Great Lakes Coal Shipments Off To A Slow Start

Great Lakes coal shipments have limped off to a slow start this year. In March, only one laker loaded coal at the Midwest Energy Resources Co. terminal in Superior, compared with 10 to 15 vessels in years past.

Throughout the Great Lakes, only three shiploads of coal were delivered in March, according to the Lake Carriers’ Association. In all, 116,259 tons of coal were shipped by water in March — 7.4 percent of what moved on the lakes during the same month last year.

At least some coal was moving in March, whereas not a single iron ore pellet shipment left the Twin Ports that month.

“I don’t remember that ever happening before,” said Jim Sharrow, facilities manager for the Duluth Seaway Port Authority.

There was little incentive for an aggressive launch of this year’s shipping season, said Fred Shusterich, Midwest Energy’s president. The demand for lakers this year is significantly weaker because of the economic slowdown and the fact that steel mills are operating at just 40 to 45 percent of capacity.

“The ice was pretty bad, but there was also no need to go out early, because boats don’t have a full season of work lined up. All you’d do is ding up your boats for no good reason,” Shusterich said.

Last year, lakers sustained more than $1.3 million in ice-related damage, according to the Lake Carriers’ Association.

The association, which represents the operators of U.S.-flagged vessels on the Great Lakes, used the slow start this season as an opportunity to lobby for more investment by the federal government in icebreakers.

“It is unfortunate that the U.S. Coast Guard’s icebreaking assets on the Great Lakes are inadequate to meet the needs of commerce,” association President James Weakley said in a prepared statement Thursday.

“We know the crews on those icebreakers do the very best they can, but five of the Coast Guard’s eight icebreaking assets were built in the late 1970s, and experience shows they are prone to mechanical problems,” he said. “Two other vessels were not designed with icebreaking as their primary mission.”

Weakley added: “A vessel operator will not send a freighter that cost tens of millions of dollars into heavy ice when there is no assurance that icebreaking assets will be able to maintain the shipping lanes and respond in a timely manner to a vessel beset in ice.”

He called on lawmakers to support the Great Lakes Icebreaker Replacement Act, introduced by U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., which would provide money for the construction of a sister ship to the Coast Guard’s largest Great Lakes icebreaker, the Mackinaw.

Source: Duluth News-Tribune