Tankers

STAMFORD, Conn. - In an office building overlooking Long Island Sound, ship broker Keith Fischer surveyed a white marker-board where the names of three oil tankers had been scribbled in erasable ink. A major oil company had just told his company, Odin Marine Inc. of Stamford, that it wanted to ship 600,000 barrels of crude from the Persian Gulf to Thailand. The three tankers on the marker-board were the only ones available. "These two ships were built in the 1970s," Fischer said, pointing to the first two names on the list.

A 61-year-old man with a high fever was rescued Tuesday evening from a 957-foot tanker ship anchored near Annapolis, U.S. Coast Guard officials said. The captain of the Cape Althea contacted Coast Guard officials about 5 p.m. reporting he had a 104-degree fever, and Anne Arundel County Fire Department personnel helped retrieve the man via a 45-foot rescue boat to a medical center, officials said. "Since the Cape Althea was at anchor and the crew from Anne Arundel County Fire and Rescue has an advanced capability to aid medically, we asked them to assist," said Chief Petty Officer Eddie McCrae, supervisor of the Coast Guard Sector Baltimore Command Center, in a statement.

WASHINGTON -- The 35-year-old son of Representative Beverly B. Byron, D-Md.-6th, is among the U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf, one of only five servicemen taking part in Operation Desert Storm who has a parent in Congress.Kimball Byron, a captain in the Air Force Reserve, has been flying KC-10 tankers -- which refuel bombers and fighters -- in the gulf since the day after Christmas.Mrs. Byron, a member of the Armed Services Committee, talked to her son about a week ago. "He just said he was pleased with my vote" (supporting the authorization of military force to drive Iraq from Kuwait, said the Frederick Democrat.

A public hearing will be held on Dec 20, starting at 6 p.m. at Joppa Magnolia VFC Main Station in regards to a proposed tanker standard for the associated fire companies of the Harford County Volunteer Fire and EMS Association. A copy of this proposed standard may be requested in advance by e-mailing PIO@bavfc.org .

FORT COLLINS, Colo. - From his seat in the instrument-crammed cockpit, Dutch Snyder dips a bright-yellow wing and sizes up the billowing smoke on the forested ridge ahead. With his left hand, he makes minor adjustments to a computer before beginning his attack. Satisfied, he pushes the control stick forward, drops to treetop level and punches a button beneath his right thumb. Instantly, a red plume of chemical retardant is released from the belly of the single-engine plane and falls to earth, cutting off the wildfire's path and buying time for ground crews hiking into the backcountry.

Bethlehem Steel Corp. is considering bidding to build five ships, a move that could return the company's Baltimore County yard to shipbuilding after two years as a ship repair facility.Winning such a contract would have a profound impact on the troubled Sparrows Point shipyard and mean that hundreds of idled shipyard workers could be recalled to work.Bethship, the recently renamed shipbuilding unit of the Bethlehem, Pa., steelmaker, is studying the possibility of bidding for five Texaco Oil Co. tankers, says Bethship President David Watson.

Gasoline and heating oil prices may increase late this month because of a new federal law that requires tankers to carry 10 times the liability insurance they have taken in the past to cover accidents and spills.No one expects the change to cause lines at the gasoline pumps, but some experts predict that tight supplies could raise the price of gasoline and heating oil by at least a few cents a gallon. The Northeast is particularly vulnerable, because of its heavy dependence on oil for heating in the winter.

AN OCEAN-GOING tanker typically starts off hauling oil for a major international petroleum company, and then, as maintenance costs begin to mount and newer, more efficient ships start coming out of the yards, it will get sold off to a little back-office partnership that will charter it out on secondary routes with third-rate crews. Over the years the ship's career will follow a steady downward trajectory -- until, in some cases, there's the final, literal fall that takes it to the bottom.

TULARE, Calif. - To understand how serious the utility crisis has become in California, consider the case of the Land O' Lakes Inc. Western Region factory here, the largest milk processing plant in the United States. Every day, 34 refrigerated tankers make several round trips from 200 dairies across the state to a six-block compound here. These trucks bring in a total of 230 tanker loads, or 11 million to 12 million pounds of milk, every 24 hours, 365 days a year. To keep the production line from dairy to processing plant flowing smoothly, Land O' Lakes runs a tight operation: Tankers come in, unload their milk and go. If a plant were shut down, the milk trucks would be delayed, the dairies' operations would get backed up and their perishable product would have to be dumped.

AS A BRANCH of industry, shipping is valuable. But as a resource of defense, essential!"Thus declared Thomas Jefferson in a message to Congress. In the ensuing two centuries, the U.S. has ignored Jefferson's counsel, allowing its merchant marine, once the powerful "fourth arm of defense," to wither.While its main allies and trading partners lie across vast expanses of water, the U.S., as Operation Desert Storm has demonstrated, no longer has the means to project its economic goods or military might without critical support from other nations -- support that could be lacking in the future.

Port Deposit hopes to beef up traffic enforcement following Friday night's fatal crash and explosion of a loaded gasoline tanker truck. Repairs to utilities and other cleanup activities were largely wrapped up by Tuesday in the town after a tractor trailer crashed and became engulfed by fire Friday night, killing the truck driver, a Maryland man , Maryland State Police said. Mayor Wayne Tome said Monday he would be meeting with the Cecil County Sheriff's Office soon to help better enforce the restriction on trucks over five tons from entering the town.

A fuel tanker overturned and burst into flames in Port Deposit Friday night, officials said. The incident happened around 9:15 p.m. on Route 222 at Main Street, said Sgt. W.O. Jones of the Maryland State Police. The tanker hit "what appears to be a passenger vehicle," he said. Emergency crews were on the scene late Friday, and Main Street was blocked off, police said. Fire companies from Havre de Grace, Aberdeen and Darlington in Harford County were called in to help respond to the fire and fill in at Cecil County firehouses, said Harford County Volunteer Fire and EMS Association spokesman Rich Gardiner.

An accident involving an overturned gasoline tanker at the intersection of Arundel Expressway and Ritchie Highway in Pasadena closed Ritchie Highway in both directions and jammed traffic Tuesday afternoon, according to Anne Arundel County fire and police officials. Both northbound and southbound lanes on Ritchie Highway were blocked to traffic for hours between East West Boulevard and Jumpers Hole Road, said Battalion Chief Steven Thompson, a fire spokesman. At 2:54 p.m., a tractor trailer was turning left onto Ritchie Highway, also known as Route 2, from Arundel Expressway, also known as Route 10, when the 8,000-gallon gasoline tanker it was carrying detached from the trailer, Thompson said.

As of 8:15 a.m., an overturned tanker is causing delays on the inner loop of Interstate 695 at Interstate 70. One of the three lanes on the inner loop is shut down, as well as the right shoulder. There are no major delays on Baltimore area transit systems at this time.

Route 140 was closed in both directions near Bethel Road in Carroll County for a little over an hour this afternoon as crews worked to clean up diesel fuel leaking from a tanker that overturned, according to the Maryland State Highway Administration. The tanker overturned near a Royal Farms store between Westminster and Sykesville around 12:30 p.m. The road reopened before 2 p.m., but the tanker remains overturned in the Royal Farms parking lot, according to highway officials.

The local trucker who police say was driving the tanker that leaked a 40-mile ribbon of roofing asphalt onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike last week, snarling holiday traffic and damaging hundreds of cars, has been issued two tickets. George Delaney, 50, of Glen Burnie, received citations from Pennsylvania State Police for failure to secure a load and failure to obey a state trooper. The trucking company, MTS Express LLC of Stevensville, has placed Delaney on administrative leave and impounded the truck.

Less than a week after a tanker leaked up to 473,500 gallons of crude oil into the Delaware River, industry and government experts say a similar spill on the Chesapeake Bay is possible but far less likely. Federal efforts are under way to improve the aging fleet of commercial tankers and barges that move petroleum products through the nation's ports. And there are calls this week to speed up the process after Friday's accident. Initial reports put the leak at 30,000 gallons, but spokesmen for the U.S. Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration raised the estimated size of the leak yesterday.

HARPSWELL, Maine - Residents in this fishing town near Brunswick are whispering about a plan that seems almost too good to be true. It could pay for nearly the entire annual town budget every year. Property taxes could drop. There is talk of new bike paths and even an indoor town pool. The catch: The town must vote to allow huge tankers filled with super-condensed natural gas to dock in their clear, rocky bay. Two energy companies are proposing to turn Harpswell's abandoned Navy fuel depot into one of the few liquified natural gas terminals in the United States, with a pair of 120-foot-tall storage containers, a gasification plant, and a pipeline to pump the fuel into the nation's natural-gas network.

A tanker truck containing more than 3,000 gallons of gasoline was recovered in Philadelphia this afternoon, after it was stolen from Kent County earlier this week. Kent County Sheriff John Price said the tanker was found just before 4:30 p.m. by Philadelphia police. It went missing sometime Monday evening or Tuesday morning, officers said. Price said he did not immediately know whether the truck had been drained of the fuel. No suspect has been arrested. The 10-wheel truck was stolen from Alger Oil Inc., a company that services the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Harford County.

A multi-vehicle crash caused significant delays on Interstate-83 near Cockeysville on Wednesday afternoon, according to the state highway administration and police. A car collided with a Jeep at about 3 p.m., flipped and became wedged underneath a tanker truck, state police Sgt. Douglas Forrester said. A picture from the scene showed a badly damaged car, but police said the driver suffered injuries not considered life-threatening. The accident closed all northbound lanes above Padonia Road for nearly two hours, though the vehicles were moved to the shoulder and traffic began moving again at about 5 p.m., police said.