naturalfeature:cape of good hope

Beware ! Les hordes asiatiques vont déferler sur l’Occident !
Il s’agit de produits intermédiaires (diesel) raffinés en Chine.

Armada of Giant New Tankers Lines Up to Ship Diesel Out of Asia - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-24/armada-of-giant-new-tankers-lines-up-to-ship-diesel-out-of-asia

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i2wLhBKd3zVY/v0/1200x777.jpg

• Maintenance season in Europe seen pulling cargoes West
• New China refineries, weak local demand seen driving shipments

A fleet of giant newly built oil tankers is gearing up to ship diesel out of East Asia.

Five very large crude carriers, which typically carry about 2 million barrels of oil each, are currently positioned in the seas off China’s eastern and southern coasts, according to shipping intelligence and tracking company Kpler. Two more newbuilds are set to swell that fleet shortly. If all were fully loaded, they would haul a total approaching what is currently held in independent storage in Europe’s key trading hub of the Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp ports.

“It’s a large volume coming at once,” said Olivier Jakob, director at Petromatrix GmbH in Zug, Switzerland.

China is boosting output, with more refinery capacity coming online, while weak local demand for middle distillates is helping to push products west, said Jakob. The start of refinery maintenance season in Europe also stoking Western demand for the fuel. China’s first round of export quotas also signaled an increase in diesel exports at the start of the year, while independent gasoil/diesel stocks in ARA are at their lowest seasonally since 2014.

Three of the seven VLCCs highlighted by Kpler — the San Ramon Voyager, Ascona and Olympic Laurel — have already taken on board a combined 3.5 million barrels of diesel, according to a Bloomberg calculation from Kpler data, but are not yet fully loaded. Of the remaining four, one is currently loading, one is en route to Singapore where it may take on product, and two have yet to fully leave their construction yards.

“We expect the majority of these cargoes to head west around the Cape of Good Hope,” said Eli Powell, a Kpler analyst. Discharging is likely in northwest Europe, with possible partial discharges in West Africa.

“European demand conditions are quite favorable,” said Harry Tchilinguirian, global head of commodity markets strategy at BNP Paribas in London. “It would make sense to try to move a lot of volume into Europe in short order to meet that demand.”

The surge in Asian exports mirrors an increase in shipments of oil products, much of it diesel, from India and the Middle East into Europe in recent weeks. January’s monthly arrivals from India are set to hit their highest since at least 2017, and shipments from the Persian Gulf will be at their highest since July last year.

This is the Longest Sailable Straight Line Path on Earth – gCaptain
▻http://gcaptain.com/this-is-the-longest-sailable-straight-line-on-earth

http://i.imgur.com/rQlk4.png

In 2012, reddit user kepleronlyknows posted a map claiming to show the longest straight line a vessel could theoretically sail on earth without hitting land.

The map showed a route from Pakistan, through the Mozambique Channel, around the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, and north through the Pacific to eastern Russia.The user provided no details about how he came to his conclusion, writing only “The Longest straight line: you can sail almost 20,000 miles in a straight line from Pakistan to Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia.”

The post generated a lot of interest and led to subsequent attempts to prove and disprove kepleronlyknows’ route, while some others chimed in with their own theories about the longest sailable straight line earth.

Now, some six years later, a pair of researchers have developed an algorithm claiming to solve the problem once and for all. Interestingly, what their models showed looked nearly identical to kepleronlyknows’ original route.

According to the authors, Rohan Chabukswar and Kushal Mukherjee, the longest straight line path on earth can be found using “branch-and-bound” algorithm, which the authors say uses great circles. 

“Although it does not look like a straight line on the map, the algorithm using great circles ensures that it is,” Chabukswar and Mukherjee noted.

The line originates in Sonmiani, Las Bela, Balochistan, Pakistan, threads the needle between Africa and Madagascar, between Antarctica and Tiera del Fuego in South America, and ending in Karaginsky District, Kamchatka Krai, Russia. The line also covers an astounding distance of 32,089.7 kilometers (19939.62 miles), further corroborating kepleronlyknows findings.

In their conclusion, researchers Rohan Chabukswar and Kushal Mukherjee write:
“We proposed an innovative approach for relaxation of an optimisation problem for utilising the branch- and-bound algorithm. On the way, we managed to prove that kepleronlyknows was right about the longest sailable straight line path on the Earth.”

How the Tension Between Mercy and Blame Shaped Our Legal Codes - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/how-the-tension-between-mercy-and-blame-shaped-our-legal-codes

http://static.nautil.us/12233_b53086d558f1127993271e8c504ded45.jpg

When we make moral judgments, says Fiery Cushman, the lead researcher at Harvard’s Moral Psychology Lab, the “more primitive, so to speak ‘you caused it, you should suffer’ response never goes away.”“The Barque of Dante,” by Eugène Delacroix (1822)One day in July 1884, four shipwrecked men aboard a lifeboat headed northwest off the Cape of Good Hope. For three weeks, Tom Dudley, Edwin Stephens, Edmund Brooks, and Richard Parker knocked off sharks with oars, drank urine, and even devoured a wayward sea turtle—bones and all—to survive. With no sign of rescue on the horizon, the quartet began to discuss sacrificing one for the good of the group. The following day, Parker fell into a coma. Dudley, seeing an opportunity, gashed open Parker’s neck with a penknife; the remaining trio began to eat. A (...)

Shippers get the news: Hanjin finally reveals where its ships are - The Loadstar
▻http://theloadstar.co.uk/shippers-get-news-hanjin-finally-reveals-ships

(localisation, mais sans carte…)

Unloading operations have begun on some Hanjin vessels after the line finally began to update shippers and forwarders on where its vessels actually are.

A fleet update issued by the carrier this morning shows the vast majority of its vessels still “waiting in open sea” for instructions from headquarters.

So far six vessels are confirmed to have been arrested – the Hanjin Baltimore at Panama, with the Panama Canal “impassable” to the line; Hanjin Vienna in Vancouver; Hanjin California in Sydney; Hanjin Rome, as widely reported, in Singapore; and Hanjin Rotterdam in Yantian; and Hanjin Sooho in Shanghai; while the Hanjin Montevideo has been arrested by its bunker supplier in Long Beach, California.

Another seven vessels are at port under embargo and three more – Sky Pride, Sky Love and Pacita – have been returned to their owners.

Ten vessels are waiting off the coast of China and two off Japan; a further 12 are waiting off South Korea, two of which – Hanjin Chongqing and Asian Trader – have now run out of fuel and are waiting for bunker supplies. Another nine vessels are underway to Pusan, where they won’t run the risk of arrest.

The Hanjin Europe is under embargo in Hamburg, with Hanjin Harmony waiting in the North Sea, while five vessels wait in the Mediterranean. Two of the latter were refused entry to the Suez Canal and now face circumventing the Cape of Good Hope on their journey to Asia.

There are nine vessels waiting in the waters of South-east Asia, the Indian Ocean and around Australia, and a further three in the Arabian Gulf.

In the US, Hanjin Greece began unloading at a Long Beach terminal, while five vessels wait off the coast, with reports that one, the Hanjin Gdynia, will dock this week.

Why I had to leave the most beautiful place on earth
▻http://africasacountry.com/2015/11/why-i-had-to-leave-the-most-beautiful-place-on-earth

I moved to #South_Africa to help open a hostel in the small, coastal, conservation village of #Scarborough, just a few miles from the Cape of Good Hope. Scarborough sweeps elegantly.....

#FRONT_PAGE #Cape_Town #racism

The Winter Bay is on the move again! Whale meat vessel sets off for Japan - WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation
▻http://uk.whales.org/blog/2015/08/winter-bay-is-on-move-again-whale-meat-vessel-sets-off-for-japan

http://uk.whales.org/sites/default/files/styles/content_full/public/winter_bay_1.jpg

Winter Bay, the second-rate vessel chartered by Icelandic whaler, Kristjan Loftsson, to move an estimated 1,700 tonnes of fin whale meat to Japan, is on the move again! The vessel has been moored in Tromso since June 11th.

chinese cartography china beat columbus to it. perhaps...

An ancient map that strongly suggests Chinese seamen were first round the world

▻http://itsmu.biz/view-chinese-cartography-china-beat-columbus-to-it-perhaps-_aHR0cDovL3d3dy5lY

C’est pas tout récent mais très intéressant

▻http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/cf_images/20060114/0206BK1.jpg

Jan 12th 2006

THE brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident assertion of European mastery: it may not be true.

It seems more likely that the world and all its continents were discovered by a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, whose fleets roamed the oceans between 1405 and 1435. His exploits, which are well documented in Chinese historical records, were written about in a book which appeared in China around 1418 called “The Marvellous Visions of the Star Raft”.

#cartographie #visualisation #histoire #columbus #chine