With winter temperatures increasingly mild, the Dnipro River shipping season is being extended for one extra month – to the end of December. Originally, the river’s six locks were to start closing in a north-south sequence in mid-November. But shippers, notably Nibulon, lobbied for an extended season, noting that last year serious ice did not start forming on the river until January. Under the direction of the State Maritime and River Transport Service, closing the river involves pulling out hundreds of buoys.