During this phase you can establish shipping lanes that allow you to transfer RUs from worlds you own to any other world in the galaxy.  RUs can be shipped off-world during the same turn that you take possession of the world, so you can set up a tentative order to ship RUs from a world that you plan to acquire in the coming turn.

You can ship RUs from one world to several different destinations.  For example, if you own a world that has 12 RUs stockpiled, you can ship six RUs to destination A, four RUs to destination B, and leave the remaining two RUs at the origin world.

If you own the destination world of a shipping lane, you simply specify both worlds involved and the amount to transfer.  If you do not own the destination world, you must also specify the intended empire, since the destination world an possibly change ownership before the transfer actually occurs.  If the specified empire does not own the destination world during the Ship Resource Units phase, then the gift lane will be cancelled.  You must be in message contact with the recipient empire at the time your gift lane is defined, but you need not have scanned the destination world.  The recipient will know that your gift has been delivered, but will not know which of your worlds supplied the gift.

Shipping lanes are automatically cancelled on the subsequent turn, but you can declare a lane to be persistent.  Persistent lanes remain in effect until you cancel that lane, or until you lose possession of either of the two worlds involved. 

Since worlds can stockpile RUs over several turns, you can sometimes ship more RUs than a world would normally produce.  If a world does not have enough stockpiled RUs to meet all its lane requirements, some lane shipments will fail.  See the Ship Resource Units phase below for more details.

Allies: Allied empires can ship RUs to each other's worlds, and maintain these RUs as separate stockpiles owned by each ally.  If the alliance is ever broken, the world owner immediately takes possession of any foreign stockpiled RUs.  If the owning empire loses control of that world, all stockpiled RUs are transferred to the new owner, unless they are also an ally of the stockpile owner.