Maritime Briefing of 17 September 2026

The Fennec was on routine photo surveillance near the southern approaches to the Great Belt when the warship's crew launched; one flare passed close to the aircraft. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the action reckless, and the Russian ambassador in Copenhagen, Vladimir Barbin, was summoned and in turn accused the Danish aircrew of manoeuvring dangerously.

, part of a shift from striking the drug boats themselves to taking out the at-sea logistics that get them north. The suspect vessel was intercepted and searched, its crew disembarked for handover to Ecuador, and the hull destroyed with explosives. A go-fast strike in the Caribbean on 9 September killed three.

, falling short of the minimum agreed under the Paris Memorandum of Understanding because of a capacity shortage. It is developing an AI model to target risk and violations more effectively in inland shipping.

Chinese crude steel output fell to 74.61m tonnes in August, down 3 percent on the month and 3.7 percent on the year, with daily output at an eight-month low and the steel purchasing managers' index below 50 for a third month. The China Iron and Steel Association has called on 44 major mills to tighten production controls and cut inventories. Iron ore imports are nonetheless up 5.4 percent year-on-year, with inventories 14.1 percent higher.

, paying $145.1m for another 4.5m shares at $32.25 apiece and lifting its total investment past $456m. The shares came out of OCM Njord's 9m-share secondary, which raises around $290.3m and gives JPMorgan a 30-day option on 1.35m more. Torm sells nothing and receives none of the proceeds.

worth around KRW1.41trn ($1.05bn). The yard disclosed a contract with an unidentified Oceania-based owner covering four 200,000 cu m carriers for delivery by September 2029.

, built for around RMB72.7bn ($10.2bn), running from Pingtangjiangkou near Nanning south through Qinzhou into the Beibu Gulf. It gives the country's southwest a river-to-sea route of its own and points inland freight towards Southeast Asia.

Transocean took a two-well, roughly 170-day campaign in Equatorial Guinea for the drillship Deepwater Conqueror, starting in 2027 in direct continuation of a $530,000-a-day US Gulf contract. Borr Drilling won a three-well, roughly 130-day programme in Vietnam for the jackup Idun from the fourth quarter of 2026. TechnipFMC took an integrated EPCI award from Petronas Carigali for the Limbayong deepwater project offshore Malaysia, and PTSC received a letter of award from QatarEnergy for an EPIC package on the Maydan Mahzam redevelopment.