Dubai is asking for congressional review of deal

NY Times:

After two days of behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Bush administration and Congress, the Dubai company seeking to manage terminals at six American ports is expected to announce by Monday a deal inviting the government to conduct a broad new review of security concerns, senior administration officials and a company adviser say.

If an agreement is completed, the state-owned company, Dubai Ports World, will "voluntarily" ask the Bush administration to pursue the lengthier, deeper investigation that Democrats and Republicans in Congress have been demanding since controversy over the transaction erupted at the beginning of the week.

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For how ports really work the Houston Chronicle has a good overview of the business at the Port of Houston, one of the nations bussiest.

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Until earlier this month, few outside the shipping industry knew what P&O was, or even cared — let alone its role at the Port of Houston, one of the area's biggest economic drivers.

The port's public and private marine terminals generate $10.9 billion in business annually. Almost 90,000 direct jobs are associated with Port of Houston activity, with hundreds of thousands of additional indirect jobs, according to the port authority.

"What we have now at the Port of Houston is a collection of docks that we operate and a variety of cargoes," said Jim Edmonds, chairman of the port authority. "At the port, there are 200 trading nations and 1,000 ports that deal with Houston."

With 88 steamship lines offering service from Houston to far-flung parts of the world, the amount of goods moving through requires the efforts of a host of businesses and individuals, both public and private.

So who really runs the port?

First of all, the biggest portion of the port, which stretches along a 25-mile swath from its entrance at Morgan's Point to the Turning Basin in the shadow of the Loop 610 bridge, is privately held.

In fact, 85 percent of the cargo is handled by more than 150 private companies, making the port home to the second-largest petrochemical complex in the world, behind Rotterdam, Netherlands. The companies with facilities here range from giant businesses like Exxon Mobil to less well-known companies like Advanced Aromatics.

A number of the companies with facilities along the Houston Ship Channel are foreign-owned, from those like Venezuela's Citgo Petroleum to others like Odfjell Terminals, owned by Norwegian concern Odfjell.

"In the U.S., port authorities don't have any control over the private side," Edmonds said. "In Europe they do."

The public portion, overseen by the Port of Houston Authority, comprises 12 terminals, each of which has multiple docks. The public terminals and their 45 docks handle only about 15 percent of the cargo.

P&O has contracts with the authority to handle freight at four docks, plus it has work, as do other stevedore companies, at various other docks when hired by shippers.

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So what about port security?

Security is a shared responsibility at U.S. ports, including the Port of Houston.

The U.S. Coast Guard is responsible for security on the waterways and reviewing and approving security plans for vessels and port facilities. U.S. Customs & Border Protection is responsible for cargo security and screens and inspects cargo entering U.S. ports. The port authority is responsible for policing its own facilities, and the private businesses at the port have their own security.

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Now you know more about port operations than many in Congress who are registering upset at this business deal.