Delta Western Signs Anchorage Port Lease

The Port of Anchorage and petroleum distributor Delta Western have signed off on a 20-year lease for 2.5 acres of land at the port, which Delta Western says it plans to use to build a bulk fuel facility with a capacity of 360,000 barrels of petroleum products.

The agreement, which had been more than a year in the making, was revealed April 3. It marks the first new long term lease at the Port of Anchorage in over 20 years. The deal represents an increase in fuel services offered by the private sector at the port.

“We are very proud to provide a waterfront site that meets Delta Western Inc.’s business requirements,” Port Director Richard Wilson said. “We are excited to be a part of a significant expansion to better serve customers in rural Alaska and our own region.”

Delta Western, an independent distributor of petroleum products and lubricants, offers direct delivery of fuel and lubricants to many Alaskan towns and villages, marine vessels, airports, logging and mining facilities and construction operations. The company has been in Alaska since 1985.

The Port of Anchorage, which opened in 1961, serves as the first point of entry for 90 percent of the consumer goods for 85 percent of Alaska.

Fidley Watch - Justice for the Downtrodden

After suffering more than a hundred years of repression at the hands of King County taxpayers, Seattle Port Commissioners will finally earn a living wage. Last month, while the rest of the country was discussing the federal budget and sequestration cuts that would decimate parts of the federal government, the Seattle Port Commission voted itself a seven-fold increase in pay.

Currently, Seattle’s part-time commissioners, who are elected to office by the voters of King County after having spent tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars campaigning for the post, receive $500 a month plus a $12,500 annual per diem. Following last month’s vote, commissioners will now “earn” $36,000 a year, for what one commissioner estimates at less than 25 hours a week, becoming the only salaried port commission on the West Coast. With the per diem, their compensation rises to $48,500.

According to a recent article in the Seattle Times, Commission President Tom Albro proposed the increase as a way to attract more people to the five-member body and make it feasible for people who have to work for a living to serve.

An average campaign for Seattle Port Commission costs in the neighborhood of $150,00, and requires a fair bit of time and effort. Currently, the people who serve on the commission have successful careers, many as attorneys. (For the record, Albro will not take the increase he proposed).

Even before the pay raise, there were almost 30 applicants to fill two vacant positions on the commission – one left by Gael Tarleton, who resigned to serve in her new position as a Washington State legislator and one left by Rob Holland, who quit under a cloud of personal and professional problems.

Commissioner Bill Bryant, whose term doesn’t expire until 2015, was out of town and didn’t vote, but had made it clear he opposed the increase. Commissioner John Creighton voted in favor of the increase, although current commissioners won’t be eligible for the raise unless they’re re-elected. Creighton’s term expires in December of this year, and a number of credible applicants among the 30 who presented themselves could give him a run for his money. One of these is attorney Courtney Gregoire, daughter of former Governor Christine Gregoire, who was appointed to fill Ms. Tarleton’s vacancy, and will run for election to the position in December.

Creighton worked alongside former Commissioner Lloyd Hara in 2008 to try to raise commissioners’ salaries and provide them with staff. That effort failed, and Hara subsequently was elected to the full-time position of King County assessor.

According to the Times article, Creighton believes the Seattle Port Commission “has long been dominated by rich old white men and individuals whose employers financially benefit from their position on the commission.” Creighton has most recently served with two women, a man of Japanese heritage and Rob Holland, who describes himself as “young, gay and black.” This makes Creighton the only “rich old white man” who stands to benefit from this increase.

Welcome Aboard!

Pacific Maritime Magazine is happy to introduce Pardise Amirshahi as our new advertising sales manager. Pardise has been in marketing for more than 20 years, most of those in print advertising, so she’s right at home with the Philips family of publications. Pardise is based in Southern California. Give her a call to discuss your ad schedule at 949-293-9545 or email her at pardise@earthlink.net.

Joint Shipping Service Coming to Seattle Terminal

The Port of Seattle is welcoming United Arab Shipping Co. (UASC) to its harbor in May via a new joint shipping service. Starting next month, UASC’s AWN1 string will call Seattle’s Terminal 30 in partnership with China Shipping Container Lines’ (CSCL) existing ANW1 service.

UASC will join the service with two 4,250-TEU ships, while CSCL is expected to upgrade its Asia-to-Pacific Northwest service by contributing two vessels of the same size. The ANW1/AWN1 service is expected to have a port rotation of Nansha, China; Hong Kong; Yantian, China; Ningbo, China; Shanghai; Pusan, South Korea; Seattle; Vancouver, British Columbia; and back to Nansha.

The port says it expects the expanded service to provide fast and reliable transits for imports to the Pacific Northwest and beyond, while providing new capacity for exports.

UASC, which was was founded in 1976, is headquartered in Kuwait, with corporate offices located in Dubai.  China Shipping Container Line, founded in 1997, is headquartered in Shanghai.

Former Long Beach Port Commissioner Named FMC Chair

Former Port of Long Beach Harbor Commissioner Mario Cordero has been named the new chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission by Pres. Barack Obama. He takes over for recently resigned Chair Richard Lidinsky.

Cordero, who was named to his new post April 1, joined the five-member Commission in June 2011. His current term expires June 30, 2014.

“I am greatly honored that the President has named me Chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission,” Cordero said. ‘I would also like to thank him for that honor, as well as my predecessor, Richard Lidinsky, both for his past leadership and his continuing dedication to the Commission. I look forward to continuing to work with my fellow Commissioners and the agency’s remarkable staff to accomplish the Commission’s important responsibility to the nation: fostering a fair, efficient and reliable international ocean transportation system and to protect the public from unfair and deceptive practices.”

Lidinsky, who submitted his resignation in late March, had been the commission’s chair since September 2009.

Prior to his FMC appointment, Cordero spent eight years on the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners, starting in 2003. Among his signature accomplishments in Long Beach was the passage and implementation of the Green Port Policy, which led to environmental initiatives like the Clean Trucks Program, the Vessel Low-Sulfur Fuel Program and the Technology Advancement Program.

California Sees Slight Gain in Export Volumes

California’s export trade this February represented a modest increase over the same month last year, according to foreign trade data revealed April 5 by the US Commerce Department.

State exports in February 2013 totaled $12.70 billion, is less than the $12.85 billion recorded in February 2012. However, 2012 was a Leap Year, adding an extra trading day to that month.

So when adjusting for both inflation and that bonus trading day last February, California’s February 2013 export trade showed an increase of 1.1 percent over the same month in 2012.

The gain came as the result of a 4.3 percent real increase in shipments of manufactured products and an even more robust 5.9 percent rise in exports of non-manufactured goods – chiefly agricultural commodities and raw materials.  Restraining further growth in the state’s overall export trade was a relatively sharp 9.6 percent drop in re-exported goods.

Analysis reveals that California’s export of manufactured products continues to be slowed by an ongoing decline in shipments of electronic components used in the manufacture of personal computers. In the most recent three-month period, December 2012 through February 2013, exports of these products were down 24.9 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to data from economic consulting firm Beacon Economics.

“The chief culprit here,” Beacon’s international trade adviser, Jock O’Connell said, “is the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets, which has been shrinking consumer demand for PCs and curtailing trade in PC components.”

California’s exports to Mexico, the state’s leading foreign market, were down by 19.2 percent in the latest three-month period, largely because PC components have constituted as much as 30 percent of California’s export trade with its southern neighbor as recently as 2011, according to Beacon.

Shipments to the state’s number two market, Canada, rose slightly by 1.2 percent during the three-month period, while exports to its third largest export market, China, slipped by 1.3 percent.

However, California exports to the European Union were up 3.9 percent over the latest three months, while exports to the Pacific Rim rose by about two percent, according to Beacon’s data.

Port of Oakland Joins China Trade Mission

Port of Oakland Acting Executive Director Deborah Ale Flint is the sole seaport executive involved in a California state trade mission to China this week led by California Gov. Jerry Brown.

Ale Flint is expected to join the California-China trade mission in Beijing April 10 and 11 for targeted meetings focused on development of direct air service between China and Oakland, which the port says could yield as much as $150 million annually for the region.

From April 6 to 9, before joining Gov. Brown’s group, Ale Flint traveled to Singapore and Hong Kong to meet with key Oakland maritime trading partners. She’s also scheduled to participate in the opening of the new state trade office in Shanghai on April 12, as well as in a forum focused on agricultural exports to China.

China-Oakland maritime trade totaled $14.5 billion in 2012, more than three times the port’s second-largest trading partner.

“The Port of Oakland is proud to engage in the California trade mission to China and combine it with face-to-face business development discussions involving our maritime and aviation businesses,” Ale Flint said in a statement. “This is an important time for the port to meet with overseas maritime business partners to promote our competitiveness as a US maritime gateway of choice.”

Although the Port of Oakland is the only seaport supporting the trade mission, the delegation also includes many of the port’s business partners, tenants and organizations whose members move cargo through the port, including the Almond Board of California, which represents almond growers that predominantly ship out of the Oakland seaport; and the Wine Institute, whose exporting members also primarily ship through Oakland.