TPT July 2014

Global Marketplace

› Con Ed has made progress too. William Akley, its senior vice president for maintenance and construction, told the Times that the utility has doubled the pace of its replacement programme, Still, he said, it will take as long as 25 years to get rid of all of the “vintage” pipes, made of iron or bare steel, in the system. The reporters noted that the company faces unique challenges. In Manhattan, “the heart of its territory,” the rules on when and how Con Ed can disrupt traffic are much more restrictive than elsewhere. As a result, the utility says it can cost as much as $2,000 a foot, or well over $10 million a mile, to replace a gas main. Felim McTague, a Con Ed construction manager, said it was taking about two weeks per block to upgrade the gas mains in the rapidly gentrifying meatpacking district of Manhattan. A crew of seven has to thread the new pipe – coated steel at the intersections, plastic in between – through a maze of steam pipes, phone lines, TV cables, and sewer and water mains. Every night, the Times was told, workers have to cover the hole in the street with thick steel plates that can bear city traffic. › Elsewhere in the US, a rupture in a major pipeline in San Bruno, California, in 2010 caused an explosion that killed eight people. In 2011, a leak from an 83-year-old cast-iron main in Allentown, Pennsylvania, caused a blast that killed five people. “It’s like Russian roulette,” said Robert B Jackson, a professor of environment and energy at Stanford University (Palo Alto, California) who has studied gas leaks in Washington, DC, and Boston. “The chances are, you are going to be lucky,” he told the Times . “But once in a while you’re going to be unlucky.” Aerospace › Under a deal brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry in November 2013, Iran agreed to curtail its nuclear activities for six months in exchange for sanctions relief from nations including Britain, China and the United States. Tehran had reportedly argued that the sanctions imposed after the 1979 hostage crisis prevented the upgrade of the Iranian commercial air fleet, endangering passengers. Now, the US Treasury Department has granted Boeing Co a licence to export certain aircraft parts to Iran. The Chicago-based plane manufacturer said on 4 April that the authorisation is solely for components necessary to the safe operation of planes it sold to Iran before 1979. Iran Air is still flying Boeing passenger planes bought before that year. Another American company – General Electric Co (Fairfield, Connecticut) – said that it had received permission from Washington to overhaul 18 engines sold to Iran in the late Said Mr McTague, plausibly, “It’s a tedious process.”

1970s. That work will be carried out by GE in the US or at facilities of the German firm MTU Aero Engines (Munich). If the moratorium should lead to a permanent lifting of sanctions, Iran would be a likely customer for hundreds of new commercial planes. But until such time, no discussion on prospective sales of aircraft is permitted. › Global sales of business jets, which dropped during the financial crisis, have been in a slow recovery, and will account for $250bn in sales from 2013 to 2023, according to the business and general aviation division of Honeywell International (Morristown, New Jersey). In its most recent ten-year forecast, Honeywell said that bigger, faster, more expensive long-range jets would by 2024 account for 70 per cent of new expenditures worldwide on business jets. Throughout Asia, Honeywell said, over the last five years the total number of business jets has grown about 12 per cent annually. Large-cabin, long-range jets accounted for 77 per cent of sales over that period. Figures from the Washington-based General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) show marked global shifts underway in the market for business jets of all sizes and types. In 2007, the US and Canada accounted for 58.3 per cent of the 1,136 business jets delivered worldwide. That dropped to 49.7 per cent in 2012, then rose slightly, to 52.4 per cent, last year – when shipments totalled 678. But GAMA noted significant growth in the Asia-Pacific region, which accounted for 11.9 per cent of shipments of business jets in 2013, up from 4.2 per cent in 2007. In Latin America, the share grew to 11.1 per cent in 2013 from 7.5 per cent in 2007.

Boeing has signed a deal that allows exports of parts to Iran

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J uly 2014