All right, Ryan Petersen here from Flexport. Welcome back. We're going to do a quick spin around the world in Flexport Atlas to see what the AI news feed has detected today. And it's always eventful out there keeping us in logistics and business. Our job is to identify these disruptions and help customers to route around them. And AI, as you're going to see right now, is making that much easier. We can get a sense for what's happening. Of course, Suez is probably the place to start.
And here you have attacks, US redirecting ships. The blockade is ongoing. I guess the news here is that Iran and Oman both put out this text. They haven't actually disclosed the text, but they've kind of talked about it, which is they're saying they've got they're going to put in tolls on the strait. The United States is not going to agree to this under the UN. Well, I shouldn't say that for sure. Maybe the Trump administration will go along, but under the UN law of the sea, no country can impose tolls on an open strait and the sea. You can do it on a canal because they built the canals in Suez and Panama, but they can't do it in the open strait like the Strait of Hormuz.
If they did so and the US allowed it, it would be very bad precedent for all the other maritime choke points. I mean, I guess the Houthis will be next, right? Or the Strait of Malacca over here. A few countries might do that. So, not good for those of us who like doing trade globally. Now, the United States has not nor Iran. We have not signed that. We haven't ratified the law of the sea. However, the United States treats it as established international law and in fact we are the primary guarantors of freedom of navigation. So, that one we're going to be monitoring very closely as you know the whole world will be watching.
All right, so let's keep spinning this earth. We've got an explosion near a tanker off Oman. Just sounds like it was near a tanker. But this one is much worse. An oil spill sank after a Russian-linked vessel exploded. So that's quite interesting because it's a Russian-linked vessel which implies that it was hit by the Americans. I don't know if Iran is going to be blowing up a Russian vessel, but maybe it was a mistake. Who knows? Don't have great intel, fog of war being what it is.
Okay. Now, we have an Indian cargo vessel that was sunk in the Red Sea near Hodeidah. I don't know where that is. But yeah, Atlas is saying it's down here. So maybe for all 14 crew members were rescued. So, God bless, save our souls. Thanks to the rescuers there. We also have Houthi attack on a Saudi tanker. So, this area is hot hot. And then the Saudis have created a new coalition to protect Red Sea shipping.
Good luck with that. We need it. Need your help. And then this is the one I talked about last week where a drone struck an LNG ship and a floating oil storage unit owned by a US company presumably. The Iranians striking all the way over here. This is also why I just don't really believe these plans are good ones where they're saying, "Hey, we can just route around the Strait of Hormuz." Saudi's got a pipeline going this way. UAE is talking about building up this port here called Fujairah. I'm probably pronouncing that wrong, but they're talking about building that because it's outside the Strait of Hormuz.
But like if Iran is sending missiles to strike over here, it can definitely reach right over here. So very skeptical of that. We saw last week that Ukraine had struck a ship in the Caspian Sea. So the range on these things is getting crazy.
Okay, speaking of Ukraine, let's head over to the Black Sea and see what's going on. We have a container ship that sank. This one here called Yana. And it says, what does it say here? There were several ships hit. A bunch of them were not container ships. One was a roll-on, roll-off. That's a car carrier. And then this one, Yana, is a container ship that sank.
The reporting doesn't say, it says a seafarer was killed in this article. Three seriously injured. Yeah. So, rough day to be a sailor in the Black Sea. This is kind of more of the same in the Ukraine area. Tragedy.
All right, let's head over here. This is, yeah, Rhine River barges. The Rhine River has water shortages right now, which is kind of common in the summertime. But you've got a lot of containers, a lot of other types of cargo move inland on the various rivers, the Rhine, the Elbe being two big ones in Europe, as well as the Danube coming from this side, from the Black Sea side. So, that's going to cause quite a bit of disruption. We switch to rail, we switch to trucking, that happens. The barge is much cheaper and often more reliable.
So what else is going on here? Oh, Port of Rotterdam strike starting September 4th. So that'll be a big deal. Biggest port in Europe, but we've got about a month to resolve that. So hopefully it never actually happens. This is the one in the UK, the crane that collapsed. They're starting to recover from that.
All right, let's keep meandering along here. Keep spinning the earth. We've got what is happening down here in Portugal. It's red. Box ship seizing five tons of cocaine on a Maersk ship. The operation involved international cooperation, led to the arrest of two stowaways and a crew member. The arrested crew member was later found dead in his jail cell. Whoa.
Oh, there's a video. All right, I'm going to watch that later. Not going to make you watch a video with me. Probably be boring news. All right. If they had video of the actual cocaine bust, we would watch it for sure, but I bet it's just someone talking about it.
What's happening in Kenya? Oh, no. This is the Somali pirates. I think we already mentioned that. Holding hostages. They've been holding them. It's going to be three months now. So, it is rough out there.
Baltimore. Let's see what's happening in Baltimore. Fatal accident. Longshore worker David Dion Smith. RIP. The incident involved Smith being struck by equipment during cargo handling operation. First work-related fatality at the port in 20 years. Prayers for the family.
Okay, now let's go down here. What do we have? Cyber attack in North Carolina at the Port of Wilmington. The attack has been contained. Recovery efforts are ongoing. Customers should anticipate delays despite normal gate schedules. Yikes. We've had so many cyber attacks. I saw Maersk got attacked, had a cyber attack at warehouses last week in Belgium.
Houston collision due to pilot distraction. The tug vessel Miss Peggy was attributed to the pilot's distraction during a 39-minute nonoperational phone call. He was on the phone while driving a ship. Come on, man.
What else we got here? Port of Long Beach plans a Vincent Thomas bridge overhaul. That's good. Good news. We're investing in our infra. What else is the other story here? There's two stories. I'm trying to get to the other one.
LBCT clears container backlog. All right, that's good news. Shouldn't all be bad. We are going to come down here. Panama Canal draft restrictions. We've covered this a few times. It's going to get worse. El Niño is supposed to be like the worst in a thousand years. They're trying to scare us with that, but do expect Panama Canal to not have enough fresh water to operate at full capacity this year. And that's already starting later this month.
In fact, what is Maersk peak season surcharges? That's quite normal. We'll see if they hold. There's peak season charges all over the world.
Argentina pilot strike ends. Okay, the pilots have gone on strike and that's been resolved in Argentina. Good news. Did I miss anywhere? Asia. Oh, this is probably that other strike that we covered last week. Strike threatens BHP exports from Port Hedland. Yeah. Okay.
Taiwan. This is going to be the typhoon, super typhoon Dolphin, and then same here. Now this is quite interesting. Good news: Port of Shanghai set a new record for daily container throughput, 170,000 TEUs in one day. Damn. That's because the typhoon caused a disruption and now they're clearing the backlog and cranking at all cylinders.
Okay. And then yeah, back to Bangladesh where you've got cargo logjam disruption. So I think that's it. We covered the whole world. What's happening in Madagascar? New STS cranes. Well STS, that's the same company that had the crane that we just covered up in the UK that collapsed. So those in Madagascar, they're not worried about that. They're unfazed. Going to go buy some more cranes from STS.
All right. Another whirlwind day in global logistics disruption brought to you by Flexport Atlas. Go check it out. It's atlas.flexport.com. This is a free service. You don't need to wait for my coverage and commentary. Although, I hope you enjoy it. Have a great day.
