Posted on 09/13/2009 7:36:56 PM PDT by BP2
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> Fascinating article by Simon Parry in the Daily Mail this evening on the Ghost Fleet of Singapore — 100s of empty container ships sidelined by the recession. Excerpt:
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[1]
[2] Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession [3]
SIMON PARRY
The Mail, 13th September 2009
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1212013/Revealed-The-ghost-fleet-recession.html
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I've read elsewhere that Singapore new ship production is down a whopping 95% from about a year ago, with little sign of improvement.
And when I look at how the Baltic Dry Good Index is CONTINUING to slip from the piddly bump this spring - and how it has been down for about a year now - I can't help but wonder how LOW long-term shelved goods must be here in the US.
Maybe it's just me, but I have a feeling the "economic recovery" is yet ... another Obama lie.
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Interesting. Thanks for posting.
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- big picture ping - With storage shelves low, cargo shipping containers backing up, and grain production taking many month to spin up, it would not take much of a “crisis” (swine flu, economic collapse, etc) to panic the masses and induce hoarding. Just FYI ... |
I’ve heard the unloading of ships at Long Beach is way down and rail cars are sitting in many sidings through out the US. Fed Ex and UPS are having light shipments too.
This recession is a long way from over and the little bounce in the stock market in recent weeks is a mirage. A lot of market guys are saying we may see a new low in 10/09 or 11/09 as the government so called stimulus is petering out. Obama has saddled us with 3+ trillion in new debt and hasn’t affected the recession much.
If you are buying now, I’d suggest canned beans and Spam, plus some warm clothes for a long winter.
On the bright side they aren’t burning bunker charlie and making see-oh-too...
What’s the big deal? Most of the vessels in that top photo are BOATs, hardly significant ocean going freighters or tankers. Put on your reading glasses, and compare. All floating steel vessels are not “cargo ships” any more than a Ford F-150 is a Freightliner.
The bottom photo, I have no idea what if anything the overlaid symbols mean, if it’s legit, photoshopped, or another catalog of a few big ships, some medium ships, and a bunch of coastal vessesl and mere boats (under 100’ loa.)
c-7
read post one, though
the baltic dry index is a record of how many tons of cargo are being moved at one time by ship
look how low it is
almost post 9/11 low with that serious drop
the only reason anything is moving is to replace old or broken items, not replace used items with new stuff I can afford because of my raise or savings
I recall last fall when there were problems related to payments of shippments because of all the bank fears, etc. Folks in Taiwan were afraid of sending a huge shippment to a U.S. company if that company suddenly did not have access to the bank credit. Or something like that. That, combined with a slump in consumer items will put a lot on hold.
There was another article where they were talking about the ship owners having to pay higher fuel charges and eating it. Although I imagine many figure it’s not worth it.
I’ve read a lot of articles talking about the slump in worldwide shipping traffic and the huge number of idle ships and don’t doubt it’s real but I gotta agree with Travis that the photo is a poor representation of what it proports to be.
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Sorry for the dupe posting. That said, “you know who” is a master at inducing panic. He's been trying (unsuccessfully) to induce that with his ObamaCare. If a crisis develops, with or without his doing, we will all expect him to not let that crisis go to waste. It does not take a clairvoyant to recognize that financial resources and foodstores are stretched thin. Reports of tainted food, or a disruption of the logistical infrastructure (infected areas), social unrest, etc., could push things to the brink in a short, based upon the reduced flow of cargo movement. IMO, events are lining up to be a repeat of the In the same way oil was manipulated to push gas prices through the roof last summer, consumable goods can be pushed into shortage levels - for the short-term financial gain of a group of profiteers, or the political gain of a sitting usurper. |
Trade with China : 2009
EXPORTS 35,662.6 IMPORTS 159,130.8 BAL -123,468.2
Trade with China : 2008
EXPORTS 69,732.8 IMPORTS 337,772.6 BAL -268,039.8
NOTE: All figures are in millions of U.S. dollars, and not seasonally adjusted unless otherwise specified.
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html#2009
What “recovery” there is, probably is a result of the gummit being gridlocked into doing nothing. Once Obama is gone from the political scene, normal people will feel it’s safe to party again.
I live in a small town but we do have a WalMart and a KMart, I am not much of a shopper but I do go in when I need something specific, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left empty handed.
There are lots of things in the store but so many things are out of stock. I’m going to have to order what I need off the internet.
Don’t worry, the Chinese have a use for that Ghost Fleet. They’ll rent it as the sampan flotilla and invade Taiwan with it.
If that photo at top is their "smoking gun," then the article is crap. Not denying the baltic dry index etc. But using that picture to "prove" anything is a JOKE to anybody who has actually been around ships. It might fool some retarded idjit in Kansas who thinks a tractor is the same as a freight train, but that's about it.
The photo is a JOKE.
graph speak more than photo, white man!
I’m with you.
Heck, if you put all of the naval vessels currently in San Diego or Norfolk into one anchorage and took an aerial photo, it would put that joke photo to shame, and show that most of the vessels in that joke photo are no more than coastal tramps and boats under 100’.
That photo with that headline, it's a joke, admit it. Were you taken in? Did you really look at all those little dots between the real ships and think, "Golly, geee, wow, more ships than the US and British navies combined!"
Tell me you didn't fall for that.
Now, there might be a glut of shipping out there, I don't doubt it, but that lurid headline couples with that joke of a photo was meant to foool only ruuuubes from the sticks, who have never seen a ship.
I was in Vancouver, Canada yesterday morning. My husband noticed all the containers from Asia sitting at the dock. With our business (wood products import and export), we tend to notice things like that. Our taxi driver said “the pile just gets bigger and bigger, and it has no where to go”.
You are aware that our fleet is 1/3 of what it’s tonnage was when me and you were in, right?
Are these some of the ‘black’ ships that have been circeling the north Pacific since some time after WWII with woe-begotten service men who came down with exotic and uncurable strains of Asian clap?
Sunrise in the Strait between Indonesia and Singapore, where 735 cargo ships were gathered
Tuesday (May 12, 2009) because of a sharp decline in global exports.
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with Cargo:
NO Cargo: |
Interesting post.
The photo as bottom shows about 7 or 8 small empty container ships. The rest are a few at a time. Where is your airial shot of fifty or 100 large empty container ships?
That lurid headline with those photos, esp. that debunked joke orginally posted, make the article a joke.
German ports still in the slump
12/08/2009
Terminal operator Eurogate saw a 10.1% first-half decline in container handling volumes compared with 2008, due to the slump in global trade, reports International Freighting Weekly (IFW).
It said both Bremerhaven and Hamburg, with a total of 3.3-m TEUs, lost 19.5% of their handling throughput. Individually, Bremerhaven was down 20.8% and Hamburg 17.1%.
http://www.worldnetlogistics.com/news.asp
The global fleet of idle ships continues to diminish as demand steadies
08/07/2009
The proportion of idle containership capacity has continued to ease marginally, as demand remains steady while supply is cut with increased scrapping, reports French-based consulktancy, AXS Alphaliner. As at July 6, the total idle fleet tracked by Alphaliner stood at 1.219-million TEUs (Mteu), representing 9.5% of the total fleet. Its previous report rated idle capacity at 1.24-Mteu on June 22 and at 1.31-Mteu two weeks before – a drop, the report added, largely due to the northern hemisphere summer peak season having really started.
The photos at 21 are more impressive, I did not see them until after I replied to the other.
I’ve had the same experience at the Target and Fry’s by my work- crazy basics, too. One day I couldn’t get envelopes at Fry’s. Weird. Also, have noticed the local restaurants we (co-workers) go to for lunch sometimes are DEAD, lately. These are mostly the small family owned places, too, so it’s sad to see. Things are worse than they are telling us.
Talk to some long-haulers. They can tell that our ports have become all but ghost towns - incoming freight is WAY down -
The trucking industry have been devastated...and no one knows.
Over half a million truckers have lost their jobs and thousands of trucking companies have gone out of business.
When the trucks stop rolling - where are we?
Grocery stores, for example, have 1-2 days stock. That's it.
as someone said - stock up on beans - get warm clothes - and seeds for a garden in the spring. (I am not jesting)
And all this while Personal Savings is going UP - sharply!
There are many reasons for this, but the biggest two are:
1) credit crunch (NO credit, tight credit and/or high interest rates)
2) fear/uncertainty about the future (particularly about the Kenyan's plans for America)
I was down in the Kemer region of Turkey this summer and saw the same thing on a lesser scale. Lots of ships anhored off the coast and the harbor itself doing nothing much except for oil tankers.
Grim tidings It's not season for rejoicing at Texas ports
I wish I had the chart for that area...If I am not mistaken, I recall a lot of that area to the south of Singapore to be anchorages...
The working port facilities are up and around on the north side...Sembawang being one facility I am fairly familiar with...
Sometimes when the port gets busy, they have to have the ships wait in those anchorages for a day or so...
To me all this means is that its rush hour...
Yep, most of those photos are showing ships that are “light-ship”, meaning no cargo other than ships stores (fuel oil, other crew usuable liquid stores)
Singapore just happens to be a major hub to the worldwide shipping industry...So thats where they’ll hang out awaiting cargo...
And since most shipowners have offices in Singapore, ships crews will have administration and other logistical support that is easily accessable...
Wow, that’s jacked up.
Foreshadowing...
 Cranes at Singapore Dock stand idle, waiting for work Orders for most existing ships to be delivered within the next six to nine months would be honoured, he predicted, and the ships would go into service at the expense of older vessels in the fleet, which would be scrapped or end up anchored off places like southern Malaysia. But, says Wallis, 'some ship owners won't be able to pay their final instalments when the vessels are completed. Normally, they pay ten per cent down when they order the ship and there are three or four stages of payment. But 50 to 60 per cent is paid on delivery.' South Korean shipyard Hanjin Heavy Industries last week said it had been forced to put up for sale three container ships ordered at a cost of £60 million ($100 million) by the Iranian state shipping line after the Iranians said they could not pay the bill. 'The prospects for shipyards are bleak, particularly for the South Koreans, where they have a high proportion of foreign orders. Whole communities in places like Mokpo and Ulsan are involved in shipbuilding and there is a lot of sub-contracting to local companies,' Wallis says. 'So far the shipyards are continuing to work, but the problems will start to emerge next year and certainly in 2011, because that is when the current orders will have been delivered. There have hardly been any new orders in the past year. In 2011, the shipyards will simply run out of ships to build.' |
Very true. But the cargo onboard those GLORIOUS ships was FREEDOM.
Ironically, the lack of cargo on THESE ships may be exploited to take Freedoms AWAY
by a White House that believes to "never let a serious crisis go to waste."
As an old Navy man myself, I have to say that these photographs fail to demonstrate a crisis.
Maybe there’s more to it than the photos show.
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As an old Navy man myself, I have to say that these photographs fail to demonstrate a crisis. Maybe there’s more to it than the photos show. Agreed. Another issue is that the ships that ARE still in operation have dramatically reduced cargo loads. The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) provides "an assessment of the price of moving the major raw materials by sea. Taking in 26 shipping routes measured on a timecharter and voyage basis, the index covers Handymax, Panamax, and Capesize dry bulk carriers carrying a range of commodities including coal, iron ore and grain." The index indirectly measures global supply and demand for the commodities shipped aboard dry bulk carriers, such as building materials, coal, crude oil, metallic ores, and grains. The supply of cargo ships is generally both tight and inelastic. It takes two years to build a new ship, and ships are too expensive to take out of circulation in the same way airlines park unneeded jets in the Arizona desert — unless market forces dictate NO OTHER OPTION. So marginal increases in demand can push the index higher quickly, and marginal demand decreases can cause the index to fall rapidly. For example, if you have 100 ships competing for 99 cargoes, rates go down, whereas if you've 99 ships competing for 100 cargoes, rates go up. In other words, small fleet changes and logistical matters can crash rates.
For comparison of other consumption levels, compare BELOW the BDI to that of Crude Oil (VERY low demand) and Gold (very MUCH in demand) |
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 Baltic Exchange Dry Index (BDI) & Crude Oil (red)
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 Baltic Exchange Dry Index (BDI) & Gold (gold)
"Logarithmic Graph"
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PORT OF LOS ANGELES CONTAINER STATISTICS - 2009 |
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To which I would add: lots of small caliber ammo, medical supplies and seeds.
The working port of Singapore is mostly on the SW part of the island. That’s where the modern container and oil terminals are. Sambawang has some ship repair facilities but it’s not a big cargo handling center. It’s been a while since I’ve been there but I don’t remember the Johor Strait being that deep.
bookmark bump...
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