Transporation Daily News 11/8

As the price of oil surges toward a symbolic milestone of $100 a barrel — hitting $96.70 yesterday — prices have redrawn the economic and political map of the world, challenging some old notions of power. As China faces spot shortages of gasoline and diesel fuel, Russia, which was nearly bankrupt a decade ago, won the Olympic games for 2014 after promising to invest $12b, made from oil, in the town to hold the events. In many poor nations with oil, the proceeds are being lost to corruption in places like Nigeria and Angola.  NY Times 11/7/07

 

In the largest oil spill in San Francisco Bay in at least a decade, a 900-foot container ship navigating through heavy fog hit a Bay Bridge abutment Wednesday morning, receiving a gash that allowed nearly 57,000 gallons of oil to spill and sicken some along San Francisco's waterfront but doing only superficial damage to the bridge. The incident had no effect on the bridge or anyone driving across it, and Caltrans engineers who examined the structure determined that the vessel did not make contact with the actual concrete abutment, said Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney. Contra Costa Times 11/8/07 The fuel that spilled from a container ship into San Francisco Bay on Wednesday is a "nasty" oil that breaks down slowly, is hard to clean up and could affect marine life for years, environmentalists and oil-spill experts say. SF Chronicle 11/8/07

 

California officials plan to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today for allegedly stalling the review of a 2002 state law that requires automakers to slash tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases from new cars starting next year. The suit was expected to be filed two weeks ago, but the wildfires in Southern California delayed any action. Sacramento Bee 11/8/07

 

Next year, the company, JetAviva, will begin offering seats on a new line of small planes that it says will bring airline affordability to the private-jet experience. For about the price of first-class airline travel, a party of three can drive right onto the tarmac at Van Nuys Airport, hop on one of JetAviva's Eclipse 500 jets and be in Las Vegas in 45 minutes, avoiding airport security, airline schedules. LA Times 11/8/07

 

The Port of Oakland and SunEdison today celebrated the activation of a new 756 kW ground mounted solar power system. The zero Emission clean solar power system is a major step in meeting the Oakland Board of Port Commissioners’ environmental directives and is the Port’s first utility generation plant.  Ad Hoc News 11/8/07

 

For the second straight month, traffic at United States-based retail container ports came up short compared to the same timeframe a year ago, according to the monthly Port Tracker report by the National Retail Federation, a retail trade association, and Global Insight, a provider of economic and financial information. The ports surveyed in the report—including Los Angeles/Long Beach, and Oakland—handled a cumulative 1.46 million TEU (Twenty-foot equivalents) in September, the most recent month for which data is available. September’s performance is down slightly from August at 0.4 percent or 6,000 containers and is off 1.9 percent from September 2006. Logistics Management 11/7/07