EXAMPLES OF GROWING FOREIGN CONTROL

OF CRITICAL U.S. INFRASTRUCTURE

 

 

SEAPORTS

 

Eighty percent (80%) of U.S. seaports are already controlled and/or operated by foreign companies:

 

· Six of seven companies running terminals within the Port of New York/New Jersey are foreign-owned.

· At the Port of Houston, the British firm Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. (acquired by Dubai Ports World) handles freight at several public terminals. Inchcape Shipping Services, the world's largest private shipping manager which was recently acquired by a United Arab Emirates investment company, also has had a long-time presence in Houston.

· At the Port of Boston, P&O Ports (wholly owned subsidiary of Peninsular and Oriental) and the Massachusetts Port Authority have joined forces to operate the Black Falcon Cruise Ship Terminal.

· P&O Ports is also a 50% joint venture partner in Delaware River Stevedores (DRS), which provides stevedoring and terminal services in Philadelphia, PA, Camden, NJ, and Wilmington, DE

· 80 percent of the terminals at the nation’s busiest port, the Port of Los Angeles, are run by foreigners. · At the Port of Baltimore, APM Terminals, a division of the Danish A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, operates a private container terminal within Dundalk Marine Terminal. C. Steinweg (USA) Inc., a division of Dutch company C. Steinweg Handelsveem B.V., operates the Baltimore Metal & Commodities Terminal Inc. Terminal. Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics, a company born of a merger between a Swedish firm and a Norwegian firm in 1999, operates the Mid-Atlantic Terminal. Finally, Ceres Terminals Incorporated, of Japanese firm NYK, currently provides service at cruise terminals in Bayonne, NJ, Brooklyn, NY, and Baltimore, MD.

· Foreign interests or their subsidiaries operate container cargo terminals at seven of the busiest container cargo ports in the U.S.

· Neptune Orient Line, (70% owned by the Singapore government) bought U.S.-based APL Limited in 1997 and now operates terminals in Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, and Alaska.

· Yang Ming Marine Transport Company (partially owned by the Taiwanese government) runs terminals in Los Angeles and Tacoma.

· Cosco Container Lines (division of China Cosco) is owned by the Chinese government and operates a terminal at Long Beach.

· A.P. Moeller-Maersk, a Danish company, is the largest terminal operator in the United States and owner of the world's largest shipping fleet. It operates terminals at the ports of Miami-Dade and Jacksonville, among others, and owns APM Terminals NA, which is building a $500 million private container terminal in Portsmouth, Virginia, scheduled to open in 2007.

· In Norfolk, Virginia, Ceres Marine Terminals Inc. (one of the major stevedoring firms) is owned by Japanese shipping firm NYK Line. Norfolk also is the U.S. headquarters of French shipping line CMA-CGM Group and Israeli shipper Zim-American Israeli Shipping Co.

· According to Dennis Rochford, president of the Maritime Exchange for the Delaware River and Bay, of the 2,700 ships that pass through the ports of Camden (New Jersey), Philadelphia, and Wilmington along the Delaware River each year, 2,500 are foreign

· In the late 1990s, China Ocean Shipping Co. (COSCO) wanted to build a $200 million container terminal at the Port of Long Beach until there was a public outcry and Congress passed a bill scuttling the plans. After a terminal at the port was later vacated by another tenant, however, Cosco was able to take it over and operate at Long Beach.

· Recently, there was similar public outcry when China National Offshore Oil Corp.’s subsidiary (CNOOC Ltd) made a bid to buy Unocal.

 

 

·  AIRPORTS
 

· Indianapolis International Airport is now run by a wholly-owned subsidiary of BAA plc (the privatized British Airport Authority). BAA plc also holds medium-term retail management contracts with Pittsburgh International, Boston Logan International, and Baltimore/Washington International airports.  This company can be sold to an Iranian, Russian, or Syrian company at any time it is deemed to be in the best interests of its stockholders.

· International Terminal 4 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport is operated under a long term concession deal between the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and a consortium that includes Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, which is a corporation run by the Dutch government.

· International Concourse E at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport is managed by a domestic subsidiary of TBI plc, a British airport management company. TBI also provides ramp control at four of Hartsfield’s six ramps and manages the Airport-wide Flight Information Display System.

· TBI also manages both the international and domestic terminals, develops additional air service, and provides ground handling and cargo services for Central Florida’s Orlando Sanford International Airport. TBI additionally provides total airport management services at Burbank’s Bob Hope Airport.

· AvPorts, a domestic subsidiary of the Australian-owned Macquarie Infrastructure Company, provides management and operations services at Albany International Airport, Atlantic City International Airport, Tweed-New Haven Regional Airport, and Westchester County Airport.

· Stewart International Airport, located north of New York City, operates under a 99-year lease to the U.S. subsidiary of the U.K.-based National Express Group, PLC.

 

 

·  WATER AND WASTE WATER TREATMENT

• Of the four largest water companies that provide operations and maintenance services to publicly-owned water and wastewater systems in the U.S., only one—OMI—is a domestic company.

• More than 2,400 water and waste water systems in the USA contract with private firms to operate and maintain them. Veolia Water, for instance, is the a subsidiary of a French firm and serves more than 600 communities and 14 million people through public-private partnerships with local governments, including the nation’s largest water partnership in Indianapolis.
  
  In addition, 15 percent of the U.S. population is served by about  20,000 private water and wastewater utilities - most are domestic subsidiaries of foreign firms.

 

·  ELECTRICAL POWER

 

·  The National Grid, which supplies electrical power to much of the North East, is owned by a foreign firm, which, at any time, if it were in the interest of stockholder profits, could sell out to the "highest bidder"...be it in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia or the Sudan.

 

  

·  HIGHWAYS

 

State and local politicians have discovered that they can make short term political gains by selling their state and local highway infrastructure to temporarily reduce taxes.  The buyers?  Long-term-thinking foreign companies that often break even on these 75 and 99 year long "deals" in a few years. For example:

· In 2004, the City of Chicago turned over control of the 7.8 mile Chicago Skyway to the Australian-owned Macquarie Infrastructure Group and Spanish-owned Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte S.A. for 99 years!

· The same firms have now taken control of the critically important Indiana Toll Road.

· Cintra also is a major player in the consortium designing, building, operating and controlling the first Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC-35).

· Macquarie also now controls:

        the Dulles Greenway toll road in Virginia,

        the Foley Beach Expressway in Alabama

        the SR-125 toll road under construction in San Diego...among others

        Macquarie was also control three toll roads in the Portland, Oregon area.

· The Australian firm Transurban is partnering with U.S.-based Fluor on projects to add high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes to the Capital Beltway (I-495) and along the I-95/I-395 corridor in Virginia.

 

The “National Defense Critical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2006” (H.R. 4881), introduced by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is one such piece of legislation. The bill would prevent non-U.S. companies from owning, managing, or operating any system or asset that is included in a list of critical infrastructure to be prepared by the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.