Japanese Ports Suffer From Double Disaster
Devastation in Japan continues to unfold as shipping into the nation’s ports is severely affected by infrastructural damage, and the threat of radiation exposure to vessels.
According to industry sources, there is significant damage to all of the following Japanese ports: Hachinohe, Hitachi, Hitachinaka, Ishinomaki, Kamaishi, Kashima, Ofunato, Onahama, Sendai-Shiogama and Soma.
The world’s largest container shipping company, Maersk Line, has officially suspended service to three Japanese ports that were affected by the tsunami, Sendai, Onahama, and Hachinohe. The company reported that while details regarding the state of their terminals at the ports, they do know they have suffered serious damage.
Maersk’s suspension to multiple Japanese ports is just one instance of supply chain disruption in the area. At least 9 grain cargo vessels were unable to discharge their cargo due to problems at the ports. Delay of delivery or threat of possible cancellation has sent future contract prices of benchmark corn and wheat down in Chicago. Sources say that many ships were at anchorage in Japanese waters or slowing down since they are unable to unload their cargoes. The uncertainty not only affects the fate of the ships themselves, but the grain houses from which the cargo originated. Japan is the world’s biggest importer of corn, third largest of soybeans, and fourth largest of wheat.
Inability to dock at many important ports is only one of the problems facing the shipping industry, though, for the fear of radiation exposure is high. Radiation levels are surging on Wednesday with a failed aerial water drop mission on a troubled reactor of a stricken power plant. Potential radiation clouds are a major concern to ships and their charterers, and causing many dry bulk vessels and oil tankers to re-route in order to avoid affected areas, which in turn could cause freight costs to rise.
While there is a multitude of additional hazards in Japan, for instance, potential hazard for aftershocks, shortage of fuel and very cold weather conditions in the North, the country is still seeing slight improvements to the total port shutdown that occurred last week at the time of disaster.
Ports at Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, and Hakata are reportedly safe with no damages, however, the suspension of badly damaged ports cause congestion to grow and imminent further delays.
Maersk released information that the Japanese government has decided to implement planned electricity outages in Tokyo and Yokohama by splitting the Kanto area into 5 groups and shutting down 1 at a time for around 3-5 hours a day. The implications of this decision are still unknown, but at least these ports are still open for imports and exports.
Lloyd’s List Intelligence projected that the brief closure of all Japanese ports last Friday would cost the country about US$3.4 billion of maritime trade.
Estimates of a casualty toll from the double catastrophe totals to over 25,000 lives.