A11
B USINESS
THE BULLETIN • TUESDAY, MARCH 30, 2021
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BRIEFING
Biden boosts plans
for wind energy
The Biden administra-
tion is moving to sharply
increase offshore wind
energy along the East
Coast, saying Monday it is
taking initial steps toward
approving a huge wind
farm off the New Jersey
coast as part of an effort
to generate electricity
for more than 10 million
homes nationwide by
2030.
Meeting the target
could mean jobs for more
than 44,000 workers and
for 33,000 others in re-
lated employment, the
White House said. The ef-
fort also would help avoid
78 million metric tons of
carbon dioxide emissions
per year, a key step in the
administration’s fight to
slow global warming.
Despite the enthusi-
asm, offshore wind de-
velopment is still in its
infancy in the U.S., far
behind progress made in
Europe. The three major
projects under develop-
ment are all owned by
European companies or
subsidiaries.
Not everyone is cheer-
ing the rise of offshore
wind. Fishing groups
from Maine to Florida
have expressed fear that
large offshore wind proj-
ects could render huge
swaths of the ocean
off-limits to their catch.
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Southwest Airlines
commits to Boeing
Southwest Airlines
will buy 100 new Boe-
ing 737 Max 7 jets over
the next decade, ending
any speculation that the
Dallas-based carrier will
switch away from its all
Boeing fleet.
Boeing announced
the deal Monday morn-
ing that will bring South-
west’s order of the 737
jets to more than 349
over the next decade,
sealing the long partner-
ship that was severely
strained when Boeing’s
flagship 737 Max line was
grounded for two years.
The 737 Max 7 is the
slightly smaller version of
737 Max 8, carrying 140
to 150 passengers. The
Max 8, which Southwest
currently flies, carries 175
passengers. The smaller
jet should give the air-
line more options to fly
to smaller destinations or
more frequencies when
the bigger jets aren’t re-
quired.
The first 30 of those
737 Max 7 jets should be
delivered in 2022, South-
west said.
— Bulletin wire reports
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St. Charles, union come to terms
Bend technicians, technologists and therapists
were on strike from March 4 to 13 over wages
BY SUZANNE ROIG
The Bulletin
The union representing
154 technicians, technolo-
gists and therapists reached
an agreement with St. Charles
Bend over the weekend,
pending ratification by its
members.
Details were not forthcom-
ing on the agreement, the first
since the union was formed.
The contract will be voted on
by the members of the Or-
egon Federation of Nurses
and Health Professionals on
Wednesday and be in effect
immediately.
In a joint statement, the
union and the hospital said the
federal mediator requested that
neither side discuss the details
of the agreement until after the
members have voted on the
contract.
The union began represent-
ing the members in October
2019. Workers walked out
March 4, the first work stop-
page in more than four de-
cades, because they could not
reach a contract agreement.
The hospital and the union
have disagreed about salary
and shift wages. The hospital
objected to the union’s request
to require any new employ-
ees to join the union and also
would only agree to wage in-
creases for the first year.
Over the past year, both
sides met 29 times to resolve
the labor dispute with medical
technicians, technologists and
therapists.
The hospital tried to stop the
strike by filing lawsuits in state
and federal courts. A federal
judge ruled the court could not
halt the strike and returned the
labor dispute to the National
Labor Relations Board.
The walkout ended March
13 when the union and hos-
pital administration agreed to
continue negotiations and fi-
nalize an agreement by March
31.
Reporter: 541-633-2117,
sroig@bendbulletin.com
Bottleneck of
vessels slowly
begins moving
Ever Given cargo ship
BY ANN KOH, SALMA EL WARDANY AND MIRETTE MAGDY • Bloomberg
Ships on Monday started moving again
through the Suez Canal after the giant con-
tainer ship that lay s-tranded across the critical
waterway for a week was finally tugged free.
Hundreds of vessels carrying everything
from oil to livestock had been forced to wait in
line after the Ever Given got stuck in the canal.
The accident was a stark reminder of the fra-
gility of global trade infrastructure and threat-
ened to further strain supply lines already
stretched by the pandemic.
Horns sounded in celebration as the con-
tainer ship — which is longer than the Eiffel
Tower and weighs 220,000 tons — limped up
the canal after a painstaking rescue operation
that saw teams of tugs and dredgers working
day and night.
Salvage teams used the tides and a full moon
to pull the ship from deep inside the sandy
bank it had smashed into last week amid high
winds and poor visibility. As part of their ef-
forts, they shoveled 1 million cubic feet of sand
and even removed part of the canal wall.
VW to switch name
to ‘Voltswagen’
Volkswagen plans to
change its brand name
in the United States to
“Voltswagen” as its shifts
its production increas-
ingly toward electric vehi-
cles and tries to distance
itself from an emissions
cheating scandal.
A person briefed on
the plan said a formal an-
nouncement is planned
for Tuesday. The person
didn’t want to be iden-
tified because the plans
had not been made
public.
The person who was
briefed on the plan said
the name Volkswagen
Group of America, which
also includes the Audi,
Bentley, Bugatti and Lam-
borghini brands, won’t
change. Rather, only
the ‘k’ in the Volkswa-
gen brand itself will be
changed to a ‘t.’
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Ships backlogged
in the Red Sea
See Suez Canal / A13
Satellite photo from Planet Labs Inc.
While the world tore its hair out over the Suez Canal blockage, Russia saw an opportunity
Russian officials are seizing on the Suez Canal blockage
saga to promote its Northern Sea Route, an ambitious in-
frastructure plan being pushed by President Vladimir Pu-
tin that aims to capitalize on the polar ice melt from global
warming by opening up Arctic shipping and development.
Russia’s Energy Ministry said Monday that the days long
blockage of the canal by Rotterdam-bound Ever Given
showed that its Northern Sea Route , or NSR , and gas and
oil pipelines were reliable, secure and competitive “in
comparison to alternative routes.”
Russia last year released a sweeping plan to open up
the Arctic shipping route, which includes building a fleet
of dozens of nuclear icebreakers and other ships, map-
ping natural resources in the region and developing air-
ports, ports and railways in northern Russia.
As Suez traffic choked to a halt last week, Russian offi-
cials were busy promoting the NSR.
Nikolai Korchunov, Russia’s envoy for international coop-
eration in the Arctic, said Friday that the Suez Canal blockage
should press the world to look at the NSR as an alternative.
“The incident in the Suez Canal should make everyone
think about diversifying strategic sea routes amid the in-
creasing scope of sea shipping,” he said. Korchunov added
that there was “no alternative” to the NSR.
In 2018, Putin decreed that cargo traffic along the route
should be sharply increased — to 80 million tons by 2024.
Cargo volumes reached 30 million tons by the end of 2019
and 32 million tons last year, according to the state nuclear
corporation Rosatom. Responsibility for delivering on the
NSR master plan and opening up exploitation of the Arctic
OSU study looks at hemp
byproduct as animal feed
BY GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
Hemp is already touted for
its healthful and therapeutic
benefits in humans. Research-
ers at Oregon State University
are now studying whether the
plant could also be part of a
nutritious diet for livestock.
The project, which received
a nearly $300,000 USDA
grant in February, aims to
determine whether “spent
hemp biomass” can be fed
to animals including lambs,
chickens and dairy cows, and
whether any residual cannabis
compounds are present in the
meat and milk.
Spent hemp biomass is the
leafy byproduct left over af-
ter processing hemp for can-
nabidiol, or CBD, oil, which
makes up the vast majority of
Capital Press
Spent hemp biomass, processed
into pellets, consists of leaves and
stalks left over after the plants
are processed for oil extract.
Oregon hemp production.
The research team, led by
Massimo Bionaz, has found
this material is similar in
both appearance and chemi-
cal composition to alfalfa hay,
long considered the gold stan-
dard of animal forages, espe-
cially for dairy cows.
“Personally, when they
told me about hemp, I didn’t
even know what the plant
looked like,” said Bionaz, an
associate professor of dairy
nutrigenomics at OSU. “The
more we analyzed, we were
really amazed by the nutritive
value.”
Rich in protein, fiber and
minerals, hemp biomass ap-
pears to have promise as a
cheaper alternative animal
feed. It could also provide
hemp farmers with an added
revenue stream, turning what
was a waste product into a
cash crop.
See Hemp / A13
amid retreating polar ice has been handed to the state oil
and gas monopolies Rosneft and Gazprom, Rosatom and
the private natural gas giant Novatek.
Global environmental groups are concerned that the
predominance of Russian state fossil fuel giants in develop-
ing the region may lead to environmental concerns being
swept aside. They fear that increased traffic and icebreak-
ing activity will speed climate change effects in the fragile
Arctic region, as well as risking oil spills and other disasters.
In 2020, Russia’s meteorological agency said the ice
cover in the Arctic sea route had reached a record low.
Russia’s Natural Resources and Environment Ministry
warned in September 2019 that the country’s temperatures
were increasing 2.5 times as fast as those of any other nation.
— The Washington Post
First trial nears in huge
3M earplugs litigation
BY MIKE HUGHLETT
(Minneapolis) Star Tribune
The first trial in one of the
largest U.S. mass torts ever
kicked off Monday with 3M
defending itself against claims
that its Combat Arms earplugs
were knowingly defective,
harming the hearing of tens of
thousands of soldiers.
3M became a giant in the
military earplug market when
it bought Aearo Technologies
in 2008. The Maplewood, Min-
n esota-based company main-
tains that Combat Arms plugs
were designed properly and
worked as they should.
The size of the earplug litiga-
tion — nearly 230,000 claims
are pending before a federal
court in Pensacola, Fl orida —
dwarfs most mass torts.
“Anytime you get a case with
this many people involved,
people turn their heads,” said
Alexandra Lahav, a professor
at the University of Connecti-
cut School of Law. “It’s an in-
credibly large number of com-
plaints.”
If the verdicts go badly for
3M, damages could tally in the
hundreds of millions of dollars,
if not more, based on the out-
come of other large mass tort
cases in recent years.
The earplug claims against
3M were lodged after the com-
pany settled a whistleblower
suit in 2018.
That suit was brought by
rival earplug maker Mold-
ex-Metric on the U.S. govern-
ment’s behalf, after an inquiry
by the Army Criminal Investi-
gations Command.
See Earplugs / A13