Category Archives: Offshore

by Jim Praley Any sailor who uses AIS (Automatic Identification System) quickly comes to appreciate the safety advantages the system provides, allowing a boat to see traffic, whether commercial shipping or recreational crafts, at a significant distance, and to determine that traffics course, speed and closest point of approach.

Over the last several years offshore race safety regulations have evolved from recommending the use of an AIS receiver to requiring that in most races competing boats have an AIS transponder (receiver and transmitter) installed.

The World Sailing Offshore Special Regulations (OSR) expressly require the use of an AIS transponder on boats competing in Category 1, 2 and 3 races, and the US Sailing Safety Equipment Requirements (USSER) similarly mandate AIS transponders on races classified as Offshore.

The two sets of regulations are very specific about the equipment installation, requiring a transponder (not just a receiver) which either shares a masthead VHF antenna by way of a low loss antenna splitter, or uses a dedicated VHF antenna, at least 3 meters over the water and fed with coax having a maximum 40% power loss.

What the regulations dont address is whether the AIS has to be turned on.

Almost all AIS transponders have a stealth switch, allowing the units transmitter function to be turned off while continuing to receive other boats positions and display them on a chart plotter or laptop.

This summer I sailed in two offshore races the 474 nm Annapolis to Newport Race in early June and, in July, the 363 nm Marblehead to Halifax Race and the two events handled the issue differently.

Annapolis to Newport didnt specifically address AIS installation or use in either the Notice of Race or the Sailing Instructions, simply requiring that all competitors be in compliance with the USSER which contain the AIS requirement. I confess to having a hand in this since I chaired the event Organizing Committee.

Our reasoning was that by adopting the USSER by reference sailors wouldnt have to flip back and forth between the NOR and the regulations to determine the race equipment requirements. At the end of the day, however, we never dictated to competitors as to whether or when the AIS was required to be transmitting.

The Halifax Race, on the other hand, put the transponder requirement right up front in the NOR, even marking it in red type as a significant change from prior years. More significantly, the SIs required that:

Each boat shall start transmitting her position using her Automatic Identification System (AIS) beginning no later than 2000 ADT on the day of the start and ending no earlier than after she has entered the Northwest Arm in Halifax. So was there a difference in the race experience? In a word, yes.

In the Newport Race a significant number of our competitors chose to go to stealth mode shortly after the start, sometimes going live in high traffic areas where they definitely wanted to be noticed by the fishing fleet or ships running commercial traffic lanes at speed. This left us to guess our position relative to our competition.

By contrast, in the Halifax Race only a few of our class competitors ever dropped off the screen, probably due to the distances between us, and we were able to keep track of pretty much everyones position and speed we even set up a rudimentary spreadsheet to keep track of relative bearings gleaned from AIS to gauge our progress.

That tracking paid off in the middle of the night off the Nova Scotia coast when our sharp-eyed and likely over-caffeinated watch captain Brian Flynn checked the navigation laptop and noticed that several boats ahead of us had dramatically dropped speed, leading us to deduce that there was a hole in the breeze and head further east for an end-around move, likely improving our finish by several places and resulting in a podium finish.

(To be fair, in both races we carried Yellow Brick trackers which cant be turned off, but Yellow Brick position reports arent always real time and once we were out of cell phone range of land accessing the leaderboard via the limited bandwith of a Satphone became nearly impossible.)

The question then is: since AIS transponders are required by the applicable safety regulations, should boats be required to transmit throughout the race or should they have the option of running silent for tactical reasons?

One obvious argument against mandating transmission is that real time tracking can lead to a sheep mentality, with everyone following the leader. For my part, I like playing the chess board, knowing where my competition is and trying to find another way to go that might be faster, so mandatory transmitting is fine.

A lot of the safety advantages for which AIS was required in the first place go away when you dont turn it on and the other boat cant see you. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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AIS Regulations for Offshore Racing - Scuttlebutt Sailing News

Every coastal country on Earth could meet its own domestic seafood needs through aquaculture using just a small fraction of ocean territory, a new study suggests.

There are only a couple of countries that are producing the vast majority of whats being produced right now in the oceans

A new study in Nature Ecology and Evolution, demonstrates the oceans potential to support aquaculture. Also known as fish farming, the practice is the fastest-growing food sector, and is poised to address increasing issues of food insecurity around the globe.

There is a lot of space that is suitable for aquaculture, and that is not whats going to limit its development, says lead author Rebecca Gentry, who recently completed her PhD at the School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Its going to be other things such as governance and economics.

The first global assessments of the potential for marine aquaculture show the worlds oceans are rife with aquaculture hot spots that provide enough space to produce 15 billion metric tons of fin fish every year. Thats more than 100 times the current global seafood consumption.

More realistically, if aquaculture were developed in only the most productive areas, the oceans could theoretically produce the same amount of seafood that the worlds wild-caught fisheries currently produce globally, but in less than 1 percent of the total ocean surfacea combined area the size of Lake Michigan.

There are only a couple of countries that are producing the vast majority of whats being produced right now in the oceans, Gentry says. We show that aquaculture could actually be spread a lot more across the world, and every coastal country has this opportunity.

The United States, for example, has enormous untapped potential and could produce enough farmed seafood to meet national demand using only 0.01 percent of its exclusive economic zone,. Given that the US imports more than 90 percent of its seafood, aquaculture presents a powerful opportunity to increase domestic supply and reduce the nations seafood trade deficit, which now totals over $13 billion.

Like any food system, aquaculture can be done poorly; weve seen it

Marine aquaculture provides a means and an opportunity to support both human livelihoods and economic growth, in addition to providing food security, says coauthor Ben Halpern, executive director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). Its not a question of if aquaculture will be part of future food production but, instead, where and when. Our results help guide that trajectory.

To determine aquacultures global potential, the researchers identified areas where ocean conditions are suitable enough to support farms. They used synthesized data on oceanographic parameters like ocean depth and temperature and the biological needs of 180 species of finfish and bivalve mollusks, such as oysters and mussels.

The research team ruled out places that would come into conflict with other human uses, such as high shipping zones and marine protected areas, and excluded ocean depths that exceed 200 meters, following current industry practice to keep their assessment economically realistic. Their analysis did not consider all possible political or social constraints that may limit production.

Theres so much area available that theres a lot of flexibility to think about how to do this in the best way for conservation, economic development and other uses, says Gentry.

Aquaculture could also help make up for the limitations of wild-caught fisheries, says coauthor Halley Froehlich, a postdoctoral researcher at NCEAS. In the past two decades, the wild-caught industry has hit a production wall, stagnating at about 90 million metric tons, with little evidence that things will pick up.

Aquaculture is expected to increase by 39 percent in the next decade. Not only is this growth rate fast, but the amount of biomass aquaculture produces has already surpassed wild seafood catches and beef production.

Froehlich emphasizes that it will be crucial for science, conservation, policy, and industry to work together to proactively ensure fish farms are not just well placed but also well managed, such as balancing nutrient inputs and outputs to avoid pollution and monitoring for diseases. This study is a step in that direction.

Like any food system, aquaculture can be done poorly; weve seen it, she says, referring to the boom and bust of shrimp farming in the 1990s, a fallout of poor management. This is really an opportunity to shape the future of food for the betterment of people and the environment.

Additional researchers are from UC Santa Barbara; the Nature Conservancy; the University of California, Los Angeles; and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This research is part of the Science for Nature and People Partnership, a collaboration of NCEAS, the Nature Conservancy, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Source: UC Santa Barbara

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Offshore farms could meet global fish demand - Futurity: Research News

(Reuters) - BP has started producing gas from two new projects offshore Trinidad and Tobago and Australia, the company said on Monday, further boosting output that is helping the company to turn a corner after a bruising market downturn.

Gas has started flowing via BP's $2 billion Juniper gas platform offshore Trinidad and Tobago that is expected to produce around 590 million cubic feet a day (mmcfd) from the Corallita and Lantana fields, BP said.

Offshore Australia, gas started flowing from the Persephone field, a project developed by Woodside Energy and of which BP owns nearly 17 percent. The field is set to contribute around 48 mmcfd net to BP, the company said.

The two start-ups show BP is on track to deliver seven new projects this year, as part of a plan to bring an additional 800,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day on stream by 2020.

BP had previously said the new projects would help to offset impact from maintenance shutdowns in the third quarter, with production expected to be flat on the second quarter.

Higher production helped to deliver forecast-beating second-quarter earnings earlier this month. It is producing oil and gas at lower costs as weaker prices have forced the industry to trim spending, with production costs falling 18 percent in the first half of the year to $7.20 a barrel.

Reporting by Karolin Schaps. Editing by Jane Merriman

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Gas starts flowing from BP's new fields offshore Trinidad and Australia - Reuters

August 14, 2017 by Marlowe Hood Finfish, such as salmon, make up only four percent of global seafood production

Harvesting fish and shellfish from offshore farms could help provide essential protein to a global population set to expand a third to 10 billion by mid-century, researchers said Monday.

Suitable open-sea zones have the potential to yield 15 billion tonnes of fish every year, more than 100 times current worldwide seafood consumption, they reported in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Coastal and inland aquaculture already accounts for more than half of the fish consumed around the world. Many regions, especially in Africa and Asia, depend on fish for protein.

But severe pollution, rising costs, and intense competition for shoreline real estate mean that production in these areas cannot expand indefinitely.

Wild fishery catches, meanwhile, have mostly plateaued or are in decline.

That leaves the deep blue sea, or at least territorial waters up to 200 metres (650 feet) deepthe practical limit for anchoring commercial farms.

"Oceans represent an immense opportunity for food production, yet the open ocean environment is largely untapped as a farming resource," the authors noted.

To assess that potential, a team of researchers led by Rebecca Gentry, a professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, undertook a series of calculations.

First they divvied up the ocean into a grid, excluding areas that were too deep or already given over to oil extraction, marine parks or shipping lanes, for example.

Some 11.4 million square kilometres (4.4 million square miles) of ocean could be developed for fish, and 1.5 million square kilometres for bivalves, such as mussels, the study found.

Thento calculate the biomass that might be harvestedthe team matched 120 fish species and 60 bivalves to cells in the grid, depending on the temperature of the water and other factors such as oxygen density.

Cost headache?

Currently, just over 40 species make up 90 percent of global seafood production. Only four percent of the total consists of finfish, such as salmon, barramundi, groupers and bass.

All the wild fish harvested worldwide could be obtained from an area the size of Lake Michigan, or Belgium and the Netherlands combined, the study showed.

"Nearly every coastal country has high marine aquaculture potential and could meet its own domestic seafood demand... typically using only minute fraction of its ocean territory," the authors said.

Many of the countries with the highest potentialIndonesia, India and Kenya among themare also predicted to experience sharp increases in population, they noted.

The findings show "that space is currently not a limiting factor for the expansion of oceanic aquaculture," said Max Troell, a scientist at the Stockholm Resilience Centre who was not involved in the research.

But hurdles remain before production can be ramped up to meet a significant portion of global demand, he added in a commentary, also in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

"The big challenges facing the near-term expansion of the aquaculture sector lie in the development of sustainable feeds, and in better understanding how large-scale ocean farming systems interact with ecosystems and human well-being," he wrote.

Production and transportation costs could also be a constraint, he added.

Explore further: Things to know about marine aquaculture

More information: Rebecca R. Gentry et al. Mapping the global potential for marine aquaculture, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0257-9

2017 AFP

Some 90 percent of seafood consumed by Americans is imported, yet the Obama administration's push to expand U.S. marine aquaculture into federal waters has failed to see one offshore farm in operation, nearly two years after ...

A new diet for farmed barramundi could be on the menu under a new research collaboration between Flinders and the US Ohio Soybean Council.

Every year for the past 60 years, an average of 20 million tonnes of fish caught in the global ocean have not been used to nourish people.

The world's population is expected to soar by 2.5 billion people by 2050, bringing a host of global challenges including how to feed so many hungry mouths.

As traditional commercial fishing is threatening fish populations worldwide, U.S. officials are working on a plan to expand fish farming into federal waters around the Pacific Ocean.

The dark gray fish prized for its buttery flavor live deep in the ocean, so researchers keep their lab cold and dark to simulate ideal conditions for sablefish larvae.

Harvesting fish and shellfish from offshore farms could help provide essential protein to a global population set to expand a third to 10 billion by mid-century, researchers said Monday.

A trio of researchers from Switzerland and the U.S. has found documented evidence of tiny regal jumping spiders killing and eating much larger frogs and lizards. In their paper published in Journal of Arachnology, Martin ...

A research collaboration led by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has for the first time created a three-dimensional movie showing a virus preparing to infect a healthy cell.

Bumblebees are less able to start colonies when exposed to a common neonicotinoid pesticide, according to a new University of Guelph study.

Biologically speaking, nearly every species on Earth has two opposite sexes, male and female. But with some fungi and other microbes, sex can be a lot more complicated. Some members of Cryptococcus, a family of fungus linked ...

(Phys.org)A team of researchers with the University of Pennsylvania has uncovered the means by which squid eyes are able to adjust to underwater light distortion. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group ...

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Can offshore fish farming feed a hungry world? - Phys.Org

BBC News

Jackets installed for offshore wind farm in Moray Firth BBC News The first of 86 structures that will form the foundations for offshore wind turbines have been installed in the Outer Moray Firth. More of the jackets for the Beatrice Offshore Windfarm Ltd (Bowl) project are to be installed up to December. Weather ... SHL lays Beatrice foundationreNews all 3 news articles »

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Jackets installed for offshore wind farm in Moray Firth - BBC News

Transocean (RIG). Deepwater Nautilus: Ultra-deepwater, 5th generation semi-submersible offshore drilling rig (She was completed in 2000 and significantly upgraded in 2007). The rig was designed by Reading and Bates Falcon and constructed by Hyundai in South Korea.

Note: The Deepwater Nautilus can accommodate 166 people, can work in water depths of up to 8,000 feet and drill up to 30,000 feet. The rig's AIS shows it as currently moored in Brunei Bay, on the northwestern coast of Borneo island.

Transocean (RIG) is the uncontested leader in the deep water sector (floaters) with an impressive backlog estimated at $10 billion (see graph below as of August 13, 2017, - Backlog estimated by Fun Trading).

The company's fleet is now reduced to 50 rigs with ~26 rigs operating (including the two under-construction drillships contracted to Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B) for 10 years).

The company management has done an excellent job to rejuvenate its rig fleet and cut its long-term debt to about $6+ billion at the end of 2017. This consolidation phase will allow Transocean to use the weakness of this market to eventually acquire distressed assets and keep its solid leading position in the floater category.

Despite a difficult environment, the growing sentiment in the offshore drilling sector is that the market has stopped degrading, prompting oil producers to look ahead for new opportunities in order to increase their fast declining oil & gas reserves, at a very attractive cost per barrel never achieved before.

There is always a silver lining in every dark cloud... And it is the jackup segment rebounding recently. The contracting activity in the jackup segment has shown clearly a nascent recovery shaping up during the first half of 2017. As an example, Vantage Drilling Inc., a private company from Vantage Drilling (OTCPK:VTGDF), has been awarded a contract for its Topaz driller Jack-up in Indonesia, according to OffshoreEnergyToday and the list is now long.

It is slowly expanding to the floater class and I was glad to report several welcomed contracts, such as the Seadrill Drillship West Saturn in Brazil or the Ensco three drillship contracts in West Africa. On August 10, 2017, according to OffshoreEnergyToday again:

Offshore driller Odfjell Drilling has signed a contract with Aker BP for the 2010-built Deepsea Stavanger semi-submersible drilling rig.

The driller informed on Thursday that the contract with Aker BP is for a period of approximately nine months, starting in February 2018 and completing around October 2018.

The contract for the 6th generation semi-submersible is for exploration and development drilling at various locations in the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. The contract value is estimated up to $68 million, Odfejll Drilling said.

Yet, the offshore drilling sector is trending down, at record lows, and even the "survivors" such as RIG and Ensco (ESV) are selling off. The question is to know if it is a trading opportunity or just a sign that the industry is slowly dying? I choose to believe that it is an opportunity and the market is always slow to react positively.

Thus, I recommend a cautious accumulation for the long term.

According to OffshoreEnergyToday, we learn the following:

According to VesselsValue, an undisclosed charterer has hired Transocean's 2000-built semi-sub Deepwater Nautilus on August 8.

The drilling rig has been taken on a four-month deal, which will start on November 1 and end on February 28, 2017.

The semi-sub previously worked Shell in Malaysia on a contract that ran from May 2016, till August 2017, at a day rate of $456,000.

The contract was an extension of a previous contract with Shell, which ran since August 2012, till May 2016, on a maximum day rate of $531,000, which was subsequently downgraded to $456,000

The day rate for this new rig is undisclosed as well as the charterer. However, based on the Odfjell drilling contract indicated above, the day rate should run between $230k/d and $270k/d, in my opinion, with some mobilization fee.

Thus, based on an estimated $250K/d and 4-month contract, the total backlog should be around $30-$35 million including mob fee.

The offshore drilling industry is rapidly changing by necessity. The oil prices have forced the Industry to adapt to a new business environment with lower day rates often close to break-even level or even lower in some cases.

However, the offshore drilling market is well-known as a cyclical one, ups and downs will always affect the industry and it is not really a new issue. Just a matter of time and patience, believe me, I have been long enough in this insane market to tell you that it is a fact. Thus, we have only two choices available.

On the one hand, we do nothing and we complain and cry about the loss on paper due to a bad investment timing. On the other hand, we recognize the character inherently cyclical of the offshore drilling industry and use the same timing as an opportunity.

Important note: Do not forget to follow me on Transocean and other drillers. Thank you for your support.

Disclosure: I am/we are long RIG.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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Transocean - Evidence Suggests That Offshore Recovery Has Now Begun, But Stock Lags Behind - Seeking Alpha

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, says he will clarify the Turnbull governments offshore detention centre secrecy provisions. Photograph: Dean Lewins/EPA

The Turnbull government has moved to water down secrecy provisions that threaten workers in Australias offshore detention centres with two years prison if they speak out about abuse or neglect.

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, has put forward amendments to the 2015 Australian Border Force Act that will make it easier for social workers, lawyers, nurses and security guards working in Australias offshore detention centres to talk publicly about the shocking treatment of refugees without being jailed.

Refugee advocates say it represents a stunning backdown on the governments controversial legislation, arguing the government is only doing so because it is in the middle of a high court challenge against the legislation that it knows it will lose.

But Dutton says his amendments simply aim to clarify the intent of the governments original legislation to stop the unauthorised disclosure of information that could harm the national or public interest.

It effectively waters down the bill, Dr Barri Phatarfod from Doctors 4 Refugees told Guardian Australia. Dutton and his office argue that it clarifies the intention of the bill, which may well be the case ... but its taken over two years for him to clarify something that he wasnt unaware of.

Heads of various peak medical and other professional bodies have been appealing to him since [the legislation was introduced in 2015].

Lawyers from the Fitzroy Legal Service, working on behalf of Doctors 4 Refugees, filed a case in the high court last year, challenging section 42 the secrecy provision of the Border Force Act.

Section 42 carries a two-year jail term for any entrusted person anybody who works within the immigration detention system who makes an unauthorised disclosure about conditions in the camps.

They argued the controversial legislation had compromised, and potentially criminalised, the actions of doctors who were only seeking to advance their patients interests by speaking out publicly on behalf of the refugees and asylum seekers they treated.

The Turnbull government subsequently removed health professionals from the definition of immigration and border protection workers but the groups have not dropped the high court challenge.

Phatarfod said doctors cannot treat refugees properly if non-health professionals such as teachers, cleaners, and security guards are unable to report or share information about refugees because they fear that they, too, could be jailed.

Duttons amendments mean the secrecy provision will now be refined to only apply to information that may compromise Australias security, defence or international relations, interfere with the investigation of offences, or affect sensitive personal and commercial matters.

The amendments will apply retrospectively, dating back to 1 July 2015 when the Border Force Act was enacted.

The retrospective application of the bill will provide the necessary certainty that only information which could harm the national or public interest, if disclosed, is to be protected, and will be regarded as ever having been protected, under the ABF act, Dutton said.

This will reassure individuals who may otherwise believe they have committed an offence, in circumstances which would not have amounted to an offence under these amendments.

This bill will clarify the intent and refine the operation of the secrecy and disclosure provisions that govern the management of information in my portfolio.

It illustrates the fine balance that must be struck in protecting sensitive information while upholding a commitment to open and accountable government.

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Dutton retreats on offshore detention secrecy rules that threaten workers with jail - The Guardian

A wide range of environmentalists, union leaders and alternative energy advocates were set to rally today in Rockaway Beach in favor of offshore wind energy projects in the region.

A coalition of wind power supporters planned to speaktonight before the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority holds its first New York City public information meeting regarding wind, scheduled for today at 6 p.m.at the Queens Public Library.

They are slated to rally just after 5 p.m. outside that library, at 92-25 Rockaway Beach Boulevard in Rockaway Beach, before the meeting.

Offshore wind will have to be a major component if that objective is to be met, according to organizers of the rally. New York has a chance if addressed in a comprehensive and timely way to be a national leader on offshore wind, and attract the new industries and jobs that will be created.

This push for wind power comes after NYSERDA held public information meetings regarding wind power last week in Long Island.

The authority plans to hold three public information meetings this week in New York City.

Representatives are scheduled from the Utility Workers Union of America AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, New York Offshore Wind Alliance, National Wildlife Federation, Workforce Development Institute and Local 361 Ironworkers union.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing for the state to obtain half of all its power from renewable energy sources by 2030.

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Offshore wind power rally today - Long Island Business News (subscription)

AMMAN, Jordan When Uber and its Emirati competitor Careem entered Jordan in 2016, they provided welcome relief from the countrys taxi services, which have a reputation for poor service and dangerous driving. Yet the startups quickly wore on the politically-connected taxi lobby. Within months both services were banned, and police were ordering rides only to detain the drivers, fine them, and impound their cars.

While Careem scrambled to stay afloat, the firms major investors reacted to this bump in the road with a collective shrug. Thats because Careem is registered in the British Virgin Islands. Careem has problems in every jurisdiction, said Lana Alamat, a lawyer with Wamda Capital, a major Mideast venture fund that invests in the startup. The holding entitythe legal place you own sharesis insulated from these liabilities.

Careem is no outlier. As startups make headway across the Middle East, they are increasingly doing business via offshore havens like the British Virgin Islands (BVI), the Cayman Islands, and even the US state of Delaware. This approach is the only way to calm investors who are deeply wary of the regions sclerotic courts and opaque regulations that are often enforced on the whims of powerful bureaucrats.

Investors require it, explained Eman Hylooz, the founder of Abjjad, an Arabic e-book platform that operates through the BVI. Being more stablemakes the investors relieved.

The startup scene in the Middle East has earned well-deserved attention in recent years, as a host of accelerators and venture funds pumped out millions in investments and spun off hundreds of new companies. In 2016 alone, Wamdaa major source of data on Mideast entrepreneurshiptallied at least $815 million in new investments across the region.

The Middle East shares the same demographic trends that are catalyzing startups across much of the developing world, explains Christopher Schroeder, a venture capitalist and author of Startup Rising, the Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East. You have disproportionately young populations with ever-increasing access to technologyand rising consumer classes more interested in transacting digitally. These startups provide a source of jobs and, for some, a way to diversify oil-dependent economies.

And while other countries have fallen behind in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab revolts, Jordan has harnessed its relative stability to build a startup scene whose vitality pulls a scrappy third behind the glistening tech hubs of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Yet the countrys regulations have been slow to catch up.

Jordans tech entrepreneurs have long struggled with rules that are more fit for brick-and-mortar companies than startups, such as laws that can force small companies to rent zoned office space rather than working out of a basement. But the idea of registering abroad to avoid these regulations caught on after 2009, when the popular Arabic web portal Maktoob sold to Yahoo! for $164 million, freeing up millions in profits that the founders scrambled to reinvest across the region. They quickly found that executing investments locally involved reams of paperwork, and more than a few liabilities.

We started with the Jordanian legal structurebut we needed speed and scalability, explained Alamat, who managed these early investments for Fadi Ghandour, a now-famous Maktoob founder and Mideast logistics giant whose early team evolved into Wamda Capital. There were a couple of red flags that really scared us.

Ghandours team settled on a rule that still applies at Wamda Capital, now a dominant force in Mideast venture capital: they would invest across the region, but only if a company agreed to register outside of it. Today, it is hard to find a successful startup in the Middle East that hasnt followed suit.

For Alamat, the biggest doubt surrounding the Jordanian legal system involved agreements that dictate when the entrepreneur must issue shares, or when an investor can be compelled to sell them, such as if most other investors agree to sell the company. Anyone is free to sign such agreements; however, the Jordanian government has never fully adjudicated whether it can enforce them, raising the possibility that a profitable exit could be blocked by a single intransigent investor, or that an entrepreneur could simply refuse to issue promised stock. Even today, nobody wants to be the first to try.

Other Middle Eastern countries have their own issues from an investors perspective. Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates both forbid issuing multiple types of shares, a common practice in the US that allows founders and investors to consolidate their control over a company, often at the expense of employees, who may be issued stock that lacks voting power.

Investors are also nervous about how hard it can be to close a company. Jordan has no specialized bankruptcy law, meaning that loan defaults are a winding and litigious process. Last year, the World Bank estimated that a Jordanian lender whose client went into default would recover 46% less of their loans value than an equivalent lender in a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a developed-countries group. The difference was largely eaten up by fees and levies.

With bankruptcy Ive heard some horror stories, said Walid Faza, a partner at Wamda Capital. He explained that in the UAE, individuals can be held liable if their companies go bankrupt, and are often held in the country until the cases are settled. That just doesnt happen in other jurisdictions.

While a variety of developed countries offer reliable courts and business-friendly regulation, Delaware stands out for an unusually easy business-registration process, and the BVI for its 0% tax rate. In spite of its reputation as a money laundering destination, the BVI actually requires more exhaustive transparency proceduresknown as know-your-client rulesthan Delaware. Nonetheless, many entrepreneurs that would be drawn by Delawares simple registration opt for the BVI instead out of a deep-seated phobia of the United States complex tax system.

Some countries in the Middle East are launching initiatives aimed at pulling companies back home, yet not all go as planned. Jordan recently took aim at the tax-free BVI, introducing a 0% tax rate for some online-only companies that are registered in Jordan. That keeps companies around, but not forever. Now [startups] do like, three days of paperwork to qualify for the Jordanian tax break in their early stages before moving abroad later anyway, explained Rana Atwan, a lawyer who often works with Oasis500, Jordans largest startup incubator.

Lebanon also took a stab at keeping entrepreneurs local when its central bank announced $400 million in funding for Lebanese-registered entrepreneurs in 2013. But that complicated investing in Lebanon by tenfold, sighed Alamat. Valuations have become stupid high, because now there is easy money, she explained, pointing out that higher valuations mean investors get less company for their money. We have basically pulled out of Lebanon.

While these initiatives often share the pretense of encouraging entrepreneurship, they also have something else in common: they offer startups fixed rewards for enduring the system, rather than reforming the system itself. In an effort at the latter, Jordan has been working to reform its bankruptcy system since 2015, yet the effort has bred few results.

But for those who are making their way in the startup economy, the opportunities are too great to let rules get in the way. Legal problems only matter because there is a dollar value assigned to them, explains Alamat. The first thing a startup thinks is not, Oh, Im going to set up a company in Egypt to work in Egypt. Its, How can I get to work?

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For many Middle Eastern entrepreneurs, the first order of business starts offshore - Quartz

Published on August 14th, 2017 | by Joshua S Hill

August 14th, 2017 by Joshua S Hill

If Europe is to fall in line with the Paris Climate Agreement intention of limiting global warming to1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the region must significantly increase its rate of growth for offshore wind development, tripling it at the very least.

These are the primary conclusions published byMichiel Mller from leading international energy and climate consultancy, Ecofys, who penned an article for Energy Post last week explaining that Europe will needa fully decarbonized electricity supply by 2045 and that Renewables are essential to making this happen, specifically,Mller argued that offshore wind from the North Seas region will be pivotal for realising a 100% decarbonised electricity supply in less than 30 years.

Mllers argument is based on research done between Ecofys and its parent company, Navigant, which looked at offshore wind generation in the North Sea for the ten countries surrounding the North Sea France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Specifically, a white paper published in March by Ecofys and Navigant concluded that 15% of the North Sea regions total electricity demand could be supplied by offshore wind energy by 2030. This integrated North Sea Grid is believed to be the only way to achieve the growth necessary to help meet the Paris Climate Agreement targets.

The research from Ecofys and Navigant determined that the total available onshore generation from various renewable energy sources wind, solar, bio, hydro, and a little bit of nuclear would only be able to provide up to 55% of the required capacity to meet the Paris Agreement targets. This leaves 45% needed to be covered by offshore wind, which translates into approximately 230 GW (gigawatts) 180 GW generated in the North Sea, and the remaining 50 GW in other seas such as the Baltic and Irish Seas, as well as the Atlantic Ocean.

There is currently only 13 GW worth of offshore installed in the region, requiring a massive turning of the screws to increase the rate of delivery. Ecofys and Navigant explains that the installation rate would have to triple from the current 3 GW a year to approximately 10 GW a year.

But, as has been pointed out repeatedly this year, this sort of growth cannot be achieved by one nation alone, and requires national collaboration, coordination, and interconnectivity between North Sea nations. Interestingly, a report published in July bythe World Energy Council (WEC) Netherlands posited a similar solution, explaining that the North Sea must play a crucial role in the energy transition ahead for northwestern Europe a transition which could result inbetween100 billion and 200 billion in economic value for neighboring regions in the transition away from fossil fuels.

The opportunities and diversity thereof in the North Sea are huge,said Jeroen van Hoof, the chair of WEC Netherlands. The Energy Transformation in the North Sea creates new industries. We can benefit from huge economic advantages by installing large wind farms. Also, a co-ordinated removal and smart re-use of former oil and gas assets can generate new economic activities. The potential is significant.

The main point from all that has been published this year regarding the North Seas potential, however, is the desperate need for cooperation and interconnectivity between the North Seas bordering coutnries. AsMller concludes in hisEnergy Post article, before the demand for interconnection can be addressedon the technical level, it will be the collaborative connection between the involved countries and public and private stakeholders that counts.

Developing a long-term spatial planning strategy and a robust 2045 roadmap for flexibility options will be two of the key steps to meeting the Paris goals. Joint strategic planning will secure operational security during and beyond the energy transition.

The full article fromEnergy Post can be read here and I recommend you do.

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Tags: Belgium, Denmark, Ecofys, France, Germany, ireland, Luxemburg, navigant, north sea, North Sea Grid, norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, UK, united kingdom

Joshua S Hill I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, and I believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), and can be found writing articles for a variety of other sites. Check me out at about.me for more.

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Europe Must Triple Offshore Wind Growth Rate To Bring Paris Goals Within Reach - CleanTechnica