Two Vietnamese Shipbuilding Execs Arrested on Corruption Charges

By MarEx 2018-12-11 10:53:00

Vietnam's Investigative Police Agency has arrested two executives from troubled state shipbuilder Vinashin on charges of embezzlement. Truong Van Tuyen, the firm's former director, and Pham Thanh Son, its current deputy director, stand accused of abusing their positions to transfer funds for their own use. According to prosecutors, Son and Tuyen worked with the firm's former accountant to transfer $4.5 million in illicit deposits to accounts at Ocean Bank, a now-defunct financial institution that has been connected to other corruption...

DOT Announces $1.5B in Grants for Port, Road and Rail Projects

By MarEx 2018-12-11 19:58:00

On Tuesay, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao announced a package of 91 new infrastructure projects across the United States worth a combined $1.5 billion. The Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) Transportation Discretionary Grants - previously known as TIGER grants - give DOT funds to invest in road, rail, transit and port projects. Congress has allocated more than $5 billion for nine competition rounds to fund projects that have a significant local or regional impact. Over $1 billion of...

Norwegian Safety Agency Orders More Improvements at Goliat

By MarEx 2018-12-11 19:09:00

Eni Norge's long-troubled Goliat platform has received another order for required improvemets from Norway's Petroleum Safety Authority. While the facility has made progress in correcting previously-identified deficiencies, newly-discovered issues and the overall quantity of outstanding maintenance pose potential problems going forward, PSA asserted. "The PSA’s observations from this audit show that faults and deficiencies still exist which, until they are corrected, represent a source of uncertainty which makes a negative contribution to the risk picture for the Goliat FPSO," the...

Insufficient Maintenance Caused Passenger Vessel Fire

By MarEx 2018-12-11 18:30:51

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has determined that an insufficient preventative maintenance program and lack of guidance for responding to engine high-temperature conditions, led to the January 14, 2018, fire on board the small passenger vessel Island Lady, in the waters of the Pithlachascotee River, near Port Ritchey, Florida. The Island Lady was a 72-foot-long passenger vessel operated by Tropical Breeze Casino Cruz, used to shuttle passengers and company employees to and from the casino boat Tropical Breeze...

Bering Sea has Record Low Winter Ice

By MarEx 2018-12-11 18:07:05

NOAA has released its annual report card on the Arctic, highlighting that the region experienced the second-warmest air temperatures ever recorded; the second-lowest overall sea-ice coverage; the lowest recorded winter ice in the Bering Sea and earlier plankton blooms due to early melting of sea ice in the Bering Sea. Declining Arctic sea ice: The 2018 Arctic Report Card found the Arctic region had the second-lowest overall sea-ice coverage on record. The...

Yamal LNG Reaches Full Capacity

By MarEx 2018-12-11 17:48:31

The Yamal LNG project reached full capacity on December 11, with the inauguration of the plant’s third LNG train. Yamal LNG is comprised of three liquefaction trains with a total nameplate capacity of 16.5 mmtpa, or 5.5 mmtpa per LNG train. The project is supported by a fleet of Arc7 ice-class tankers supplemented by lower ice-class designated tankers to transport LNG cargoes. More than 100 LNG cargoes have been offloaded with approximately 7.5 million tons of LNG produced and delivered...

Saipem's Servers Hit by Cyberattack

By MarEx 2018-12-11 17:25:44

In a brief public statement issued Monday, Italian subsea engineering and oil services firm Saipem announced that it had detected an attack on its regional server systems in the Middle East. "We are collecting all the elements useful for assessing the impact on our infrastructures and the actions to be taken to restore normal activities," the firm said. "We are also in the process of notifying the report of the incident to the competent authorities." Saipem officials told Bloomberg that...

Hong Kong is the World’s Top City Destination

By MarEx 2018-12-11 16:55:22

Global market research company Euromonitor International has released its Top 100 City Destinations 2018 ranking report, covering the world’s leading cities ranked by international tourist arrivals. The ranking shows that six out of the top 10 most visited cities in 2017 are in Asia, with Hong Kong and Bangkok as the top two performers and with Singapore, Macau, Kuala Lumpur and Shenzhen in the global top 10. Asia accounted for 41 out of the top 100 cities globally in 2018,...

Duplicate Invoice Payments Need Not Happen!

By Mark Franklin 2018-12-11 16:14:22

Duplicate payments on invoices occur far more frequently than most organizations realize. According to Concur.com, a typical small business processes approximately 450 invoices in a busy month and experiences an invoice duplication rate of around one percent. This doesn’t sound much, but it means about six duplicate invoices are received monthly. Some of these then get approved and paid, with a 2015 Infor.com study concluding that duplicate payments happen in up to 0.1...