Mississippi River reopens, freeing over 1,000 stuck barges

Chicago

THE US Coast Guard has reopened the Mississippi River to maritime traffic, ending a shutdown that stranded more than 1,000 barges on the key conduit for agriculture exports.

The river reopened as of 9am Central Time on Friday, said the Coast Guard, providing relief to a queue of 62 vessels and 1,058 barges stranded on the north and south sides of the Interstate 40 (I-40) Hernando DeSoto Bridge near Memphis, Tennessee. The waterway had been closed since Tuesday after a crack was found in a truss of the bridge. "The Coast Guard has determined that transit under the I-40 bridge is safe for maritime traffic," said Ryan Rhodes, captain of the Port of Memphis, citing information provided by the Tennessee Department of Transportation.

The crack in the bridge, found during a routine inspection, had stranded barges and cut off the biggest route for US agricultural exports when the critical waterway is at its busiest. Covered barges full of grain and soy float from US farm country to terminals in the Gulf of Mexico, while crude oil, refined products and imported steel also travel through sections of the waterway.

Priorities for resuming vessel traffic are Department of Defense and red flag fuel barges, many of which are helping offset shortages created by the Colonial Pipeline outage, followed by passenger boats and then south-bound and north-bound cargoes, said Lieutenant Mark Pipkin of the Coast Guard's Sector Lower Mississippi River.

The reopening will be a "big help for American agriculture", said Dan Basse, president of Chicago-based consultants AgResource, adding that he sees river operations returning to normal by middle of next week.

"The record large US summer corn export programme is not threatened," he said, adding that there "should not be any big snags as long as two-way traffic can persist".

The New Orleans Port Region moved 47 per cent of waterborne agricultural exports in 2017, said the US Department of Agriculture. The majority of these exports were bulk grains and bulk grain products, such as corn, soya beans, animal feed and rice. The region also supports a significant amount of edible oil exports, such as soya beans and corn oils.

Tennessee's transportation department said it does not have specifics on a repair plan for the bridge or a time frame for the work. Evidence of damage in the same area of the fracture was spotted by an inspector's drone video in May 2019, the Arkansas Department of Transportation said on Friday.

"Hopefully the repair efforts will not cause restrictions in barge traffic," said Joseph Glauber, a former chief economist with the US Department of Agriculture. "Grain and oilseed shipments to the Gulf pick up in the late spring and early summer, and weekly shipments have been running above the three-year average due to increased trade with China." BLOOMBERG