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UK helicopter pilot touts far-flung travel to likes of Afghanistan
Gillian Duncan
If you are bored with the same old holiday snaps from the Seychelles and fancy seeing somewhere a bit different this summer, a new tour company based in Dubai could be for you.
Offbeatours is offering adventur-ous travellers the chance to holiday in areas such as Afghanistan, Yem-en and the Kurdish region of Iraq.
The company was started by Dav-id Butler, a British helicopter pilot who has lived in Dubai for 15 years and visits the destinations offered by his tour company.
“I get more out of trips to these places than I do going to other places. I find them fascinating, in-teresting and I love going to a place which you read so much about and when you get there it’s different,” he said.
“Most of the people are just going about their normal daily lives. You meet some great people and these particular initial three destinations are scenic and culturally different of course and have a lot of history, both modern and ancient.”
Tours in Afghanistan are accom-panied with security and focus on safer parts such as Panjshir Val-ley, which is still littered with the wreckage of Soviet armoured cars from the country’s invasion dur-
ing the Cold War. “Yemen, I tell you, it is absolutely fascinating. If you go there you will think there is absolutely nowhere else like this on Earth. When I went three weeks ago it was specifically to look at the mountain villages which I am ad-vertising,” said Mr Butler.
“You go up into the mountains where these villages are built on places which you would think were the most inaccessible places ever to put a village or a town and there they are stuck up on top of a moun-tain peak.”
He said he did not feel threatened at any point during the trip, but there are many checkpoints dot-ted around and travelling requires passes from the police.
“You end up with a huge wad of them because every checkpoint has got to have a copy of the pass,” said Mr Butler.
A five-day itinerary in Yemen costs a little more than Dh2,000 (US$544). Kurdish Iraq, which is the most expensive destination at about Dh 3,500 for a five-day trip, is completely safe, he said.
Mr Butler hopes to add a tour in Kalash Valley, in the north-west of Pakistan, soon. “To me it was the most fascinating trip I did last year,” he said. But is it safe?
“If you read the [UK] foreign and commonwealth office travel ad-vice, no. In my opinion, yes. If you are a foreigner you have to register with the police and they provide you with an armed guard to go with you all the time for your stay.”
Tour operator in Dubai goes off beaten path
b TheNational
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inside
Company hit by North American prices and UK oilfield disruption
Florian Neuhof
Profits at Abu Dhabi National Ener-gy Company fell last year as North American gas prices and disrupted oil production in the United King-dom contrasted with solid results by the company’s power and water business.
Net profit dropped 13 per cent to Dh648 million (US$176.4m), while revenue increased 15 per cent to Dh27.8 billion.
The government-controlled com-pany, known as Taqa, has been stung by the shale gas revolution in the United States and Canada, where the company is producing gas. The increased supply has sent prices tumbling. Taqa responded by slimming its North American gas portfolio, shedding low margin assets and buying into more profit-able fields.
“While we have continued to en-dure a tough pricing environment in North America, there is reason for some optimism, as prices have recovered from their low point,” said Carl Sheldon, Taqa’s chief executive. “Nonetheless, we have taken decisive action to restructure our North American business.”
The company divested assets in Canada worth Dh1.8bn, and in-vested Dh569m in new production sites. Capital expenditure in North America for this year has been cut by 30 per cent.
Production at Taqa’s North Sea oilfields declined 3 per cent on the year after a leak at the Cormorant Alpha platform forced a shutdown at the site. Cormorant Alpha’s 10,000 barrel per day (bpd) remain shut in, but Taqa’s other North Sea wells are pumping again after the company resumed operation of the North Sea Brent pipeline.
Nevertheless, oil and gas revenue increased by Dh22m to Dh12bn.
ShaleĝgasĝrevolutionĝdrainsĝTaqaĝprofits
Khalifa Port is preparing to take delivery of a second batch of automated cranes to meet rising demand. The port has been operating for six months. Karim Sahib / AFP
Taqa,ĝcontinuedĝonĝb2ĝ→
1.30
1.45
1.40
1.35
2 Jan 13 13 Mar 13
Taqa (Dh/share)
1.34
Source: Bloomberg News
Shootingĝstar
Tom Arnold
Abu Dhabi Ports Company expects to handle more than one million containers this year, up 20 to 30 per cent from last year, as Khalifa Port widens the gateway for trade.
More than six months after open-ing, Khalifa Port is preparing to take delivery of a second batch of automated cranes to meet rising demand, said Tony Douglas, the chief executive of ADPC.
Geared as the first fully auto-mated dockyard in the region, the Taweelah-based deepwater terminal has taken over from the ageing and crowded Port Zayed as the emirate’s principle sea-trade terminal.
“The first six months have been remarkable,” he said. “Since mid-December all of the operations have been here. The port has been spectacularly successful in our opinion, as not only has it been able to facilitate a far faster transi-tion [from Port Zayed] than was en-visioned but it gives us the ability to grow.” The port will cross the mile-stone of more than 1 million stand-ard containers units later this year, said Mr Douglas.
“We are looking to grow 20 to 30 per cent this year against a back-drop of 3 to 4 per cent growth in the global industry,” he said. After
opening on September 1, ADPC had allowed a six-month window for the transfer of shipping lines from Port Zayed to Port Khalifa.
But the transition has been much faster. Mr Douglas said shipping companies helped to speed up the move once it became clear the port would not face any teething prob-lems.
One of the big draws for exporters from Khalifa Port is the time sav-ings from the reduction in paper-work required compared with the old port. Radio frequency identity tags on containers and lorries com-ing in and out of the facility and on-line registering of shipments make the customs process speedier.
The growth in trade volume also reflects a rapid increase in output by two of the emirate’s biggest exporters: Emirates Aluminium (Emal) and Borouge.
Longer-term, ADPC is counting on a steady stream of business from tenants of Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (Kizad), which en-circles the port.
“We’ve been pleasantly surprised by interest in Kizad,” said Mr Doug-las. “We are in commercial discus-sions with over 60 per cent of avail-able land in zone A, which is 51,000 square kilometres.”
OneĝmillionĝcontainersĝthisĝyearĝforĝĝKhalifaĝPortĝ‘First six months have been remarkable’ CEO forecasts growth of up to 30% over 2012 for the emirate’s cutting-edge facility
analysisApril Yee
Suhail Mohamed Al Mazrouei, the newly named UAE oil minister, will be the youngest among his Opec colleagues – junior by a dozen years to his Qatari colleague and by half a century to his Saudi counter-part.
His youth is just one of the ele-ments that make him an unusual choice for energy ministers in the UAE’s short history – a choice that symbolises the new direction Abu Dhabi wants to take in fuelling growth.
In 1973, shortly after the UAE’s unification, the post was given to Mana Al Otaiba, who was a prized asset in his young nation as one of a small group of university gradu-ates. A Baghdad University scholar, he ushered in a breath of transpar-ency to a secretive industry when he published all the oil contracts signed in the UAE through the ear-ly 1980s.
The outgoing minister, Moham-med Al Hamli, came from a life-long career at Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), taking on increasing responsibility from finances for the emirate’s main money-maker to management of offshore fields, and as a respected elder, he served on several boards including the powerful Supreme Petroleum Council. Always a welcome sight for oil reporters, he delivered his slow, measured comments from behind a neatly
trimmed moustache. Mr Al Maz-rouei, by contrast, began his career at Adnoc but, like the smartest among today’s generation of Emi-ratis, gained international experi-ence through secondments with Royal Dutch Shell in the North Sea, Nigeria and Brunei.
The 39-year-old will be the only Arab Opec minister to have expe-rience at a foreign company, and the locations where he worked are notable for the lessons they can of-fer the UAE in how to milk the most out of ageing fields and maintain gas production. He moved on to head new business development as the deputy chief executive of Mubadala Petroleum, where Mau-rizio La Noce, the chief executive, praised him for “his intellectual capabilities, his vision and fore-sight and his diplomatic skills”.
His work in bringing on new projects in gas exploration in East Africa and a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal in Fujai-rah will be key components of his remit as minister, along with domestic solar powered plants and an ambitious new nuclear programme that is the first to be launched by any country since Chernobyl. The multibillion dollar investments are part of a new strat-egy for meeting the UAE’s power needs: not by building power plants to burn gas produced inside the country, but to import fuel, whether LNG or uranium rods.
“They’re used to the [independ-ent power plants] being success-ful, but now the issue is increasing capacity through fuel imports and how is that done,” said Christo-pher Gunson, an oil and gas lawyer at Pillsbury, the American firm. “Thinking about a new energy min-ister who comes from an IOC [inter-national oil company] background who knows more about the global markets, that makes sense to me.”
Sultan Al Mehairi, the director of marketing and refining at Adnoc who serves in the Opec delegation, hoped Mr Al Mazrouei could bring “some dynamic ideas.”
“Of course we’re going to miss Hamli, but change is part of our life, and change does not mean a negative thing – it can bring posi-tive things,” said Mr Al Mehairi. “I think he understands the business and he’s capable to lead in the fu-ture.”
New oil minister brings youthful zeal together with worldly view
Thinking about a new energy minister who comes from an IOC background, who knows more about the global markets, makes sense to meChristopher Gunson oil and gas lawyer, Pillsbury
ADPC,ĝcontinuedĝonĝb2ĝ→
CommentISXĝsurvivesĝtoĝthriveThe Iraq Stock Exchange is far from perfect, but on Iraqi terms, the ISX is a paragon of institu-tion building. When it reopened in 2004 there were just 15 companies listed on the market. There are now 88. b3
TransportSailĝpowerĝtoĝre-emergeĝĝWith its tall masts and billowing sails, the Tres Hombres evokes the romance of the long-gone age of sea travel. Yet this brigantine, or twin-masted ship, could serve as a beacon for a renaissance of sail in global cargo trade. b6
06 Thursday, March 14, 2013 www.thenational.ae The National business
With its tall masts and billowing sails, the Tres Hombres evokes the romance of the long-gone age of sea travel.
Yet this brigantine, or twin-mast-ed ship, could serve as a beacon for a renaissance of sail in global cargo trade.
The 32 metre-long vessel, with a ca-pacity of 35 tonnes and a crew of up to 15, ploughs the Atlantic between Europe, America and the Caribbean region carrying cargoes such as cof-fee, cocoa, chocolate and rum, all stamped with a label informing buy-ers the products travelled thousands of miles without generating a gram of carbon dioxide emissions, the greenhouse gas blamed by many for global warming.
It has been sailing since 2009 after undergoing a major refit by three Dutch sailors who bought the com-posite steel and wooden hull of a German auxiliary naval ship built in 1943 during the Second World War.
Given the trend towards ever-larg-er vessels, with ports around the world being dredged to accommo-date leviathans capable of carrying 18,000 or even 20,000 standard car-go containers, one might think that the contribution of sailing ships to global freight transport can only ever amount to a drop in the ocean; that it’s just a dream of green ideal-ists with a passion for the sea.
After all, there was a commercial reason why sailing cargo ships van-ished from the world’s oceans more than a century ago. Setting and reefing the sails required too much manpower, and the absence of wind made no difference to engine-pow-ered ships.
Yet the commercial backers of Tres Hombres, along with marine architects and engineers around the world, are convinced sail power will re-emerge as an important fac-tor in cargo shipping of the 21st century, thanks to rising fuel prices and mounting pressure to curb car-bon emissions from ship engines.
“Wind propulsion will play a great role in the future, if not in two years’ time then in 25 years’ time,” says Guillaume Le Grand, 31, the found-er of Trans Oceanic Wind Trans-port, a French freight company that works with Tres Hombres and a small fleet of other sailing ships.
“Man in the 21st century will have to rediscover sail and capitalise on new technologies now available to make it efficient.”
Mr Le Grand says he sees using existing sailing ships for transport-ing cargo as an important first step to raise awareness among the pub-lic and potential investors that the concept is economically feasible, even though current vessels are not very fast, do not sail upwind very easily, need a relatively large crew and are slow to load and unload.
His company has developed a green shipping label that allows buyers to track the journey the goods take and is expanding distri-bution networks for sail-shipped products through eco-friendly stores.
“Just two or three years ago sail shipping was regarded as some-thing for lunatics, just like organic food producers were dismissed as crazy 40 years ago,” says Mr Le Grand. But retailers are now showing a growing interest in sail-shipped goods.
“We’re building something out of the blue. It’s important to have something concrete now to make decision-makers understand it does exist and that we are in need of support and a technology break.”
Various designs for modern, au-tomated sailing ships are on draw-ing boards around the world but they have found little backing from investors so far, possibly because the pressure for change is not high enough yet.
There is currently no international regulation of greenhouse gas emis-sions from ships, even though the world’s fleets belch out some 1,000 million tonnes of CO2 per year, ac-counting for about 3 per cent of glo-bal CO2 emissions. More than 90 per cent of the world’s trade is car-ried by sea.
But tougher rules are in the off-ing. The European Commission has said it is considering several options to cut shipping emissions, such as a fuel or carbon tax, manda-tory emissions reductions per ship or inclusion in the emissions trad-ing system (ETS). The aviation sec-
tor was included in the ETS from the start of last year.
The International Maritime Or-ganisation (IMO), a UN agency, has been imposing cuts in the sulphur content of shipping fuel, which causes acid rain and an array of health problems in humans. The next round of those cuts is due to come into force in 2015. The ex-haust fumes created by the heavy oil cause an estimated 50,000 deaths every year in Europe alone.
Shipping fuel prices have risen six-fold over the past decade – and the low-sulphur oil ships are increas-ingly being required to burn is some 60 per cent more expensive than conventional fuel. Many shipping lines have responded by ordering their fleets to save fuel on the high seas by slowing down – but they are going to have to embrace new tech-nologies to wean themselves off fos-sil fuels.
One sail innovation, the Dyna-rig, was developed back in the 1960s by the German engineer Wilhelm Prölss. The square sails are stored inside the mast and are automati-cally unfurled along the yards at the push of a button. The masts can be rotated to allow the ship to make optimal use of the wind.
The system is already in use in a luxury yacht, The Maltese Falcon, and is one option being consid-ered by Dykstra, a Dutch company designing the planned Ecoliner, an ambitious project to create an 8,200-tonne sailing cargo vessel.
“We do get a sense that this is the future, we don’t have a signed con-tract yet but we do think there’s a lot of interest in the project,” says Daan Sparreboom, a naval architect at Dykstra.
“The Ecoliner is meant as a multi-purpose ship. It will be able to take containers, which can be placed on the deck or in the cargo hold but conventional container ships use cranes and with the masts that will be less practical, so we’re trying to
design it as a multi-purpose cargo ship for things like bulk goods or machine parts,” says Mr Sparre-boom. It would be able to carry 476 standard containers.
The Ecoliner could be equipped with an engine that would work in conjunction with the sails.
“When there’s little wind you can use the engine to increase the speed of the ship and this extra speed gives you more wind in the sails,” says Mr Sparreboom.
“The sails benefit from the use of the engine.”
The Dyna-rig is only one of the pro-pulsion options being considered for the Ecoliner. Another is the so-called Flettner rotor, designed by the German inventor Anton Flet-tner in the 1920s.
It is a tall vertical cylinder that rotates in the wind and thereby transmits energy to propel the ship. The technology is already in use on E-Ship 1, a cargo vessel owned by Germany’s Enercon, a wind turbine manufacturer, and has been in op-eration since 2010.
Another idea, developed by the Japanese start-up Eco Marine Pow-
er, consists of a rigid sail design incorporating solar panels so the vessels could generate energy even when in port. The company says its Aquarius Eco Ship concept could lead to fuel savings of 40 per cent or more.
In Britain, B9 Shipping, part of the B9 Energy Group, is designing a 3,000-tonne wind-powered cargo carrier with three 55-metre masts, and a biogas engine fuelled by or-ganic waste.
In Germany, the inventor Stephan Wrage came up with the idea of a giant kite as an auxiliary propul-sion system for cargo ships. Steered automatically, it enables a ship to save up to two tonnes of fuel per day in perfect wind conditions, Mr Wrage says. The IMO calculates Mr Wrage’s Skysails technology could eliminate up to 100 million tonnes of CO2 emissions a year – or 11 per-cent of Germany’s CO2 emissions.
The system has already been fit-ted on four vessels and an upgraded version will be installed this year on the Aghia Marina, a 28,500-tonne dry bulk cargo vessel chartered by the Cargill group.
Mr Wrage says the shipping indus-try has underestimated the political will of international authorities to tackle maritime CO2 emissions and will need to invest heavily in lower-ing its carbon footprint in the com-ing years.
“I don’t think the industry is suffi-ciently prepared for what’s about to happen,” he says.
“People keep saying the emissions curbs will keep on getting delayed but I don’t think so. Things could get uncomfortable for some com-panies in the coming years.”
Wind power can not propel the biggest container ships but that fleet makes up only 10 per cent of the world’s maritime fleet.
“The backbone of the global econ-omy is made up of freighters and tankers of all sizes, many of which would be suited to wind power pro-pulsion,” says Mr Wrage.
“Wind is simply the cheapest source of energy on the high seas and it makes no economic sense not to use it. Everybody’s talking about offshore wind in power gen-eration. Well, ships are offshore by nature so there’s no reason why wind power shouldn’t play a huge role.”
But Mr Le Grand believes inves-tors are still too cautious to back a project as big as the Ecoliner.
“I am convinced that an interme-diate step will have to happen first, so that the next five years or so will see the development of smaller modern cargo sailing ships that will eventually make the Ecoliner pos-sible.”
Noting that the UAE has a strong focus on investing in green technol-ogy, he adds: “Investors there need to get in touch with us.
“If you want to invest strategically in the future, give us a call. Shipping things by sail is something that is not only credible – it is also neces-sary for all of us to survive.”
Wind set fair for sail power’s returnAs operating costs continue to soar and the pressure on the cargo shipping industry to curb carbon dioxide emissions intensifies, an altogether more gentle alternative to fossil fuel looks increasingly attractive, David Crossland, Foreign Correspondent, writes from Berlin
Future
The Tres Hombres, a twin-masted sailing ship, transports cargo across the Atlantic between Europe, America and the Caribbean. Courtesy TOWT – Michel Floch
15
14
5
0
-5
-10
-15
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012* 2013* 2014* 2015* 2016* 2017*
World trade volume and GDP – growth rate (% change year on year)* ForecastGDP, constant priceVolume of imported goods
Source: BIMCO
Commerce
A rendering of the Ecoliner, a concept for a modern cargo sailing ship being developed by the Dutch firm Dykstra. Courtesy of Dykstra Naval Architects
The wind of change is blowing for the world’s biggest container shipping company – although a switch to sail power is unlikely.
Maersk Line will stop using the Panama Canal to transport goods from Asia to the US east coast as ever bigger ships help the company move them profit-ably through Suez Canal.
Maersk Line will send through the Suez Canal a vessel that can carry as many as 9,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) at a time, instead of using two 4,500-container vessels through the Panama Canal, says Soeren Skou, the chief executive. The last sailing through Panama will be on April 7 and the first service through Suez a week later.
“The economics are much, much better via the Suez Canal simply because you have half the number of ships,” Mr Skou says. “At the end of the day, it comes down to cost.”
Shipping companies, includ-ing Maersk Line and Neptune Orient Lines, have cut costs, reduced the speed of their fleet and sold some vessels to con-tend with freight rates that are below break-even levels. Maersk Line, based in Denmark, which is taking delivery in June of an 18,000-TEU vessel – the world’s biggest when it enters service – has said pressure on charges will remain this year.
The company finds it more cost-effective to send larger ships through the United States, even if it means the ships need to sail longer, Mr Skou says.
“The practice of using bigger ships through Suez Canal rather than Panama Canal will likely be followed by other carriers,” says Bonnie Chan, an analyst at Mac-quarie Group who is based in Hong Kong. “This gives shipping companies a bit more flexibility in managing capacity.”
The number of container ships crossing the Suez Canal fell 12 per cent to 6,332 last year, ac-cording to the waterway’s au-thority. A total of 17,225 ships of all types travelled the link between the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Suez last year. The Panama Canal was used by 3,331 container ships last year, up from 3,253 in 2011, the ca-nal authority says. There were 12,862 total crossings.
Fees for ships to go through the Panama Canal have tripled in the past five years to US$450,000 (Dh1.6 million) per passage for a vessel carrying 4,500 containers, Mr Skou says. Last month, the Suez Canal Authority announced canal toll increases that would be effective from May, according to the Asian Shipowners’ Forum.
A $5.25 billion expansion of the Panama Canal, the waterway handling 5 per cent of global trade, will open by June 2015, six months later than originally planned. The canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Whether Maersk will use the Panama Canal after the expan-sion will depend on the econom-ics, says Mr Skou.
* withĝBloombergĝNews
MaerskĝdropsĝPanamaĝinĝfavourĝofĝtheĝSuezĝCanal
12%decline in the number of container ships using the
Suez Canal last year
the number
ATransportindustry insights
