The Census Bureau will hold a webinar on “The Fundamentals of Exporting” Aug. 22 at 1 p.m. This fourth webinar in the Foreign Trade Webinar Series will clarify roles and responsibilities in an export transaction, Census said. Registration is available here. The presentation and archived video of the webinar will be available after the event.

A provision of the Defense Department’s regulations implementing the Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty that gives DoD officials a role in determining whether items can be exported according to the terms of the Treaty, or are instead disallowed because of International Traffic in Arms Regulations limitations, could cause compliance problems for exporters, said the American Bar Association Section of Public Contract Law (ABA-PCL) in comments on DoD’s May interim rule. “The regime has the potential for confusion, particularly because most DoD contracting officers and program managers have relatively little formal training in export controls, and there is no explicit ‘safe harbor’ provision allowing reliance on DoD determinations,” said ABA-PCL.

The Bureau of Industry and Security renewed its Temporary Denial Order against Mahan Airways and Zarand Aviation for another 180 days. The parties for which export privileges are denied by this order include: Mahan Airways; Zarand Aviation; Gatewick LLC; Pejman Mahmood Kosarayanifard; Mahmoud Amini; Kerman Aviation, Sirjanco Trading; Ali Eslamian; Mahan Air General Trading LLC; Skyco (UK) Ltd.; and Equipco (UK) Ltd.

U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas will happen, but volumes will be smaller than many expect, said a global gas market expert. But Ken Medlock, a Baker Institute energy fellow at Rice University in Houston, told Natural Gas Intelligence just a little bit can make a difference in other ways: "When you have that artery open so there's this opportunity, all you really need is just the threat of arbitrage to begin to see markets blink." He said the U.S. will be "lucky to see more than 1 Bcf/d" of exports 10 years from now. He said he believes global arbitrage players will be active in the export market, noting that Asians and Europeans can hold U.S. storage capacity anywhere in the country and make their market strategies work through displacement.

The U.S. Department of Energy gave Excelerate Energy a long-term, multi-contract authorization to export liquefied natural gas to free trade agreement (FTA) nations from its Lavaca Bay LNG project, currently under development, the company said. The permit is to export up to 10 million metric tons per year of LNG produced from domestic resources for a 20-year term beginning on the date of its first export, it said. The Lavaca Bay LNG facility on the Texas Gulf Coast will be the first floating liquefaction export facility in the U.S., it said. It still needs authorization from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but Excelerate said it expects the facility to be in-service in 2017.

The Bureau of Industry and Security issued a correction to a July 26 notice revising the Commerce Control List. The July 26 notice said BIS was correcting 5A003 to remove the entry for EI in the table for “License Requirements” and place it below the table as an indented paragraph. The sentence should have instead referred to 5A002.

Export related subcommittees of CBP’s Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations (COAC) said they're evaluating current export policies, Mutual Recognition Partners programs, and data sharing, among other things, according to documents released in the lead up to the Aug. 15 COAC meeting in Seattle. The Subcommittee on Exports provided a progress report, while the newly-established Subcommittee on Export/Outbound Cargo released its work statement.

The Agricultural Marketing Service released the “Ocean Shipping Container Availability Report” for the week of Aug. 8-14. The weekly report contains data on container availability for westbound transpacific traffic at 18 intermodal locations in the U.S.¹ from the 10 member carriers of the Westbound Transpacific Stabilization Agreement (WTSA)². Although the report is compiled by AMS, it covers container availability for all merchandise, not just agricultural products.

The Association of Small Business Development Centers (ASBDC) will host an Automated Export System Compliance Seminar and an AESPcLink Workshop in Baltimore, Md., Aug. 21-22, the Census Bureau said in AES Broadcast # 2012053. At the seminar on Aug. 21, Census experts will cover the filing requirements of the Foreign Trade Regulations, Schedule B classification requirements, and provide an overview of AES. On the second day, Aug. 22, two AESPcLink Workshops will be conducted. More information is available here, and registration is available here. Email documents@brokerpower.com for a copy of this message.

The Export-Import Bank of the U.S. and the Industrial Development Corp. of South Africa signed an agreement to help advance the South African government's Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) and the South African Renewable Initiative (SARi). Under the agreement, Ex-Im Bank will assist in financing up to $2 billion worth of U.S. technologies, products and services to South Africa's energy sector, with an emphasis on clean-energy development, they said.