According to a report from WorldNetDaily, Dubai Ports World is scheduled to take over 22 U.S. ports, not 6.
According to the website of P&O Ports, the port-operations subsidiary of the London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. (P&O), DPW will pick up stevedore services at 12 East Coast ports including Portland, Maine; Boston; Davisville, R.I.; New York; Newark; Philadelphia; Camden, N.J.; Wilmington, Del.; Baltimore, Md.; and Virginia locations at Newport News, Norfolk, and Portsmouth.
Additionally, DPW will take over P&O stevedoring operations at nine ports along the Gulf of Mexico including the Texas ports of Lake Charles, Beaumont, Port Arthur, Galveston, Houston, Freeport, and Corpus Christi, plus the Louisana ports of Lake Charles and New Orleans.
Previously reported have only been P&O Ports’ container operations at New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, and New Orleans. Stevedore services also typically involve the loading and unloading of containers on and off cargo ships, as well as moving and storing containers, though often in separate facilities from where containers are initially loaded and unloaded from the cargo ships. Thus, while DPW will be operating the container terminal operations of only the six ports initially disclosed, DPW will be managing stevedore services, handling containers at a total of 21 ports, located along the Eastern seaboard from Maine to Virginia, and across the Gulf of Mexico from Texas to Louisiana.
Additionally, the website of P&O Ports North America lists that P&O provides container services at the Port of Miami, through a subsidiary identified as P&O Ports Florida, Inc. This brings to 22 the total number of American ports where DPW will be acquiring P&O operations.
With all the heat on George W. Bush and his administration’s decision to do this deal, I don’t know how it can proceed as is. There’s just too much noise right now, and the president won’t win by trying to adjust his message upon each new revelation. The best that can be done is for everyone to agree to suspend the transaction. Release all of the details and explain that this issue is really one of bad public relations, nothing more. Right now the goal should be full disclosure. Anything less will be met with further criticism and allegations of corruption, exactly the things we don’t need heading into the mid-terms.