume grew some 6.8%. Loaded containers for foreign trading in the Yangtze River delta and Pearl River delta regions dropped around 13% and 20% year-on-year, respectively.
Cargo throughput at major coastal hub ports rose 3.07%. International trade cargo throughput dropped 1.95% and domestic volume grew 7.64%.
Seatrade Maritime News
Biden climate blueprint promotes modal shift away from trucks
A formal strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector prioritizes maritime and rail over trucking to more quickly get to net-zero emissions by 2050.
The U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization, released Tuesday by the Biden administration, is billed as a “first-of-its-kind” plan to cut GHG emissions in both passenger and freight transportation, building off funding incentives included in the 2021 infrastructure package and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
The blueprint lays out three main strategies for attaining its goal: increasing user convenience, improving vehicle efficiency and transitioning to clean fuels and vehicles.
Freight Waves
