Several spots along North America's new oil-by-rail corridors find residents and officials restless, following six fiery derailments in the past 10 months. Some want to limit or halt the traffic, fearful that existing precautions will not prevent deadly blasts, air and waterway pollution, or nuisances including nasty odors.
In a recent decision affecting ocean freight operators, the International Maritime Organization's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) adopted amendments to the MARPOL Convention to set a date for the implementation of "Tier III" standards within emission control areas (ECAs) and to make the IMO Member State Audit Scheme mandatory.
The lower cost of fuel for natural gas-powered highway tractors compared to their diesel-fired brethren could make it more profitable for trucking companies to engage in longer lengths of haul for intermodal shipments.
Despite many underlying tensions, the Middle East has maintained a positive economic outlook, according to Frost & Sullivan's "International Supply Chain Excellence Programme-Gulf Edition 2014." This is evident from the region's ability to maintain a positive growth rate when most economies globally have struggled to be above the red line.
Logistics operations driven by the shale energy boom employed 32,000 workers in 2012, a figure which is expected to grow by over 26,000 jobs, or 82 percent, to more than 58,000 jobs in 2025.
Throughout the logistics industry, food is one of the most demanding goods moved around the world. Statistics also show that it is also one of the most disposed products worldwide in relation to the produced quantity with 30 to 50 percent of food going to waste. The highest portion is on the consumers' side. But In the supply chain, a non-stop cold chain monitoring is the major instrument for food staying fresh and not rotting ahead of time. There are already several solutions in the field to collect data to monitor the cold chain. But most of these solutions are costly to install and to maintain and therefore only suitable for high-priced products such as pharmaceuticals. Wireless sensors that use the energy harvesting principle now overcome these challenges and open the door for a complete traceability of food at affordable costs.
When TransCanada first proposed the Keystone XL pipeline in 2008, the company hoped it would be done by 2012 and begin carrying heavy crude from the Alberta oil sands in Western Canada down to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Six years later the pipeline remains in limbo, stymied by Department of State reviews, route adjustments, lawsuits, environmental and economic studies, and (most important) an Obama administration that appears truly divided on the issue. Last month the State Department announced that no decision would come until after November's midterm elections.
A week after a train loaded with crude oil from North Dakota exploded in downtown Lynchburg, Va., dumping 30,000 gallons of oil into the James River, the Department of Transportation announced two moves to try to keep this from happening so frequently. It's doubtful that either will make much of a difference in preventing what's become a major safety hazard in the U.S.
The latest supply-chain news, analysis, trends and tools for executives in the chemicals and energy industries. Learn how chemical and energy companies and their suppliers around the world are managing the flow of products across all channels of the enterprise. Experts sound off on forecasting and demand planning, supply-chain visibility, logistics outsourcing, inventory optimization, transportation management, warehouse management, supply-chain security, corporate social responsibility and more.
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