GALTEX Pilots File New Rate Increase Request

Industry taken by surprise; still analyzing details of new rate proposal. Legal action, says one stakeholder, “possible.”

In a surprisingly quick turnaround from the August 24th withdrawal of another rate increase that also took local stakeholders by surprise, the Galveston-Texas City Pilots have filed a new request for a rate increase with the Board of Pilot Commissioners for the Ports of Galveston County. In the latest rate request, dated 11 September 2009, GALTEX pilot chief Captain Chris Gutierrez insisted, “The Galveston County Pilots will show good and sufficient cause exists to support the requested application.”

The new request comes less than one month after the pilots withdrew their previous application after last summer’s acrimonious and lengthy meetings with stakeholders and the Pilot commissioners. Those talks, which initially appeared to yield a rate increase – although not the one pilots or industry was hoping for – proved fruitless when the pilots abruptly withdrew their request with little notice or explanation.

If approved, the latest rate increase request would become effctive on October 17th, 2009. Still digesting the latest request from the pilots, industry stakeholders provided MarEx with preliminary analysis of the rate request. That information, provided in confidence to MarEx, suggested that while draft unit charges would not change at all, the differences in certain “accessorial charges” would be significant.

MarEx had not verified the accuracy of the math involved at the time of this e-newsletter. Separately, another Gulf Coast-based stakeholder told MarEx that legal challenges were being seriously considered..