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SCA Weekly Report | August 9 - 13, 2021
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**Due to the first full week of August recess there will not be a SCA Weekly Report next week**
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Registration Now Open: 2021 SCA Fall Membership Meeting
October 13-14, 2021
Coronado Island Marriott Resort & Spa
Coronado, California
The 2021 SCA Fall Membership Meeting will be held in-person on October 13-14, 2021.The cost to attend is $550.
SCA Board and Committee Meetings will be held on Wednesday, October 13 and SCA Staff Reports, the Guest Speaker Session, and shipyard tours will be held on Thursday, October 14.
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SCA has secured a room block at the Coronado Island Marriott Resort & Spa for the Fall Meeting. The rate for the room block is $279/ night. To book a hotel room under the SCA rate, please click HERE.
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2021 SCA Fall Meeting Exhibition Hall
Registration for the 2021 SCA Fall Meeting Exhibition Hall is now open. The exhibition hall encourages greater interaction between SCA members, offering the opportunity for companies to demonstrate their product or services directly to potential customers.
Exhibitors will be able to choose their booth assignment on a first come, first serve basis upon completion of the registration and payment. The cost to exhibit is $1,900.
The following will be provided for each exhibitor:
Tabletop Exhibit
- (1) 6ft L x 2 ft. W x 30” H draped table
- (2) chairs
- (1) waste paper basket with liner
The exhibitor packet with registration form can be accessed HERE.
Please fill out the registration form and send it back to davis.gaddy@arlaw.com and paula.zorensky@arlaw.com to confirm your booth assignment and be invoiced for the exhibition fee.
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Senate Passes $550B Infrastructure Bill; Tees Up $3.5T Reconciliation Package
This week the Senate voted 69-30 to pass a $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill. The measure marked a major step forward for President Biden’s economic agenda; pressure will now shift to House Democrats who hold a narrow majority and don’t all agree on next steps. The legislation faces an uphill battle in the House, where cryptocurrency, chemicals and transportation lobbyists, and advocates are jockeying to alter it to benefit their industries.
While moderate Democrats want to pass the infrastructure bill quickly as-is, others are pressing for inclusion of their priorities in the infrastructure bill or in the broader and larger budget reconciliation package.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) plans to hold the infrastructure bill until the Senate passes the $3.5T reconciliation package. Her chamber will work with the Senate to make sure its priorities “are included in the final infrastructure and reconciliation packages,” she said this week.
Immediately following adoption of the infrastructure package, the Senate adopted a budget resolution with reconciliation instructions to pave the way for the broad $3.5 trillion economic plan, though there’s still plenty of work left.
Senators voted 50-49 along party lines to adopt a budget framework that would allow Democrats to pass much of President Joe Biden’s economic legislative agenda without Republican support in the Senate. The measure now moves to the House, which must adopt the same budget resolution in order to set the stage for the $3.5 trillion bill. Senators voted on more than 46 non-binding amendments during the debate, and adopted 28 of them including an amendment from Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) supporting a prohibition on renewable energy projects getting federal funds to purchase materials produced in China.
Democrats did not include reconciliation instructions to raise the debt ceiling in their budget resolution, indicating they’re banking on getting 60 votes in the Senate, which would require at least 10 Republican votes. However 46 Senators recently signed a letter opposing raising the debt ceiling.
SCA actively engaged Capitol Hill advocating for the inclusion of an amendment by Senator Shelby (S.A. 2535) which would have allocated $25.35 billion for a Defense Infrastructure Fund that would support "Navy and Coast Guard Shipyard Infrastructure Improvement" into the legislation. The SCA letter of support can be found HERE.
Senate Confirms Del Toro for SECNAV
Over the weekend, the Senate confirmed Carlos Del Toro to be Secretary of the Navy; he was sworn in as the 78th Navy Secretary late Monday. In a message to the Fleet on Tuesday, Del Toro singled out China as one of the services major challenges, echoing comments he made to Congress during his confirmation hearing. You can read his first message to the Fleet HERE
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SECDEF to Require All Troops/DOD Employees to Receive COVID19 Vaccine
In a memo to Department of Defense Employees this week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin mandated that all troops and Department of Defense employees receive the COVID-19 vaccine by September 15. You can read the memo HERE
Navy to Conduct Large Scale Test; Will Be First Test of Live Training Framework
The Large Scale Exercise 2021 taking place across the globe is meant to validate the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps’ new operating concepts — but it’ll also be the biggest test yet of a live, virtual and constructive (LVC) training framework that has never been asked to connect so many players around the planet in real time.
The LSE 21 exercise, which kicked off Aug. 3, includes 25,000 participants across 17 time zones — some at the tactical level on 25 ships at sea or at the pier, some at the headquarters level in Navy maritime operations centers or Marine Corps combat operations centers ashore and some in the middle at task groups and strike groups scattered around the world.
Though Navy leaders declined to discuss the details of the scenario, it will include a buildup of tensions into a crisis and the eruption of war, in such a way that forces in the Atlantic, Pacific and Europe all have to sense their environments, track potential threats and communicate to the four-star commander about how they are seeing the crisis unfold from their vantage points. The admirals can then use the assets in their theaters to conduct the war fight — the best sensors and the best shooters, under the distributed maritime operations concept — within the LVC setup.
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U.S. Senators Introduce Offshore Wind Manufacturing Tax Credit Bill
Four U.S. Senators have introduced a bill to create offshore wind manufacturing tax credits aimed at advancing the manufacturing and offshore wind deployment in the U.S. The Offshore Wind American Manufacturing Act would create a 30 percent investment tax credit for qualified facilities that manufacture offshore wind components and subcomponents that would reduce the high capital costs required to build, upgrade, or retool a facility. The investment tax credit would be complemented by a new production tax credit that ranges from 2 to 5 cents per watt multiplied by the total rated capacity of the turbine. The production tax credit varies by components including blades, towers, nacelles, generators, gearboxes, foundations, and related vessels.
More importantly for shipyards, the proposed legislation provides a manufacturing production tax credit in an amount equal to the applicable rate with respect to any qualified offshore wind component or related vessel. The applicable rate for any related offshore wind vessel is an amount equal to 10 percent of the sale price of such vessel.
The legislation was introduced by Senator Edward Markey (D-MA), and cosponsors Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
The bill can be found HERE.
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Senator Lee Budget Resolution Jones Act Amendment
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) filed multiple anti-Jones Act and anti-PVSA amendments to the budget resolution earlier this week. The Jones Act amendment specifically was drafted in such a manner that it would have impacted many other maritime laws beyond the core elements of the Jones Act – US built, crewed and owned – and would have likely been unenforceable. Ultimately, he did not offer either of these amendments. He filed more than 100 amendments to the bill but offered just a few.
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Congestion Takes Hold Again with Supply Chain Delays Spread Across the United States
Growing congestion fears in Asia are being matched by an apparent resurgence of delays at U.S. west coast ports. AIS data from earlier this week showed around 30 ships at anchor in San Pedro Bay, offshore from the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. Maersk told customers the situation in Southern California had “deteriorated”, with the number of vessels at anchorage doubling over the last few weeks. Moreover, on the east coast and in the south-east, the carrier said there was a two-week trucking delay to add to container dwell times, with further difficulties in sourcing chassis.
Worsening this problem, earlier this week China shut down the world's third largest port due to COVID infections. This is the second recent shutdown of a Chinese port due to the coronavirus, after the closure of Yantian port in Shenzhen in late May. That closure caused goods to back up in factories and storage yards, and also likely lifted already soaring freight rates, which are at record levels and a source of inflation.
Galveston Partners to Offer LNG Fueling Services Starting This Year
Galveston announced that it has reached an agreement to introduce liquefied natural gas bunkering services at the port before the end of 2021. The port cited data from DNV showing the demand for LNG as a marine fuel is projected to grow from approximately 1.0 million tons per annum (MTPA) in 2020 to nearly 4.0 MTPA by 2024, a compound annual growth rate of over 30 percent.
Golden Ray Team Locates and Caps Source of Oil Leak
After nearly a week of oil leaking from the wrecked Golden Ray, the unified command overseeing the salvage operation reported that they believed they have located the source of the oil and capped it. The leak, which began on July 31 when they began to raise section six has been the most significant oil leak since salvage work began on the wreck of the car carrier in St. Simons Sound. The leak started after the team completed the cutting for section six and started to raise the section to prepare it to be moved to the recycling operation.
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If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Paula Zorensky on the SCA staff.
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