TPT July 2019

G LOBA L MARKE T P L AC E

Weeks later, a blast and fire at a plant north of Houston that makes an aviation fuel component killed one worker and injured two others. Crude storage capacity is up 17 per cent across the nation to 573.6 million barrels since 2015, according to the US Energy Information Administration. According to market data provider TankTerminals, operators are expanding 23 storage terminals in Texas and seven in Louisiana, with Texas terminal operators projected to boost capacity by 7 per cent to 393 million barrels by the end of 2019. Denmark to deploy sulphur-sniffing drone To ensure compliance with the country’s sulphur limit, Denmark plans to deploy a large drone to monitor emissions from ships in its waters. According to the Danish Maritime Authority, the sulphur- sniffing drone, provided by the European Maritime Safety Agency, will be deployed in the coming months, in an area north of the Great Belt where many large tankers pass going to and from the Baltic Sea. By entering the ship’s exhaust gas plume, the drone can register the amount of sulphur in the fuel. The data is immediately available to Danish authorities to take action if a ship does not comply with the requirements. The Danish Maritime Authority said: “The project will contribute to a more efficient enforcement of the sulphur rules, thereby ensuring fair competition for shipping companies and less pollution from ships.”

JLR emphasised that the new Defender had been designed and engineered in the UK, and would also use engines built in the UK, “reinforcing both the company’s British roots and the diversified, globalised nature of its manufacturing strategy.” The company said the decision to move the Defender abroad came amid plans for “significant investment” at the UK plant, for the next generation of Range Rover and Land Rover models. Industr y and envi ronment US oil storage industry sees fines soar on air and water violations Collin Eaton, in a Reuters analysis of federal data, reported that fines for violations of air, water and waste regulations by US petroleum storage facilities so far this year have exceeded all of last year – even without including two major Houston- area disasters that are still under investigation. Federal and state fines of storage tank operators totalled $5.2mn as of April, from $4.1mn for all of 2018 and $2.5mn in 2017, according to data from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on federal and state penalties. US petroleum storage operators have added millions of barrels of capacity since 2015, when the USA lifted a 40-year ban on crude exports. The nation is now shipping as much as 3.6 million barrels per day overseas, and cheap natural gas prices have fuelled a boom in petrochemical production that also necessitates more storage, particularly on the US Gulf Coast. With that, however, have come more air and water quality incidents. “There have been some accidents and an awful lot of expansion,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of non- profit Environmental Integrity Project and a former director of civil enforcement at the EPA. “There’s been a drop in resources available for enforcement. There have been mixed signals on how much enforcement to do.” This year, the average penalty is $218,000, up from $52,000 in 2018. Data shows the total number of actions for violations of Clean Air and Clean Water act regulations was 24, up from 17 by the same time last year. That figure does not include two incidents in Texas for which federal and state investigations are underway, but no fines have yet been assessed. A March fire at a Houston-area petrochemical storage facility raged for days, sending millions of pounds of carbon monoxide and other gases into the air, and leaking thousands of gallons of fuel and toxic foam into waterways. The blaze, at a site along the Houston Ship Channel in Deer Park, Texas, started when a leak from a tank containing volatile naphtha ignited and spread to others in the same complex. Those tanks hold tens of thousands of barrels of products used to boost gasoline octane, and to make solvents and plastics.

Mar i t ime More propane passing through the Panama Canal

World Maritime News reported data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA); the largest change in petroleum flows through the expanded Panama Canal has been the increase of hydrocarbon gas liquids (HGL), especially propane, from the US Gulf coast to destinations in Asia. According to the EIA, citing data from the Panama Canal Authority, most of the petroleum transiting the Panama Canal travels south from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Flows of HGL are the largest single petroleum commodity transiting the canal. In 2018, around 387,000 barrels per day of HGLs moved south through the Panama Canal, compared with 266,000 barrels of distillate and 230,000 barrels of motor gasoline. Before 2016, the main constraint for increasing US HGL exports was export infrastructure on the US Gulf Coast. By 2016, the addition of Gulf Coast export infrastructure alleviated the constraint and the size limitations of the

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JULY 2019