5 ms·

What kind of cargo may be worth paying $4M to skip the line? I assume it should either be something that perishes if not delivered on time, or something extreme

What kind of cargo may be worth paying $4M to skip the line? I assume it should either be something that perishes if not delivered on time, or something extremely critical overall.

jahnu 3y ago
400,000 bananas, Michael.
bombcar 3y ago
If a ship is carrying 20,000 containers $4m is only $200 a container.
expertentipp 3y ago
Smartphone cases and drugs.
Trias11 3y ago
[flagged]
theultdev 3y ago
> Eneos’ shipping division transports various commodities, including crude oil, liquefied petroleum gas, chemicals and bulk cargo.
mdeeks 3y ago
The Flexport CEO said it was an LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) carrier. https://x.com/typesfast/status/1724150162531201571?s=20 https://x.com/typesfast/status/1724150162531201571?s=20 Keep an eye on whats going on at the Panama Canal. An LNG carrier just paid $4 million to jump the line. This will likely be more common for LNG carriers as their cargo will literally boil off sitting in the hot tropical sun, but it will be interesting to see if container ships end up having to resort to similar measures as transits continue to be restricted due to the ongoing severe drought.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Presumably LNG ships have recondensors so they can burn some small proportion of the gas to power engines to run chillers to keep the rest cold?
  - gosub100 3y ago
    > some small proportion of the gas probably about $4MM/(anticipated duration of long wait) =)
- Smoosh 3y ago
  You would think that $4 would pay for some excellent refrigeration equipment. I wonder what the engineering compromises are for the LNG storage on these ships.
  - fuzzfactor 3y ago
    The chillers are a lot more than $4 million, more like billions, they are huge and located on shore or offshore at the point of loading: https://www.econnectenergy.com/articles/how-does-an-lng-plant-work https://www.econnectenergy.com/articles/how-does-an-lng-plan... LNG is almost all methane which is the lightest hydrocarbon. Methane is so light a gas that it does not liquefy even under thousands of PSI of compression. And at room temperature it only practically exists in a gas form, pressurized or not, so in that case it needs to be handled like oxygen or nitrogen, other light gases where the heavy-walled steel storage cylinders weigh more than the contents even at maximum pressure. You just can't get that many kilos of such light molecules into a certain space as a compressed gas compared to how dense a liquid gets. So they liquefy the gas instead before transport and that requires cryogenics rather than pressure. The chilled liquid can then be stored or transported in tanks of much thinner-walled steel since gas pressure is not a major issue. These low-pressure tanks are thickly insulated with lightweight materials to keep in the cold as much as possible. And unlike the heavy-walled things like the welders use for their pressurized oxygen, cryogenics are handled like the tanks of liquid oxygen, where you can't completely close the cryogenic storage tanks or pressure would build up beyond the bursting point of their relatively thin-walled construction. The cryogenic tanks are constantly hissing as they release excess gas for this reason. Since no insulation is perfect, the cargo does pick up heat gradually and this causes a certain amount of steady boiloff. Rather than physically becoming warmer, the cargo self-refrigerates by evaporation. Basically they are loading metric shiploads of really cold LNG and it just slowly evaporates as they go. The cargo temperature is kept constant by self-refrigeration where the condenser is the plant on shore and the evaporator is the ship on its way at sea.
commandlinefan 3y ago
I predict that everybody will start paying $4M to "skip the line" and then the line will be as long as it ever was _but_ it will cost an extra $4M to get through it. Just like when we started paying for TV to avoid commercials and then they slowly started putting commercials into the TV we were paying for.
- TylerE 3y ago
  At some point an equilibrium will be reached, where ships that don’t want to pay and/or wait just go the long way around Tierra del Fuego. That’s already what the giant ships (like aircraft carriers) that don’t fit do.
- p1mrx 3y ago
  That's how supply and demand are supposed to work. Eventually Panama should use the extra money to upgrade capacity, so they can make even more money.
- keypusher 3y ago
  That’s not how it works. As mentioned in the article, this limited privilege is auctioned off to the highest bidder.
  - fuzzfactor 3y ago
    Exactly, IOW ticket scalping those rare VIP experiences.
hef19898 3y ago
Let's say a container vessel carries 8k TEU, at a shipping rate of 3k USD per container. That makes 24 million USD shipping cost alone, let's say around 20 million USD. That is without considerimg the cargo value, so allnthings be told, if on the other side there is a schdeule be kept, 4 million is acceptable. In case of tankers, even more so. The spot market prices, and corresponding delivery contracts, make 4 million peanuts basically.
TylerE 3y ago
It probably isn’t the cargo so much as needing the ship at location X on date Y for the next run. Sort of like how failures to the ATC system very rapidly expand until the whole system grinds to a halt.
- mike_hock 3y ago
  Yes, and nobody sees a problem with running the world economy this close to the abyss constantly, not even after someone yanked the joystick the wrong way and wedged his ship in the Nile river, or after the ridiculous Corona-induced "container shortage." No redundancy, no buffers, no fallbacks.
  - hnav 3y ago
    your redundancy is another player's opportunity (to paraphrase Bezos)
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    People see the problem, they have been complaining for decades. The issues are manifold: - the Panama Canal has already been built at the shortest site possible, dito for the Suez Canal - constructing a new canal is (virtually) impossible due to the enormous amounts of rock you'd have to move on the Panama side - there's a reason why the existing canal is raised so much above sea level - both Egypt and Panama lack the financial resources to construct a new canal or meaningfully expand the existing ones, and public funding from the Rest of World isn't really there either - the impact to nature is just as massive, which makes that a no-go for environmental reasons - why destroy so much of nature just for even more cheap trinkets from China? - climate change is looming to kill off polar ice, which would enable ships to use polar transit routes without icebreakers and significantly impede the business of the canals
  - karaterobot 3y ago
    What kind of redundancy are you proposing? Dig another Panama canal? Where? Keep in mind that they already used the easy route.

What kind of cargo may be worth paying $4M to skip the line? I assume it should either be something that perishes if not delivered on time, or something extremely critical overall.

jahnu 3y ago

400,000 bananas, Michael.

bombcar 3y ago

If a ship is carrying 20,000 containers $4m is only $200 a container.

expertentipp 3y ago

Smartphone cases and drugs.

Trias11 3y ago

[flagged]

theultdev 3y ago

> Eneos’ shipping division transports various commodities, including crude oil, liquefied petroleum gas, chemicals and bulk cargo.

mdeeks 3y ago

The Flexport CEO said it was an LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) carrier. https://x.com/typesfast/status/1724150162531201571?s=20 https://x.com/typesfast/status/1724150162531201571?s=20 Keep an eye on whats going on at the Panama Canal. An LNG carrier just paid $4 million to jump the line. This will likely be more common for LNG carriers as their cargo will literally boil off sitting in the hot tropical sun, but it will be interesting to see if container ships end up having to resort to similar measures as transits continue to be restricted due to the ongoing severe drought.

londons_explore 3y ago
Presumably LNG ships have recondensors so they can burn some small proportion of the gas to power engines to run chillers to keep the rest cold?
- gosub100 3y ago
  > some small proportion of the gas probably about $4MM/(anticipated duration of long wait) =)
Smoosh 3y ago
You would think that $4 would pay for some excellent refrigeration equipment. I wonder what the engineering compromises are for the LNG storage on these ships.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  The chillers are a lot more than $4 million, more like billions, they are huge and located on shore or offshore at the point of loading: https://www.econnectenergy.com/articles/how-does-an-lng-plant-work https://www.econnectenergy.com/articles/how-does-an-lng-plan... LNG is almost all methane which is the lightest hydrocarbon. Methane is so light a gas that it does not liquefy even under thousands of PSI of compression. And at room temperature it only practically exists in a gas form, pressurized or not, so in that case it needs to be handled like oxygen or nitrogen, other light gases where the heavy-walled steel storage cylinders weigh more than the contents even at maximum pressure. You just can't get that many kilos of such light molecules into a certain space as a compressed gas compared to how dense a liquid gets. So they liquefy the gas instead before transport and that requires cryogenics rather than pressure. The chilled liquid can then be stored or transported in tanks of much thinner-walled steel since gas pressure is not a major issue. These low-pressure tanks are thickly insulated with lightweight materials to keep in the cold as much as possible. And unlike the heavy-walled things like the welders use for their pressurized oxygen, cryogenics are handled like the tanks of liquid oxygen, where you can't completely close the cryogenic storage tanks or pressure would build up beyond the bursting point of their relatively thin-walled construction. The cryogenic tanks are constantly hissing as they release excess gas for this reason. Since no insulation is perfect, the cargo does pick up heat gradually and this causes a certain amount of steady boiloff. Rather than physically becoming warmer, the cargo self-refrigerates by evaporation. Basically they are loading metric shiploads of really cold LNG and it just slowly evaporates as they go. The cargo temperature is kept constant by self-refrigeration where the condenser is the plant on shore and the evaporator is the ship on its way at sea.

commandlinefan 3y ago

I predict that everybody will start paying $4M to "skip the line" and then the line will be as long as it ever was _but_ it will cost an extra $4M to get through it. Just like when we started paying for TV to avoid commercials and then they slowly started putting commercials into the TV we were paying for.

TylerE 3y ago
At some point an equilibrium will be reached, where ships that don’t want to pay and/or wait just go the long way around Tierra del Fuego. That’s already what the giant ships (like aircraft carriers) that don’t fit do.
p1mrx 3y ago
That's how supply and demand are supposed to work. Eventually Panama should use the extra money to upgrade capacity, so they can make even more money.
keypusher 3y ago
That’s not how it works. As mentioned in the article, this limited privilege is auctioned off to the highest bidder.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  Exactly, IOW ticket scalping those rare VIP experiences.

hef19898 3y ago

Let's say a container vessel carries 8k TEU, at a shipping rate of 3k USD per container. That makes 24 million USD shipping cost alone, let's say around 20 million USD. That is without considerimg the cargo value, so allnthings be told, if on the other side there is a schdeule be kept, 4 million is acceptable. In case of tankers, even more so. The spot market prices, and corresponding delivery contracts, make 4 million peanuts basically.

TylerE 3y ago

It probably isn’t the cargo so much as needing the ship at location X on date Y for the next run. Sort of like how failures to the ATC system very rapidly expand until the whole system grinds to a halt.

mike_hock 3y ago
Yes, and nobody sees a problem with running the world economy this close to the abyss constantly, not even after someone yanked the joystick the wrong way and wedged his ship in the Nile river, or after the ridiculous Corona-induced "container shortage." No redundancy, no buffers, no fallbacks.
- hnav 3y ago
  your redundancy is another player's opportunity (to paraphrase Bezos)
- mschuster91 3y ago
  People see the problem, they have been complaining for decades. The issues are manifold: - the Panama Canal has already been built at the shortest site possible, dito for the Suez Canal - constructing a new canal is (virtually) impossible due to the enormous amounts of rock you'd have to move on the Panama side - there's a reason why the existing canal is raised so much above sea level - both Egypt and Panama lack the financial resources to construct a new canal or meaningfully expand the existing ones, and public funding from the Rest of World isn't really there either - the impact to nature is just as massive, which makes that a no-go for environmental reasons - why destroy so much of nature just for even more cheap trinkets from China? - climate change is looming to kill off polar ice, which would enable ships to use polar transit routes without icebreakers and significantly impede the business of the canals
- karaterobot 3y ago
  What kind of redundancy are you proposing? Dig another Panama canal? Where? Keep in mind that they already used the easy route.