London (Platts)--21Jan2011/711 am EST/1211 GMT
An increasing number of barges have been allowed to pass the Lorelei Point, the site on the river Rhine where the Waldhof barge capsized on January 13, a Rhine Authority official said Friday. Since Thursday more than 30 of the over 100 southbound barges that had been waiting at the site for a week have been permitted to resume travel upstream, deputy director of the German Rhine Authority's Bingen station Florian Krekel said. "By the end of today [Friday] the number will be up to 60." None of the other 100 barges, however, waiting to travel downstream (north) through the Lorelei site have been permitted to proceed until the Waldhof salvage and sulfuric acid removal operations warrant it. Meanwhile, two cranes have arrived at the Lorelei Point, which will try to upright and salvage the capsized Waldhof, Krekel said, adding that a third was expected to arrive over the weekend. "The Rotterdam firm [Mammoet Maritime] which is supplying the cranes and handling the salvage operation apparently decided that a fourth crane, initially considered, won't be needed," Krekel said. The capsized vessel has a load of nearly 2,400 mt of sulfuric acid that Rhine authorities hope to retrieve by pumping it onto smaller barges. The obstructed Rhine traffic was causing uncertainty for diesel barge traders in Northwest Europe. "[Traders] don't know if they can load their barges or not," a source said. Offers for prompt ULSD barges in the Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp region were around $33/mt above the February ICE gasoil contract, he added. On Thursday the premium was $30.25/mt, according to Platts data. Within Germany no shortages of diesel were reported, with refiners switching from 50 ppm to 10 ppm production due to warm temperatures and relatively high outright prices, a trader said.--Robert Ingersoll, newsdesk@platts.com--Daniel Colover, daniel_colover@platts.comSimilar stories appear in Oilgram News. See more information at http://bit.ly/OilgramNews