Category Archives: Offshore

June 27th, 2017 Jason Jiang Europe, Offshore 0 comments

DEME Groups offshore marine engineering subsidiary GeoSea has received a notice to proceed from Siemens for fabrication and offshore installation of 16 wind turbine foundations and one offshore transformer module for the EnBW Albatros offshore wind farm.

The project will cover an area of around 11 sq km and will feature 16 turbines with a total installed capacity of 112 megawatts.

Fabrication of the foundations is expected in 2017 and 2018 whilst offshore installation will take place in 2018 together with the offshore installation of the EnBW Hohe See offshore wind farm.

We see the award of the Albatros project as a recognition by our Clients of our continuous strive for efficiency and synergies in the execution of projects. Our presence in Germany also strengthens our relationships with all our German partners and as offshore foundation specialist we are proud to support Siemens in the entry to the German offshore wind market with the Siemens Offshore Transformer Module (OTM). The Albatros contract gives continuity to our project portfolio in Germany and will be handled by our local project team of experts from our regional offices in Bremen, said Christopher Iwens, general manager of DEMEs German subsidiaries.

Jason Jiang

Jason worked for a number of logistics firms following his English degree, then switched this hands-on experience to writing and has since become one the most prolific writers on the diverse China logistics industry writing for a host of titles including Supply Chain Asia, Cargo Facts and Air Cargo Week. Jasons access to the biggest shippers with business in China has proved an invaluable source of exclusives.

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GeoSea secures offshore wind installation work - Splash 247

Welcome home from work! Go play with your kids or talk to a neighbor or just frolic in the sunshine! Thats what I imagine the Phillies were collectively telling us with this game. You probably couldnt watch the beginning and by the time you could watch there wasnt a point.

This game was over early. I could tell because in the third inning John Kruk suggested that Daniel Descalso run from first on a 3-2 count just to work on things. You know, because the Phillies are a summer-long spring training squad. The score at that point was 5-0. By the end of the inning it would be 6-0 and the Phillies starting pitcher, Nick Pivetta, would be done for the afternoon.

Pivetta lasted just 8 outs, walking 5, K-ing 3, and allowing 7 hits, i.e., almost as many as outs. It was a terrible start for a young pitcher riding a small wave of success. In his previous two outings hed blanked the Red Sox for 7 innings and dominated the Cardinals to a tune of 10 Ks to 1 BB. In those games, he threw his fastball for strikes and kept hitters off-balance with a slider, curveball, changeup mix. By way of contrast, today Pivetta could not control, let alone command, his fastball, and his secondary pitches became ineffective as a result. The problem announced itself from the first batter. Pivetta worked ahead of Chris Hermann 0-2 with fastballs in the zone but not particularly well located. Hermann wasted a few fastballs and took others to get back even in the count. Pivetta couldnt put him away. Then, on the last pitch, Pivetta grooved a fastball a little above the knees and right down the middle. Hermann slashed it into the right-center pool where some Phillies fans were partying. (They dutifully threw the ball back.) Pivetta bounced back in that first inning, fanning two. But the signs of his unravelling were already present. For the next inning and a third it would be a struggle for him just to keep his fastball in the zone, let alone keep it off of barrels. If not for a double play following three consecutive walks in the second, Pivetta probably wouldnt have made it into the third inning at all.

The suspense of the game was neutered early, but thats not to say the Phillies didnt have a chance to make it interesting. Diamondbacks starter, Zack Greinke, did not have his command to start the contest either. Daniel Nava led off the game with single. Freddy Galvis followed that with an at-bat where he saw exactly 2 of 7 pitches in the zone. Unfortunately, Galvis swung at all but 2 of those pitches. He did manage to crush the last one to centerfield, but Rey Fuentes cruised underneath it. Aaron Altherr would then single to keep the pressure on Greinke. But in the end, Greinke channelled his inner Monica Seles and grunted his way out of the inning. (Literally, he was grunting on every pitch. Ive never noticed him doing this before.)

That inning was particularly frustrating because two of the outs came in at-bats that should have been walks. Ive already mentioned Galviss at-bat. The other was Odubel Herreras. Herrera got ahead 3-1 by taking close pitches. But once the count went 3-2 Herrera swung at everything, close or not. Surprisingly, Herrera made contact with a lot of those pitches and made Greinke work. But eventually Greinke caught on, bounced a slider in front of the plate, and watched Herrera wave at it vainly. Herrera has had a stellar June thanks to an outrageous (but mostly earned) BABIP. If he wants to avoid these swings from abyss to peak, he needs to turn those kinds of at-bats into walks. Despite how well hes hit this month, hes still barely walking.

After the third inning, where Pivetta finally fell apart, the game turned on the autopilot. Greinke cruised until the fifth, where his struggles returned, he surrendered a run, and ended his outing short. Daniel Nava, who had a good game, drove in that run. Hoby Milner and Ricardo Pinto both got their second chances to make an impression in the bigs and fared better than in their first. But for the most part it was just professional baseball played by professionals and indistinguishable from the myriad of other games this afternoon. (Whats that? There was only one other game this afternoon because afternoon games on Mondays are like drive-in movie showings on an off-shore oil rig? Oh. Well, maybe thats for the best.)

The Phillies move on from Arizona and head to Washington to face the Mariners. Everyone say, Hi, Chooch!

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Like an Offshore Drive-In: D'Backs 6, Phillies 1 - The Good Phight

The Obama administration is gone, but many of its last-minute regulatory changes remain. Rushed through and foisted on a public preoccupied with selecting their future leader, it is entirely appropriate that the Trump administration recently announced important regulatory reviews of these changes as part of its Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy executive order.

Among the most important regulations the executive order will review is an obscure Notice to Lessees from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). An under-the-radar move, it raised the financial assurance requirements on energy companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico. Should it stand, this innocuous-sounding policy measure will sweep the legs out from under independent drilling operators. That would be disastrous for a Texas economy already fighting significant headwinds.

Talk about a direct affront. Texas pulled the U.S. economy out of the Great Recession, adding one of every seven new American jobs between 2010 and 2014. But Obamas harsh anti-petroleum mindset led his administration to kick this gift horse hard, with executive and agency actions entirely adverse to pro-growth policies our communities need right now. The Lone Star State is feeling the damage. Since 2014, Texas has lost over 90,000 oil, gas, and mining jobs.

Its no wonder so many Texans rallied around Donald Trump. As a candidate, Trump recognized that oil and gas is overregulated and as president, he has shown his intention to put America back to work. He realizes this will require a strong energy industry. Rolling back the BOEM notice offers an early opportunity to remove the yoke from oil and gas companies and to bolster our nations growth.

Applied properly, financial assurance is a common-sense requirement. To qualify for a lease, energy companies currently must put up bonds or other collateral to ensure there will be funds to decommission a well once the oil and gas have been extracted. This ensures that bankruptcy or malfeasance cant endanger the environment or force taxpayers to foot the bill to plug a well.

The previous financial assurance guidelines were highly effective for decades, even as the industry stared down falling prices and some failed enterprises. Nonetheless, the BOEM made the unilateral decision to require larger bonds or more capital set-asides without a clear rationale.

There are several problems with this. First, higher financial assurance requirements siphon off funds that could be spent on energy exploration, job creation and investment in environmental safety, including well decommissioning itself.

More concerning is the fact that most small operators will be simply unable to comply. Unlike large multinationals, independent energy companies generally lack sufficient capital assets for collateral, so they depend on bonds. But experts suggest the bond market cannot absorb the exponential increase in demand stemming from the BOEMs guidelines.

If ending the day of independent oil and gas operations is the intention, there are few more effective ways to achieve it. Without access to bonds, independent companies cannot get or keep leases to drill. Without leases, they cannot stay in business and their employees will be pounding the pavement looking for jobs.

A study by Opportune LLC outlines the national impacts: production falling by the equivalent of 367 million barrels of oil, a $10 billion hit to GDP, and 85,000 fewer jobs. Thats too high a price to pay. Given the role of Gulf energy in our economy, Texas will bear a disproportionate share of the pain.

There is an alternative. President Trump and Congress are poised to take action to reverse the crippling changes to financial assurance guidelines and the myriad of other rushed anti-oil and gas administrative actions forced in the 11thhour by the departing Obama administration. Domestic energy production is central to the economy, to job creation and national security. All were cited as top priorities for a Trump administration, so we are pleased these new leaders in Washington feel the urgency of action.

Originally posted here:

President Trump's offshore executive order is an important first step - TribTalk

SHANGHAI Tradeweb, a fixed-income trading platform, will connect with China Foreign Exchange Trading System (CFETS) to be the main interface for offshore investors trading in China's bond market through the country's upcoming "Bond Connect" scheme, the company said on Monday.

Talks between Tradeweb and the Hong Kong exchange were exclusively reported by Reuters last August.

Tradeweb, majority-owned by Thomson Reuters, the parent company of Reuters News, matches buyers and sellers of fixed income products across more than 22 international OTC bond markets.

In a statement, Tradeweb said that eligible overseas institutional investors from its network of more than 2,000 clients would be able to trade directly with liquidity providers in the CFETS market through Tradeweb's platform.

Investors trading through Tradeweb will be able to use global custodians to settle through a nominee holding arrangement provided by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's Central Moneymarkets Unit, the statement said.

Hong Kong and Chinese regulators said in May that they had approved the long-awaited "Bond Connect" program, with only "Northbound" trades - trading of Chinese bonds by foreign and Hong Kong investors - permitted in its initial stage.

Regulators have not yet revealed a launch date for the scheme.

China's bond market is the world's third largest, worth about 65 trillion yuan, or about $9.5 trillion, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said in May.

(Reporting by Andrew Galbraith; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether corporate insiders who blow the whistle on their employers are shielded from retaliation if they only report alleged misconduct internally rather than to the government's Securities and Exchange Commission.

WASHINGTON New orders for key U.S.-made capital goods unexpectedly fell in May and shipments also declined, suggesting a loss of momentum in the manufacturing sector halfway through the second quarter.

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Tradeweb to be main offshore trading platform for China 'Bond Connect' - Reuters

BBC News

Union ballot over offshore catering pay BBC News Offshore catering staff are being consulted on industrial action over pay. It follows a consultative ballot by the Unite union of members employed by companies represented by the Caterers Offshore Trade Association (Cota). They previously rejected an ... and more »

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Union ballot over offshore catering pay - BBC News

Microsoft values privacy, even while facing the wrath of the Department of Justice. Recently, the DoJ has been pushing on the tech giant, claiming that the recent rulings in its favor are severely misinterpreting the law. Now, CNN reports that the Department of Justice will be approaching the Supreme Court about Microsofts refusal to provide private information from other jurisdictions.

The case that brought the legislative debate about originated when the federal government wanted information about a potential drug trafficking case. Law enforcement sought Microsoft out for private emails and information stored on its database servers in Ireland. The courts first found that Microsoft should hand over the information, but after appealing to the Second Circuit, it was reversed. After all, if Microsoft gave the U.S. government information stored in Ireland, what was stopping other governments from requesting U.S. information?

The Department of Justice didnt take too kindly to the ruling, now appealing to the Supreme Court for clarification. It believes that if information can be accessed domestically with the click of a computer mouse, then the information is fair game for the U.S. government.

Brad Smith countered the DoJ claiming that it seemed backward to continue the debate in courts. The DOJs position would put businesses in impossible conflict-of-law situations and hurt the security, jobs, and personal rights of Americans, he explained in Fridays blog post.

In less than one year, a new European data protection law will go into effect. Under that law called the General Data Protection Regulation it would be illegal for a company to bring customer data from Europe into the U.S. in response to a unilateral U.S. search warrant.

This isnt the first time Microsofts integrity was called into question regarding transnational information. An employee was criminally charged and the company fined for not complying with a request between the differing laws Brazil and the U.S. Smith believes that no matter who wins the case with the Supreme Court, that the new legislation is still a much needed addition.

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US Justice Department wants to take Microsoft to Supreme Court in offshore email case - OnMSFT (blog)

Foreign investment flowing into India is primarily pooled and managed in offshore jurisdictions. This is because our regulatory framework discourages asset managers based out of India from managing offshore pools of capital. As a result, several offshore funds which target investing in India have fund managers of Indian origin who have relocated to offshore locations. It is high time we enable offshore fund activity to shift to India, giving a boost to the domestic fund management industry.

Of the $43 billion of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows which India received in FY17, $24 billion was invested via Mauritius and Singapore. Both these jurisdictions have emerged as the preferred destination for fund managers to set up their operations. Compared to this, the domestic pool of capital managed by India-based asset managers under the Securities and Exchange Board of Indias (Sebi) alternative investment fund (AIF) guidelines is only $7 billion. A significant chunk of the offshore capital flowing into India can be managed by fund managers based out of India if regulatory changes are carried out. Unless that happens, fund managers in India who want to attract foreign capital will keep shifting offshore, leading to loss of employment and tax revenue for India.

There are two ways in which regulations can enable fund managers based in India to manage offshore pools of capitalallow them to manage offshore funds from India without taxing the offshore fund as an Indian entity, and permit foreign investors to directly invest in funds set up in India. For both these cases, regulatory changes need to be carried out.

The most important regulatory change required is to ensure that an offshore fund will not be taxed as an Indian entity just because it is being managed by a fund manager located in India. A beginning was made in Finance Bill 2015. Under the newly introduced Section 9A of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (ITA), it was clarified that the income of an eligible offshore fund would not be taxed in India merely because the fund is being managed by a fund manager located in India.

The objective of Section 9A was to allay fears that the presence of a fund manager in India would lead to the offshore fund being taxed in India at domestic tax rates, rather than lower rates specified under various double taxation avoidance agreements (DTAAs). Unfortunately, the conditions specified under the Section are so strenuous that for all practical purposes, they remain unachievable.

For instance, one of the conditions specifies that an investors share in the fund, directly or indirectly, should not exceed 10%. This is a very restrictive condition when it is common for funds to have a sponsor or anchor investor whose share in the fund generally exceeds 25%. Also, most funds are targeted at a specific group of investors, which does not exceed 10. Further, fund managers may consciously want to cater to a small set of investors who can make large investments.

Regulators should relax this condition by looking beyond the investor and also including the investors beneficiaries. This is because an investor in a fund could be a pool of several other investors. Thus look through provisions will enable several offshore funds to be classified as eligible funds under Section 9A. Also, given that Sebi-registered foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) already meet broad-based requirements of being diversified in terms of investor participation, they should automatically be regarded as an eligible investment fund.

Another debilitating condition specified under Section 9A is that offshore funds should not control or manage any business in India. Offshore private equity funds, during the course of the fund tenure, may be required to acquire a controlling stake in the investee companies to protect their initial investment. Further, even in cases where the fund has only a minority stake, exercising any minority interest protection rights could be classified under existing law as resulting in control over the investee company in India.

Furthermore, the benefits of Section 9A are available only to PMS (portfolio management services) asset managers and investment advisers registered with Sebi. Investment managers of AIFs and mutual funds are not covered under the list of eligible investment managers that can make use of Section 9A. This limits the number of fund managers who can make use of the regulatory relaxation.

Given these difficulties, the alternative is to have foreign investors directly invest in funds registered in India. Changes in regulations to permit this have been more encouraging. In November 2015, the Reserve Bank of India permitted automatic approval for foreign investors to invest in AIFs, real estate infrastructure trusts and infrastructure investment trusts. Previously, investment in these vehicles required specific approvals from the foreign investment promotion board. Further, in the Finance Bill 2016, it was clarified that foreign investors investing in India-based funds would be taxed at rates mentioned under the various DTAAs.

However, given that not all foreign investors are comfortable directly investing in India, there is still a need to enable fund managers in India to manage offshore funds. Regulatory changes to permit this can midwife a truly multinational asset management industry in India.

Ravi Saraogi is investment strategist, IFMR Investment Managers Pvt. Ltd, Chennai.

Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

First Published: Tue, Jun 27 2017. 12 13 AM IST

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On-shoring offshore funds to India - Livemint

TAIPEI -- The Taiwan Strait will likely generate an annual 3 million kilowatts to 5 million kilowatts from wind power, Premier Lin Chuan said Monday, implying an upgrade to the previously targeted 3 million kilowatts in 2025, thanks to investment applications from foreign companies.

President Tsai Ing-wen's administration aims to shrink nuclear's share of the electricity supply from 14% in 2015 to zero by 2025. To support the phaseout, the government plans to quintuple renewable energy's share from 2015 levels to 20%.

Offshore wind's potential output exceeds 10 million kilowatts, Lin said, highlighting hopes of this renewable source of energy replacing the atom. Each nuclear plant can generate up to 2 million kilowatts, he said.

Danish giant Dong Energy and Australian infrastructure developer Macquarie are among the applicants for investments. Lin shared hopes that Japanese companies with advanced technologies in wind power will take part as well. Siemens of Germany and Japan's Hitachi are seen as candidates.

With Swancor and other equipment providers in Taiwan trailing Western rivals in technological capabilities, the authorities here are eager to import foreign know-how to establish Taiwan as an Asian hub of wind power generation.

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Taiwan welcomes investment in offshore wind power: premier - Nikkei Asian Review

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Sunday, June 25, 2017

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

Robert Whitcomb

June may be had by the poorest comer."

-- James Russell Lowell

The new ordinance banning smoking outdoors in part of downtown Providence reflects the confusions and hypocrisies of American policies regarding tobacco and some other drugs (such as alcohol). On the one hand we say that smoking is very unhealthy and leads to many thousands of deaths a year and vast health expenses, on the other hand, tobacco products are legal and pull in billions of dollars a year in tax money. (Some argue that smoking, by causing early and often fast deaths, actually saves on overall national health costs: Fewer of those too-expensive old folks who take so long to expire.)

I think that the new ordinance isnt a bad idea. It may extend a few lives, including of those people who must breathe in second-hand smoke in situations such as waiting for buses at Kennedy Plaza. And there will be fewer cigarette butts and other smoking-related litter on the streets and sidewalks.

Smoking banned downtown

Now back to the scarier substance-abuse problem opiate addiction and lethal overdoses.

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I was not at all surprised that young Jon Ossoff narrowly lost the 6th District Georgia congressional race to Republican Karen Handel last Tuesday. The traditionally very Red district, another triumphant example of ruthless Republican gerrymandering, was still the GOPs to lose, whatever the many millions of dollars the Democrats pumped in.

It will take a while to deconstruct the vote, but I suspect that the Democrats did not get quite the turnout that theyd hoped for. This would be another example of why, although in many national polls a majority of the public backs what are basically Democratic positions on health care and other big issues, the GOP, aided by the state legislatures doing the gerrymandering of congressional districts, does so well in campaigns.

Consider the failure of the young, who lean heavily Democratic, to vote while people in their 50s and older vote heavily -- most often for Republicans. That may continue as long as the GOP doesn't threaten their Medicare and Social Security.

Democrats leadership troubles

The older (or just old) Tea Party types (mostly men) who comprise, for example, the little group who denounce me every week in the Facebook comments at the bottom of this column, do vote. And some or most are retired and have plenty of time to denounce socialists and elitists in social-media posts while they take a break from the Fox News echo chambers. God bless em! At least theyre not passive.

Meanwhile, Democratic strategists must be wondering if they should have poured a lot more money into a special South Carolina congressional race, in another intensely gerrymandered and traditionally very Republican district. Democrat Archie Parnell came very close last Tuesday to winning that contest. He may have been a better candidate than the somewhat callow and too-mild Mr. Ossoff, who perhaps should have taken on the Trump regime with much more energy.

The underlying demographic changes favor the Democrats but maybe they dont deserve to win because so many of the folks calling themselves Democrats are too lazy to take 20 minutes to show up at the polls every couple of years.

Oh yes, and the Democrats urgently need new leaders in the U.S. House. Number 1: Nancy Pelosi, 77, should retire as their leader now! The party needs new faces to present to the public.

They desperately require leaders with inspirational talents, organizational ability and pragmatism. They need to eloquently promote the interests of lower-and-middle-income people and push back hard against the plutocracy now in charge in the White House and in the Capitol.

Meanwhile, some Democrats may be secretly hoping for a recession. Given the realities of business cycles (the current business expansion is very old) and other factors among them Chinas economic woes, Brexit and inflated technology stock prices -- they may well get it next year. Ten percent unemployment would give the Democrats control of Congress in 2018, probably by a landslide.

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The Trump administration, in a sleeping bag with the oil and natural-gas sector, wants to hand out permits for large-scale seismic blasting up and down the Atlantic coast, from Delaware to Florida, to detect the presence of fossil fuel. Such blasting can injure or even kill such intelligent mammals as whales and dolphins and other marine animals.

xxx

A plan to help maintain the 17-acre Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, in downtown Boston, may be an example for upkeep of other public parks. Since property owners near the Greenway obviously benefit more than most people from this amenity, theyve agreed to pay $1 million a year in a voluntary tax on the big buildings along the Greenway via a Business Improvement District that would defray the bulk of yearly maintenance. The idea is to let the state reduce its spending on the park to $750,000 a year by 2020 from the current $2 million.

User taxes, including highway tolls, are very fair. You benefit; you pay.

India Point Park, in Providence, is an example of where similar arrangements could be made to better maintain public spaces and save on local and state government spending. Certainly the Downtown Providence Improvement District has done fine work in making Downcity a lot more presentable than it was a couple of decades ago.

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President Donald Trump

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If you want to know who the prime historical villains are in our exorbitantly expensive and convoluted health-care system, look no further than the American Medical Associations support, starting in the 40s, for a fee-for-service, private- insurance company model that would maximize physicians incomes. In tandem were the AMAs successful efforts to prevent the creation of the sort of universal, government-backed health system that virtually all other developed nations have and better health.

This system has ensured that American physicians are the worlds highest paid although medical outcomes lag behind most other developed nations. Of course, in the 60s Medicare and Medicaid came along. But Medicare, trapped in the traditional fee-for-service model, was for decades a bonanza for doctors, until federal cost containment efforts in recent years.

Yes, it was all about the money.

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Anti-Republican lunatic James Hodgkinson, who shot at a group of GOP politicians at a park in Alexandria, Va., gravely injuring House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, had 200 rounds of ammunition in a storage unit. Thats the sort of thing youd expect in a nation whose gun laws are written by the National Rifle Association and their paymasters in the weapons biz, in collaboration with the Republican Party. I (and numerous family members) have owned guns all my life but the need to stock up on war-zone levels of ammo has eluded me. But then, I somehow forgot the potential joys of mass murder.

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As the United States withdraws from speaking out for human rights and democracy, the Chinese dictatorship moves in with piles of money. That money is already having sad effects.

Consider that Greece has vetoed a European Union statement denouncing Chinese human-rights abuses in the wake of Greece recently getting billions of dollars in infrastructure investments from Beijing. Croatia and Hungary (the latter run by a semi-fascist president), also the beneficiary of massive Chinese spending, have also blocked E.U. statements on Chinese actions, including Chinas attempt to take over the entire South China Sea. Each E.U. nation has veto power over statements meant to be the official E.U. position.

Here at home we have the Confucius Institute problem. The Instituteis affiliated with ChinasEducation Ministry and has the official aim to promote Chinese language andculture. But it is really a propaganda and intelligence office, a handy base for industrial and other espionage and a sturdy platform for the increasingly aggressive and expansionist dictatorship to keep in line Chinese students studying abroad. Their very presence tends to constrain intellectual freedom regarding things Chinese.

Some U.S. colleges and universities, such as Rhode Islands Bryant University, have partnered with the Institute satellites for the money and business connections they provide after they set up shop on American campuses. These Confucius Institute operations provide free (to the colleges) teachers and textbooks and cover operating costs. Some administrators and faculty members like them because they help bring in full-tuition-paying Chinese students and provide free and luxurious junkets to China to some administrators and faculty members. Such operations are inappropriate on American college campuses.

Rachelle Peterson, director of research at the National Association of Scholars, a conservative group, has accurately complained: Confucius Institutes export the fear of speaking freely around the world. They permit a foreign government to have intimate influence over college classrooms. Its time to kick them off campus. Ms. Peterson quoted former Chinese Communist Party propaganda chief Li Changchun as calling the on-campus Confucius Institute satellites an important part of Chinas overseas propaganda efforts.

xxx

Amazons plan to buy Whole Foods has elicited a lot of heavy breathing and assertions that Amazon will wipe out a lot of grocery stores. I think that these forecasts are exaggerated. Groceries stuff that can rot are not the same things as books and clothes. The distribution challenges are very different.

Most people will continue to drive or walk to a regular (not high-end, expensive organic) supermarket or small grocery store for the foreseeable future. Inflation-adjusted wages have been falling for most people. The market for expensive (and some would say pretentious) food is unlikely to vastly expand. For all its alleged glamour, most people dont shop at the expensive likes of Whole Foods and never will.

An Amazon-Whole Foods mating might work very well in densely populated affluent areas with a close enough proximity to warehouses to ensure that the stuff can be delivered unspoiled to Amazon-Whole Foods supermarkets or to your home. But it wouldnt work well in thinly populated areas.

Finally, even in this plutocratic age, its possible that the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Justice Department will awake from their all-too-frequent torpor and press monopoly charges against the company if it tries to take over a big hunk of the grocery business.

Anyway, Im more worried about the effects on employment and wages of the automation of cashier and other jobs now underway in many kinds of stores than about Amazon specifically (I always use cashiers, not those machines, in a tiny effort to help preserve jobs.) And I worry about the effects on local tax revenue and jobs from so many stores of all kinds closing because of the online revolution.

xxx

Scott Avedisian

Excerpt from:

Robert Whitcomb: No Smoking Downtown; Dems at Sea; Blasting Offshore - GoLocalProv

Heavy seas engulf Rhode Islands Block Island wind farm, the first U.S. offshore wind warm. Photo by Energy.gov/Flickr

Offshore wind developments are rapidly expanding. But most wind turbines are not built to withstand a direct hit from the strongest hurricanes, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters that models the worst-scenarios caused by category-5 storms.

Researchers predict new offshore turbines would face hurricane wind gusts of more than 223 miles per hour but the turbines can only manage gusts of 156 miles per hour based on current engineering standards. Part of the problem: Offshore turbine designs often draw from onshore wind turbines in Europe, where hurricane conditions are essentially nonexistent.

We need to make sure offshore wind energy is successful the first time around, said Rochelle Worsnop, doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder, who spearheaded the project. We believe that this research can help guide those standards to help turbines placed in hurricane prone regions survive these major hurricanes.

Offshore wind energy development is growing along U.S. coasts. The first U.S. commercial offshore wind farm went into operation in December, and many more are on the horizon. Offshore wind energy generation could expand the nations energy supply with potential to provide 160,000 jobs and low-cost energy for millions of Americans, according to a government report.

Worsnop and her colleagues started this project by looking into where hurricane winds cross paths with offshore wind farms. At first, getting this kind of data proved nearly impossible.

Hurricanes that come within striking distance of offshore wind turbines are infrequent. Plus, at the moment, offshore wind developments are few and far between. Most wind measurements she could find in public databases were recorded too high above the water or too far from shore to reflect what a wind turbine might experience.

So, Worsnops team member George Bryan of the National Center for Atmospheric Research recommended she use a computer simulation driven by hurricane data from the last 15 years. Bryan used this high-resolution model to recreate the worst of the worst a category-5 hurricane eyewall, where winds can exceed 220 miles per hour to see how wind turbines would hold up. The team also investigated how wind characteristics, such as changes in direction and turbulence, might affect turbines.

Researchers found the extreme wind speeds they modeled would cause structural damage to wind turbines and possible failure of turbine parts. When wind speeds from typhoon Usagi in southern China exceeded turbine specifications in 2013, for instance, blades bent and towers toppled over.

Large and fast changes in wind direction could be problematic too, based on Worsnops model. Wind turbines work best when facing directly into the wind, so turbine rotors swivel about the tower to maintain a wind-in-the-face orientation. The researchers found most turbines would not twist fast enough to respond.

We are learning more about the anatomy of a hurricane, which is improving the design resilience of future wind turbines, Walt Musial, an engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a senior author on the study, told NewsHour via email.

Their model also predicted wind direction changes up to 55 degrees between the ground and the tip of a blade a measurement called veer. As a result, these category-5 winds could bend a turbine blade in one direction say, at the tip as it simultaneously applies stress on another portion, causing the blade to malfunction or break.

One of the benefits of this study is that you can get a much better global, spatial quantification of that veer and thats fabulous, thats exactly what a wind turbine designer needs, said Sandy Butterfield, chairman of the International Electrotechnical Commission Renewable Energy (IECRE), the organization that writes the standards for wind turbines and other renewable energy equipment.

The researchers behind the study are now guiding a revamp of turbine engineering standards. Musial said they may take three years to implement.

The simulation is the best estimate we have. Its more accurate than any other estimate for the kinds of winds that could really damage a wind turbine, Butterfield, who was not involved in the study, said. Its going to help us update the standards to reflect wind turbine design criteria for hurricanes.

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Why offshore wind turbines can't handle the toughest hurricanes - PBS - PBS NewsHour