Global Shipping Earnings Break 2007 Record as Tankers Push ClarkSea Index to $64,569 a Day
Global shipping earnings have moved beyond the peak of the 2007 shipping boom, with Clarksons Research’s cross-sector ClarkSea Index reaching $64,569 per day for the week ending September 18, up 14% in one week...
Can You Turn a Conventional Ship Autonomous in Nine Days?
Maritime Tech Retrofit Diagnostic How Fast Can You Retrofit a Ship for Autonomy? A 257-foot commercial offshore vessel received autonomous command and control in nine days, then crossed between Hawaiian islands under autonomous navigation....
The Rotterdam Biodiesel Price Shock
ShipUniverse Maritime Fuel Decision Report Biodiesel Just Beat Marine Gas Oil. Does the Math Actually Hold? Rotterdam B100 briefly collapsed to record-low pricing while marine gasoil surged. The headline looks simple. The economics are...
Japan, U.S. and South Korea Line Up Arctic Shipping Pact as Northern Sea Route Activity Accelerates
Japan, the United States and South Korea are preparing a trilateral memorandum covering Arctic maritime cooperation, energy supplies and economic security, according to Japanese reporting cited by South Korean and maritime media. Foreign ministers...
Crew Claims Hackers Seized LNG Carrier Safety Systems, Forcing Vivit Africa Diversion
The crew of the 174,000-cbm Vivit Africa LNG says hackers temporarily interfered with critical cargo and safety controls during a voyage carrying U.S. LNG from Cameron, Louisiana, to Italy, but investigators have not confirmed...
When Cruise Ships Plug In the Grid Feels It
ShipUniverse Cruise Infrastructure Report The Cruise Ship Plugs In. Then the City’s Grid Gets the Bill. From the pier, shore power can look almost absurdly simple. A cruise ship arrives, connects a cable and...
Hormuz Shipping Remains Severely Constrained as Costly Tanker-Shuttle System Takes Over
Commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains heavily constrained even as Gulf oil exports recover through an increasingly elaborate tanker-shuttle network. Updated Kpler data showed 17 trackable commodity vessels crossing Hormuz over the...
The Navy’s Real Bottleneck May Be the Drydock
Naval Industrial Capacity The Fleet Is Only as Ready as Its Shipyards Fleet plans count ships. Readiness depends on something less visible: how quickly those ships can move through drydocks, repair berths, work packages...
Twenty New PCTCs Will Get Level-2 Autonomous Navigation
CIDO Shipping has signed an agreement with HD Hyundai subsidiary Avikus to install the HiNAS Control autonomous navigation and digital-operation system across 20 LNG dual-fuel, 7,600-CEU pure car and truck carriers now under construction...
QatarEnergy Warns Hormuz Crisis Could Delay Parts of 142 MTPA LNG Expansion
QatarEnergy says the Strait of Hormuz crisis could begin delaying parts of its massive North Field LNG expansion because critical equipment is still unable to reach Qatar. CEO Saad al-Kaabi said the first 8-MTPA...
Supertanker Ordering Surges to 25-Year High as VLCC Owners Bet on Longer Oil Routes
Shipowners have ordered more than twice as many Very Large Crude Carriers in 2026 as they did during all of 2025, pushing supertanker contracting to its highest level in at least 25 years. Signal...
Could a Nuclear Container Ship Actually Make Money?
Could It Actually Work? The reactor can propel the ship. The harder test is whether avoided bunker consumption, carbon exposure and higher vessel productivity can repay several hundred million dollars of nuclear-system capital. Recent...
The $18 Million Question: Retrofit This 12-Year-Old Bulker or Replace It?
ShipUniverse Decision Report | Dry Bulk A 2014-built 58,000 dwt Supramax can still be worth more than $20 million. A modern Ultramax can cost close to $40 million. The real decision is whether additional...
NYK Completes World-First Ship-to-Ship Ammonia Bunkering in Japan
NYK Line and four Japanese partners completed what the companies describe as the world’s first ship-to-ship transfer of ammonia as marine fuel into an ammonia-fueled vessel on September 17, 2026, at Japan Marine United’s...
Underwater Robots Move Into Real Maritime Work as ROVs and AUVs Rack Up 2026 Successes
Underwater robots have spent 2026 doing considerably more than technology demonstrations. Recent operations have used remotely operated vehicles to inspect offshore substations from small crew-transfer vessels, perform integrity surveys nearly 500 meters below the...
What Breaks First When a Cruise Ship Loses 40% of Its Electrical Generation?
ShipUniverse Cruise Decision Report The first thing to disappear should not be navigation, steering or fire protection. It should be electrical demand. On a modern diesel-electric cruise ship, propulsion and the hotel plant are...
Drewry WCI Rises to $4,500 as Transpacific Rates Jump and Asia-Europe Slides
Drewry’s World Container Index increased 1% to $4,500 per 40-foot container in its September 17 assessment, with sharply different movements across the major east-west trades. Shanghai-to-Los Angeles rates climbed 5% to $7,712, while Shanghai-to-New...
Saudi Arabia Rebuilds Oil Exports With 60 Million-Barrel Sohar Ship-to-Ship Relay
Saudi Arabia is rebuilding crude exports from its Gulf terminals through a large ship-to-ship transfer program off Sohar, Oman, after attacks on the East-West Pipeline sharply reduced flows to the Red Sea export hub...
Fresh Tanker Strikes Hit Hormuz as Commercial Traffic Remains Near Standstill
Fresh attacks on tankers are adding to the severe disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, where only four commodity vessels were recorded transiting on September 17, compared with a 10-day average of about 16...
Reverse Engineering the World’s Newest Autonomous Warship
Reverse Engineered Saronic’s 180-foot Marauder exposes surprisingly little of its internal engineering. But its published speed, payload and range numbers are enough to put boundaries around the machinery, fuel volume and mission architecture hiding...
OOCL Sends 24,188-TEU Megaship Back Through Suez as Major Carriers Rebuild Red Sea Services
OOCL’s 24,188-TEU OOCL Portugal transited the Suez Canal on September 16 while sailing from Belgium toward China, marking OOCL’s first return and the first southbound transit by a COSCO Shipping-controlled vessel since Red Sea...
South Korea Opens 90% Financing Path for Arctic Ships With KRW120bn KOBC Program
South Korea’s Korea Ocean Business Corporation has launched a KRW120 billion, roughly $87 million, annual investment program to help Korean shipowners acquire icebreakers and ice-class commercial vessels for Northern Sea Route operations. The program...
LNG Prices Projected to Spike as Europe Enters Winter With Low Gas Stocks
Europe is approaching the 2026-27 heating season with gas inventories well below normal levels while LNG exports from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates remain heavily constrained by disruption in the Strait of Hormuz....
Bunker Mass Flow Meters in 2027: 8 Ways Shipowners Can Fight Quantity Losses
Ship Universe Maritime Technology Report · 2027 Outlook Mass flow metering has quietly moved from a specialist bunker-industry issue into something much more useful for shipowners: a way to create their own measurement record...
Panama Canal Slot Auction Hits Record $5.3M as El Niño Tightens Capacity
South Korea’s SK Gas paid a record $5.3 million auction premium to secure a September 1 northbound Panama Canal transit for the LPG carrier G. Spirit, according to canal officials and shipping reports. The...
Cruise Ship Elevator Modernization and the 8 Upgrades Owners Can Make Without Replacing the Entire System
Cruise Elevator Modernization Outlook 2027 Old elevator shafts do not automatically need new elevators. Anyone who has spent time around an aging cruise ship knows the elevator complaint before the machinery report arrives: slow...
7 Hidden Costs of Moving ROV Pilots Ashore in 2027
Subsea Operations Outlook 2027 Remote ROV Operations Centers in 2027: 7 Costs Operators Miss Before Moving Pilots Ashore Moving an ROV pilot from a vessel to a control room looks simple on an organization...
Strait of Hormuz Traffic Collapses to Three Visible Commodity-Vessel Transits
Preliminary Kpler ship-tracking data showed just three visible commodity-vessel crossings of the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, September 16, down from 12 on Tuesday and roughly 82% below the latest 10-day average of about...
Naval Radar Retrofit Outlook 2027: Where SPY-6 and Next-Generation AESA Upgrades Are Creating Supplier Demand
Naval radar retrofit outlook 2027 Where SPY-6 and Next-Generation AESA Upgrades Are Creating Supplier Demand The interesting part of a modern naval radar retrofit is not the antenna sitting on top of the ship....
Philippines Targets Shipyard Red Tape With One-Stop Approval Push as Asian Shipbuilding Competition Intensifies
The Philippines is moving toward a one-stop regulatory system for shipbuilding and ship repair as the Maritime Industry Authority and Anti-Red Tape Authority work to consolidate and simplify permits, licensing and approvals across government...