Egypt earned nearly $8 billion from the Suez Canal in 2022, an increase of 25 per cent from the previous year, the head of the international waterway said on Monday.

The $1.7 trillion bipartisan government spending bill passed by the US House of Representatives Dec. 23 has historic funding increases for clean energy and other climate-related programs. The fiscal year 2023 omnibus appropriations package now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk for signing next week.

Falmouth Harbour has awarded Holyhead Marine a £1.6m contract to build a fuel-efficient pilot vessel to join a fleet operating 24/7, 365 days a year. The vessel will complete more than 1,000 boardings and landings per year within the Falmouth Harbour Pilotage Area.

The Port of Los Angeles has awarded a total of $6 million to two trucking companies and their truck manufacturer partners to speed up the transition to zero-emission (ZE) drayage trucks serving the nation’s busiest container port. The grants will defray the cost of putting 22 pre-production emissions-free models in Port service during 2023.

Efforts to close the $1.7 trillion annual global trade finance gap are gaining traction, especially in the small-to-medium-enterprise (SME) sector, with DP World announcing that its platform has received requests for more than $600 million in credit limits.

U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced more than $703 million to fund 41 projects in 22 states and one territory that designed to help improve port facilities through the Maritime Administration’s Port Infrastructure Development Program. 

Watson Farley & Williams (“WFW”) has advised SPDB Financial Leasing Co., Ltd. (“SPDBFL”) on two sale and leaseback transactions involving the acquisition from, and bareboat charter back to, the Ciner Shipping group (“Ciner”), one of the largest shipping companies in Turkey, of eight bulk carriers. The vessels comprise four second-hand bulk carriers and four newbuild bulk carriers currently being built by the SUMEC group.

Performance Shipping Inc., a global shipping company specializing in the ownership of tanker vessels, announced that it has signed, through a separate wholly-owned subsidiary, a Memorandum of Agreement to sell to an unaffiliated third party the 2007-built Aframax tanker vessel “M/T P. Fos”, with delivery to the buyer during November 2022, for a gross sale price of US$34.0 million.

Carnival Corporation reported that stronger than anticipated investor demand permitted the company to increase the size of its latest refinancing offering by nearly two-thirds while also pricing the offering with a lower than projected coupon interest rate. All of this comes as the world’s largest cruise corporation works to continue to build its momentum in the return to service after the pandemic despite the recent headwinds from the economy.

Middle East crude benchmarks Oman, Dubai and Murban dropped nearly $1 a barrel on Tuesday on slow demand from Asian buyers.