With the British government’s announced plan to increase the windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas producers to 38% from 35% and extend the levy by one year, a move to fund renewable energy projects, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to implore the UK to “open up” the British North Sea and get rid of windmills.

“The U.K. is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of Windmills!” Trump’s post said.

As Monday, January 20, 2025 grows closer — inauguration day for the incoming U.S. Administration — this message resonates through the small but growing U.S. wind farm industry, too.

Trump’s post was in response to a report about U.S. oil and gas producer APA Corp’s unit Apache’s plans to exit the North Sea by year-end 2029. The company expects North Sea production to fall by 20% year over year in 2025.

Oil companies have been steadily exiting the North Sea in recent decades, with production declining from a peak of 4.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day at the start of the millennium to around 1.3 million boed today.

Meanwhile, the Labor government aims to quadruple offshore wind generation by 2030 to 60 gigawatts.

The North Sea has seen major offshore wind farm development by Britain…

Mining company Rio Tinto has reported that a deck fitter on board its bulk carrier RTM Zheng He, travelling from China to Western Australia, went missing.

A deck fitter, named Gel Aguaviva, was reported missing on December 26, 2024.

Rio Tinto said an extensive and ongoing search and rescue operation has been conducted over the past seven days, with the company working in collaboration with RTM Zheng He ship and crew manager, Anglo Eastern, and relevant authorities.

The Philippine Coast Guard is leading the search and rescue operation.

“Our thoughts are with Gel’s family, friends and colleagues, and we stand with everyone affected by this distressing situation. We are focused on offering all possible support during this difficult time.

“We would like to thank everyone involved in the search for their tireless efforts,” said Jakob Stausholm, Rio Tinto Chief Executive.

RTM Zheng He was in international waters near the Philippines when Aguaviva was reported missing.

Rio Tinto noted it is co-operating fully with relevant authorities and the ship’s manager on investigations into the incident, as well as conducting its own investigations.

2024 was another busy and eventful year for the Irish Coast Guard. 

The year in figures:

• The 44 Coast Guard Units were mobilised on 1,154 separate occasions this year;
• Coast Guard Helicopters conducted 752 missions;
• Critical assistance was provided to 537 persons (preventing loss of life, and/or delivery to appropriate medical care);
• Coast Guard helicopters conducted 134 air ambulance flights in support of the offshore island communities;
• Royal National Lifeboat Institution lifeboats were launched on 699 occasions; and
• Community inshore rescue service was launched  for 73 taskings in 2024.

Throughout the year, the Coast Guard coordinated 2,554 incidents which included search and rescue, maritime casualty responses and pollution and preparedness responses. The 44 Irish Coast Guard Units were mobilised on 1,154 occasions over the past 12 months. The Irish Coast Guard continued to support communities across the country by providing 134 air ambulance flights in support of the offshore island communities.

The Irish Coast Guard provided critical assistance to 537 people over 2024, preventing loss of life and/or delivering people to appropriate medical care. It also collaborated with the wider search and rescue community throughout 2024, with the three Irish…

Ukrainian military intelligence said one of its naval drones had destroyed a Russian helicopter and damaged another one in the Black Sea.

In a battle near Cape Tarkhankut on Crimea’s west coast on Tuesday, a Magura V5 maritime drone equipped with missiles hit a Russian Mi-8 helicopter, Ukraine’s GUR spy agency said on Telegram.

GUR said it was the first time a Ukrainian naval drone had downed an air target. Reuters could not independently verify the report.

There was no comment from Moscow on the helicopter. Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Telegram its Black Sea Fleet destroyed eight unmanned drone vessels.

The downing of a Russian helicopter by a Ukrainian naval drone was also reported by the prominent Russian military blogger, Voenny Osvedomitel. The GUR said a second Russian helicopter managed to get to the airfield after it was damaged in the attack.

‘In grainy footage released by GUR, a helicopter flying over water could be seen targeted by several projectiles. The aircraft is filmed falling down after the attack. Reuters could not immediately verify the video.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has ramped up drone production and developed naval attack drones.
Kyiv’s military has used maritime drones to strike…

Muddy Water Dredging’s new cutter suction dredge (CSD) Vaneta Marie “represents the future of dredging technology”, according to Bill Wetta, senior vice president, and chief technology officer of DSC Dredge, the Reserve, La. based company that built the dredge, and one of Maritime Reporter & Engineering News’ ‘Great Ships of 2024.’

Christened during a ceremony in New Orleans earlier this year, Vaneta Marie is a fully customized Marlin Class dredge that measures 371 ft. long, making it one of the longest in its category.

Boasting the capability to dredge a 400-ft.-wide cut with an 80-degree swing arc, it sets a new standard for operational efficiency, enhancing productivity by 5.9%. Furthermore, its customizable design features a detachable carriage barge, enabling seamless adaptation to various working environments.  

“Vaneta Marie was specifically built for a certain set of projects in the Gulf Coast area, primarily the Calcasieu River, although it will actually work from Galveston all the way to Pensacola,” Wetta said. The dredge will perform “mostly navigational maintenance-type work, where material is not that deep, but it tends to be more in the corners of the channel, where movement becomes really important.”

“[Muddy Water…

Finnish authorities are moving an impounded tanker closer to port after boarding the vessel carrying Russian oil earlier this week on suspicion it had damaged an undersea power line and four telecoms cables.

Baltic Sea nations have been on high alert after a string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and NATO said on Friday it would boost its presence in the region.

The Cook Islands-registered ship, named by authorities as the Eagle S, was boarded on Thursday by a Finnish coast guard crew that took command and sailed the vessel to Finnish waters, a coast guard official said.

Finnish police believe the Eagle S may have caused the damage to undersea cables the previous day by dragging its anchor along the seabed.
“The police begin an operation to transfer the Eagle S tanker from the Gulf of Finland to Svartbeck, an inner anchorage near the port of Kilpilahti,” the Helsinki police department said in a statement on Saturday.

This would be a better place to carry out investigations, it added.

Finland’s customs service believes the ship is part of a “shadow fleet” of ageing tankers being used to evade sanctions on the sale of Russian oil.
The Kremlin said on Friday Finland’s seizure of the ship…

Centuries-old international maritime law has to be updated to outlaw damage to undersea infrastructure such as cables and pipelines, the Estonian justice minister told Reuters after cables connecting it to Finland were again damaged this week.

Finnish authorities on Thursday seized a ship carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea on suspicion it caused the outage of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia a day earlier, and that it also damaged or broke four internet lines.

On Friday, the Estonian navy moved to protect a parallel power line.

The Estonian government has decided to apply to the International Maritime Organization by February to update the maritime law, which it says currently does not deal with underwater damage.

“We are interested in pushing the international maritime community to change or to modernize the international maritime law”, Justice Minister Liisa Pakosta said in an interview. She said that bringing clarity to the legislation on how countries are to deal with cases of underwater damage would “minimize” the possibility of any disputes ending up in an international court.

“The current maritime law, parts of which are centuries old, deals quite specifically with piracy, quite specifically with unauthorized…

A famous racecar driver once deadpanned, “That which is in the rearview mirror is not my concern.” 

Here in the inland marine industry, we also like to keep our eyes on the forward horizon, but it is also instructive to look back every now then, especially with measurable metrics at our fingertips. Fortunately, the American Waterways Operators (AWO) and the U.S. Coast Guard collaborate annually to measure such important things.

On August 5, 2024, AWO and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) issued their annual report that benchmarks and further serves as the annual safety report card for the domestic towing industry. It is a good time to look at these numbers, especially eight long years after the deadline for the so-called ‘subchapter M’ towboat rules to take effect. MarineNews last made these comparisons in October of 2018. Let’s look at what’s changed; and what has not.

The National Quality Steering Committee (NQSC) has always used three measures to track overall trends in safety and environmental protection. These useful indicators of towing industry trends include

1. Crew fatalities per 100,000 towing industry workers, 
2. Gallons of oil spilled from tank barges per million gallons transported, and 
3. The number and severity of towing vessel…

Cambodia’s former Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Friday that Japan would be granted visitation rights to the country’s Ream Naval Base, a facility the United States is concerned could become a military outpost for China.

Chinese military vessels have been rotating through Ream since a Beijing-funded upgrade started in June 2022. Cambodia has denied reports of a secret deal with China to station its forces at the base. The upgrade came after Cambodia demolished a U.S.-built facility at the base in Sihanoukville in 2020, having declined Washington’s offer to repair it.

Hun Sen, now Cambodia’s Senate president, announced the decision to grant U.S. ally Japan access during a visit by Akiba Takeo, its national security adviser.
According to a post on Hun Sen’s Facebook page that was accompanied by footage of their meeting, he praised the role of Japan in a region he said recognized the country as a good partner.

Ties between the United States and Cambodia have been strained in recent years, in part due to Phnom Penh’s strengthening alliance with Beijing and a sustained government crackdown that has decimated the political opposition. Hun Sen’s son, Hun Manet, a U.S.-educated graduate of the West Point military academy, succeeded his father as prime…