there are links about these stories on the youtube site.
All I know about this is that I was working in Liberia when a previous war closed the Suez canal, and all the big tankers had to go around Africa. This was before container ships by the way.
We had a contract with some shipping firms to treat sialors... many small ships would go around the hump to local ports, meaning first to Sierra Leone then to Monrovia, so most of those we treated were for diseases the sailors picked up from the nice ladies there. And since I spoke some Spanish (lots of Portuguese seamen could understand Spanish) and German (lots of Polish seamen could speak German) it meant I got to see a lot of these in our clinic.
since Monrovia's artificial port is small, it meant we had to go out to the larger ships to evacuate patients which I did a couple of times.
Things are now different: Container ships for example, and LPG not just tankers...
The video discusses the money part, about insurance coverage, and about the dark fleet to get around sanctions.
And don't forget China. LINK
Tanker traffic through the energy chokepoint effectively halted after the US and Israel began a bombing campaign over the weekend that has prompted Iran to respond with strikes across the region. As the world’s largest oil and gas importer, China is among the most exposed nations — while it has ample reserves, almost half of its crude imports transited the strait in December.
And he reminds people about the Houthis who are Iranian proxies, who will probably start shelling ships from neutral countries in the Red Sea.
Translation: This will cause many ships going to Europe to divert around Africa, and also impoverish Egypt since it won't collect fees from ships using the Suez canal.
Another change: Huge numbers of Filipinos are seamen and in danger.
There are over one million Filipino OFW in the Middle East, and over 1000 have asked for help to come back home, mainly from Dubai.
But trouble in the area has other implications for the Philippines.
and here in the Philippines, the gov't is worried that the price of oil/petroleum products will go up. This means higher diesel prices for those of us who farm (using hand plows instead of water buffalo), higher prices for fertilizer, (even organic chicken manure fertilizer needs to be bagged and transported to the fields), higher prices for anything that has to be transported, higher prices for people using public transportation to work, and higher prices for LPG to cook food (the alternative wood means deforestation).
So use modern solar farms? Yup. We have them being placed all over our valuable rice growing areas here but they aren't on line yet.
we are seeing a few e-bikes being used as tricycles (which is what ordinary people here use for transportation) But you can't use solar energy for handplows.
Or for backhoes either.
Right now, the winter harvest is almost done, and it's too early to prepare the fields for rice planting, so a lot of farmers around here are renting backhoes to dig up the soil so they can pan for gold. We hope this won't destroy the rice paddies, but hey poor people are more worried about eating today than about possible ecological problems in the future.
(Note: We are approaching hunger season, when the money from the last harvest runs out but no money until the next harvest).
Sigh.
