Supertanker Ordering Surges to 25-Year High as VLCC Owners Bet on Longer Oil Routes
Shipowners have ordered more than twice as many Very Large Crude Carriers in 2026 as they did during all of 2025, pushing supertanker contracting to its highest level in at least 25 years. Signal...
Could a Nuclear Container Ship Actually Make Money?
Could It Actually Work? The reactor can propel the ship. The harder test is whether avoided bunker consumption, carbon exposure and higher vessel productivity can repay several hundred million dollars of nuclear-system capital. Recent...
The $18 Million Question: Retrofit This 12-Year-Old Bulker or Replace It?
ShipUniverse Decision Report | Dry Bulk A 2014-built 58,000 dwt Supramax can still be worth more than $20 million. A modern Ultramax can cost close to $40 million. The real decision is whether additional...
NYK Completes World-First Ship-to-Ship Ammonia Bunkering in Japan
NYK Line and four Japanese partners completed what the companies describe as the world’s first ship-to-ship transfer of ammonia as marine fuel into an ammonia-fueled vessel on September 17, 2026, at Japan Marine United’s...
Underwater Robots Move Into Real Maritime Work as ROVs and AUVs Rack Up 2026 Successes
Underwater robots have spent 2026 doing considerably more than technology demonstrations. Recent operations have used remotely operated vehicles to inspect offshore substations from small crew-transfer vessels, perform integrity surveys nearly 500 meters below the...
What Breaks First When a Cruise Ship Loses 40% of Its Electrical Generation?
ShipUniverse Cruise Decision Report The first thing to disappear should not be navigation, steering or fire protection. It should be electrical demand. On a modern diesel-electric cruise ship, propulsion and the hotel plant are...
Drewry WCI Rises to $4,500 as Transpacific Rates Jump and Asia-Europe Slides
Drewry’s World Container Index increased 1% to $4,500 per 40-foot container in its September 17 assessment, with sharply different movements across the major east-west trades. Shanghai-to-Los Angeles rates climbed 5% to $7,712, while Shanghai-to-New...
Saudi Arabia Rebuilds Oil Exports With 60 Million-Barrel Sohar Ship-to-Ship Relay
Saudi Arabia is rebuilding crude exports from its Gulf terminals through a large ship-to-ship transfer program off Sohar, Oman, after attacks on the East-West Pipeline sharply reduced flows to the Red Sea export hub...
Fresh Tanker Strikes Hit Hormuz as Commercial Traffic Remains Near Standstill
Fresh attacks on tankers are adding to the severe disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, where only four commodity vessels were recorded transiting on September 17, compared with a 10-day average of about 16...
Reverse Engineering the World’s Newest Autonomous Warship
Reverse Engineered Saronic’s 180-foot Marauder exposes surprisingly little of its internal engineering. But its published speed, payload and range numbers are enough to put boundaries around the machinery, fuel volume and mission architecture hiding...
OOCL Sends 24,188-TEU Megaship Back Through Suez as Major Carriers Rebuild Red Sea Services
OOCL’s 24,188-TEU OOCL Portugal transited the Suez Canal on September 16 while sailing from Belgium toward China, marking OOCL’s first return and the first southbound transit by a COSCO Shipping-controlled vessel since Red Sea...
South Korea Opens 90% Financing Path for Arctic Ships With KRW120bn KOBC Program
South Korea’s Korea Ocean Business Corporation has launched a KRW120 billion, roughly $87 million, annual investment program to help Korean shipowners acquire icebreakers and ice-class commercial vessels for Northern Sea Route operations. The program...
LNG Prices Projected to Spike as Europe Enters Winter With Low Gas Stocks
Europe is approaching the 2026-27 heating season with gas inventories well below normal levels while LNG exports from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates remain heavily constrained by disruption in the Strait of Hormuz....
Bunker Mass Flow Meters in 2027: 8 Ways Shipowners Can Fight Quantity Losses
Ship Universe Maritime Technology Report · 2027 Outlook Mass flow metering has quietly moved from a specialist bunker-industry issue into something much more useful for shipowners: a way to create their own measurement record...
Panama Canal Slot Auction Hits Record $5.3M as El Niño Tightens Capacity
South Korea’s SK Gas paid a record $5.3 million auction premium to secure a September 1 northbound Panama Canal transit for the LPG carrier G. Spirit, according to canal officials and shipping reports. The...
Cruise Ship Elevator Modernization and the 8 Upgrades Owners Can Make Without Replacing the Entire System
Cruise Elevator Modernization Outlook 2027 Old elevator shafts do not automatically need new elevators. Anyone who has spent time around an aging cruise ship knows the elevator complaint before the machinery report arrives: slow...
7 Hidden Costs of Moving ROV Pilots Ashore in 2027
Subsea Operations Outlook 2027 Remote ROV Operations Centers in 2027: 7 Costs Operators Miss Before Moving Pilots Ashore Moving an ROV pilot from a vessel to a control room looks simple on an organization...
Strait of Hormuz Traffic Collapses to Three Visible Commodity-Vessel Transits
Preliminary Kpler ship-tracking data showed just three visible commodity-vessel crossings of the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, September 16, down from 12 on Tuesday and roughly 82% below the latest 10-day average of about...
Naval Radar Retrofit Outlook 2027: Where SPY-6 and Next-Generation AESA Upgrades Are Creating Supplier Demand
Naval radar retrofit outlook 2027 Where SPY-6 and Next-Generation AESA Upgrades Are Creating Supplier Demand The interesting part of a modern naval radar retrofit is not the antenna sitting on top of the ship....
Philippines Targets Shipyard Red Tape With One-Stop Approval Push as Asian Shipbuilding Competition Intensifies
The Philippines is moving toward a one-stop regulatory system for shipbuilding and ship repair as the Maritime Industry Authority and Anti-Red Tape Authority work to consolidate and simplify permits, licensing and approvals across government...
USCG and FBI Investigate Cyber Compromises on US-Bound Energy Tankers
U.S. Coast Guard and FBI teams boarded at least two foreign-flagged energy tankers in the Gulf of Mexico in August after authorities found indications that the vessels’ networks had been compromised by foreign cyber...
Ethanol vs Methanol for Ships: The Fuel Economics Owners May Be Missing
Ship Universe Maritime Fuel Report · September 2026 Methanol has spent years building a lead at sea, and it deserves that lead. Engines are operating, bunker procedures are settling down and major ports know...
Marine Fuel Outlook: Tight Bunker Supply and $100+ Oil Keep Shipping Costs Elevated This Week
Marine fuel markets remain under pressure this week as crude oil stays above $100 per barrel, middle-distillate supplies remain tight and bunker availability varies sharply between major ports. Brent was trading near $108 per...
Starlink Changed Ship Connectivity. Zero Trust Could Change Who Gets Into the Engine Room
Maritime Tech • Remote OT Access Beyond the VPN: Zero-Trust Remote Access for Ships in the Starlink Era There was a time when remote access to a ship meant a slow connection opened because...
HD Hyundai and BAR Technologies Advance 174,000-CBM Wind-Assisted LNG Carrier Design
HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, BAR Technologies, Korean Register and the Liberian International Ship & Corporate Registry have launched a joint development project for a 174,000-cbm LNG carrier incorporating BAR Technologies’ WindWings wind-assisted propulsion system....
CMA CGM Tipped for $3B Yangzijiang Megamax Order as 12-Ship LOI Emerges
CMA CGM has been identified by Alphaliner as the likely customer behind a reported Yangzijiang Shipbuilding project for 12 additional 24,000-TEU containerships, with a letter of intent understood to have been signed. The ships...
Cruise Ship Thermal Batteries: Can Stored Waste Heat Replace Boiler Fuel in Port?
Cruise Engineering Report | 2026 Cruise Ships Throw Heat Away at Sea, Then Burn Fuel to Make It Again in Port There is something hard to ignore once you look at a cruise ship’s...
China Opens Pinglu Canal, Creating New 5,000-Tonne Shipping Gateway to Beibu Gulf
China officially opened the 134.2-kilometer Pinglu Canal to navigation on September 16, creating a direct river-to-sea route from Guangxi and southwest China to the Beibu Gulf and Southeast Asian shipping lanes. Built at a...
30 Days With No Mechanic: The New Propulsion Standard for Unmanned Naval Ships
Naval propulsion and unmanned vessel report 30 Days With No Mechanic: The New Propulsion Standard for Unmanned Naval Ships The glossy part of an unmanned ship is the autonomy screen. The part that decides...
Oman Evacuates 23 From Attacked Tanker EL GAIA as Search Continues for Two Missing Crew
Omani authorities are continuing search-and-rescue operations after the Panama-flagged oil tanker EL GAIA was struck in the Strait of Hormuz, triggering a fire in the vessel’s engine-room area and forcing the evacuation of its...