Slick tricks and cheaper oil: something I've mentioned before...
Does anyone remember the Trafigura toxic waste scandal a couple of years ago?
Dust off the newspaper cuttings, or look up that link: it - or something like it - will be news again, soon. Or worse, not news: secretly disposed of, and silently killing people.
Let's say you have pumped a tanker-load of low-quality oil out of the ground; not just 'heavy' and in need of cracking into lighter fractions, but *filthy* - full of sulphur, and 'naptha' and maybe some heavy metals, too.
What do you do?
Well, you take it to the refinery and refine out the crap. That's what refineries are for... Except that this costs money. If crude prices have fallen, there's no money in it: why spend ten dollars a barrel doing that, when there's tanker after tanker full of better-quality oil, ten or twenty dollars a barrel cheaper?
It's entirely possible that your dirty oil has a negative economic value, and it's racking up the tankage fees. It's also possible that the oil has a positive value - possibly a very large one - and you're too much of a cheapskate to pay for refining out the crap.
So, what do you do if you're a dirty cheapskate?
Well, you put to sea with your dirty oil, and a few hundred tons of caustic soda and fuel oil (acts as a solvent) and you sail a *long* way from land - because what you are about to do stinks.
You give your dirty cargo a 'caustic wash' - pump the soda and the fuel oil through it a few times, sail around a bit to let it settle (and throw away everything the stench got into) and sail to the nearest no-questions-asked refinery.
Your choice of refinery is important: reputable ones won't touch 'washed' oil - that's not about morality and an environmental conscience, they're peeved that you didn't pay them for the premium refining service - but the right refinery will let you unload the nice, clean oil for a nice, dirty profit.
Actally, it's not so clean - it's damn' well obvious what you did - and you can't unload everything in your tanks: the bottom one or two percent is an unusable, unsaleable, and extremely toxic sludge. We call it 'tank washings', as if it's just the usual sludgy bits that settle out a typical cargo - and unscrupulous shipowners used to pump out the tank washings at sea on the return journey, leaving a tell-tale slick.
I say 'used to' because the International Convention Against Dumping at Sea has real teeth: it's enforced by quayside inspection (and even satellite observation) and the fines are *real* money, up to and beyond impounding tankers at the dock.
So you don't wash out your tanks at sea... Now what the hell do you do, with hundreds of tons of toxic sludge from a 'caustic wash'?
Well, you find a country with a waste-disposal industry that consists of an official who will take your waste, and a surprisingly small amount of money in return for a certificate assuring you that the waste has been responsibly disposed of, and you sail your ship away.
Rinse, and repeat.
The sludge, of course doesn't really disappear. And 'Tank Washings' are the worst industrial waste that there is, full stop. I'm sure that you can get a lab chemist to brag about the worst thing that they ever handled; but the odds are that when you ask them about it, they never actually handled it in quantities exceeding ounces - and nothing like this stuff ever turned up, anywhere, in quantities measured in tens or hundreds of tons.
It's toxic, corrosive, carcinogenic, flammable, and it stinks - hydrogen suphide and mercaptans, with a bracing tang of phenols and napthalene.
And when it's stopped stinking, when the volatiles have all evaporated off or the locals living next to it have got used to the smell, it carries on killing, silently, seeping into soil, and aquifers, and watercourses.
The short version: there's a lot of dirty oil out there, in tankers and in storage, that's worth a lot less money than it was when oil was eighty or a hundred dollars a barrel. So we're going to see 'tank washings' turning up again; and the Trafiguras of this world are going to make a lot of money doing what they do worst.
So my prediction is: the recent tumble in crude oil prices will have extremely negative environmental effects.
There will be other effects, and I won't have heard of them - would anyone else like to chip in?
This is a copy of my post here, on Dreamwidth, which has
comments. OpenID will allow you to comment there from your LiveJournal session: contact me if you have problems.
Dust off the newspaper cuttings, or look up that link: it - or something like it - will be news again, soon. Or worse, not news: secretly disposed of, and silently killing people.
Let's say you have pumped a tanker-load of low-quality oil out of the ground; not just 'heavy' and in need of cracking into lighter fractions, but *filthy* - full of sulphur, and 'naptha' and maybe some heavy metals, too.
What do you do?
Well, you take it to the refinery and refine out the crap. That's what refineries are for... Except that this costs money. If crude prices have fallen, there's no money in it: why spend ten dollars a barrel doing that, when there's tanker after tanker full of better-quality oil, ten or twenty dollars a barrel cheaper?
It's entirely possible that your dirty oil has a negative economic value, and it's racking up the tankage fees. It's also possible that the oil has a positive value - possibly a very large one - and you're too much of a cheapskate to pay for refining out the crap.
So, what do you do if you're a dirty cheapskate?
Well, you put to sea with your dirty oil, and a few hundred tons of caustic soda and fuel oil (acts as a solvent) and you sail a *long* way from land - because what you are about to do stinks.
You give your dirty cargo a 'caustic wash' - pump the soda and the fuel oil through it a few times, sail around a bit to let it settle (and throw away everything the stench got into) and sail to the nearest no-questions-asked refinery.
Your choice of refinery is important: reputable ones won't touch 'washed' oil - that's not about morality and an environmental conscience, they're peeved that you didn't pay them for the premium refining service - but the right refinery will let you unload the nice, clean oil for a nice, dirty profit.
Actally, it's not so clean - it's damn' well obvious what you did - and you can't unload everything in your tanks: the bottom one or two percent is an unusable, unsaleable, and extremely toxic sludge. We call it 'tank washings', as if it's just the usual sludgy bits that settle out a typical cargo - and unscrupulous shipowners used to pump out the tank washings at sea on the return journey, leaving a tell-tale slick.
I say 'used to' because the International Convention Against Dumping at Sea has real teeth: it's enforced by quayside inspection (and even satellite observation) and the fines are *real* money, up to and beyond impounding tankers at the dock.
So you don't wash out your tanks at sea... Now what the hell do you do, with hundreds of tons of toxic sludge from a 'caustic wash'?
Well, you find a country with a waste-disposal industry that consists of an official who will take your waste, and a surprisingly small amount of money in return for a certificate assuring you that the waste has been responsibly disposed of, and you sail your ship away.
Rinse, and repeat.
The sludge, of course doesn't really disappear. And 'Tank Washings' are the worst industrial waste that there is, full stop. I'm sure that you can get a lab chemist to brag about the worst thing that they ever handled; but the odds are that when you ask them about it, they never actually handled it in quantities exceeding ounces - and nothing like this stuff ever turned up, anywhere, in quantities measured in tens or hundreds of tons.
It's toxic, corrosive, carcinogenic, flammable, and it stinks - hydrogen suphide and mercaptans, with a bracing tang of phenols and napthalene.
And when it's stopped stinking, when the volatiles have all evaporated off or the locals living next to it have got used to the smell, it carries on killing, silently, seeping into soil, and aquifers, and watercourses.
The short version: there's a lot of dirty oil out there, in tankers and in storage, that's worth a lot less money than it was when oil was eighty or a hundred dollars a barrel. So we're going to see 'tank washings' turning up again; and the Trafiguras of this world are going to make a lot of money doing what they do worst.
So my prediction is: the recent tumble in crude oil prices will have extremely negative environmental effects.
There will be other effects, and I won't have heard of them - would anyone else like to chip in?
This is a copy of my post here, on Dreamwidth, which has
comments. OpenID will allow you to comment there from your LiveJournal session: contact me if you have problems.