Marine industry officials throughout the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System eagerly await the beginning of the 2012 navigation season and the opening of the bi-national Canadian-U.S. Seaway locks. The upcoming 54th season is focusing on coal exports and project cargo opportunities to support robust mining development, and manufacturing growth in energy industries.
Coal exports through the seaway this year may top 2 million tons, or a sevenfold increase over the estimated 300,000 tons shipped in 2011. Powder River Basin coal from Wyoming and Montana mines are being railed to Superior, Wis., where seaway-size ships move them to Quebec for transshipment via Capesize vessel to Europe. Last year, Canada Steamship Lines and Quebec Stevedoring proved the business model works, so expect competitors.
Europe is diversifying its sourcing portfolio for steam coal to include a Great Lakes routing of America’s coveted low-sulfur coal. Strong demand, reasonable freight rates, steady market prices and coal-friendly policy decisions — Germany’s turn away from nuclear power, for example — make the Great Lakes routing one to watch.
Quebec’s Plan Nord, Alberta’s oil sands, and America’s Marcellus-Utica and Bakken shale gas and oil deposits spell more project cargo. Iron ore mine upgrades and the La Romaine hydropower construction project require heavy mining equipment. Marine and rail modes will deliver it. Oil sands investments mean hydrocrackers, turbines and pipe. Ohio and Pennsylvania companies V&M Star, Timken and U.S. Steel’s Lorain Tubular Operations will manufacture the precision pipes.
Meanwhile, renewable energy project cargo —wind turbine blades, nacelles and towers — move increasingly through the lakes and the seaway’s locks.
Coal exports and project cargo are the key growth markets for the Great Lakes-Seaway marine industry in 2012.