Lough Swilly - Ireland's Gateway to the Far East and the Pacific

open sesame

Is the title of a proposal at the somewhat dodgy (see Simon McGarr's article in the Irish Times at the weekend) Your Country Your Call. This idea is perhaps so gigantically grandiose that the proposer doesn't really expect to win and thereby get ripped off by the mysterious folk behind YCYC - and is just getting it out there. Have a look

<blockquote>The Northwest Passage – Lough Swilly, Europe’s Gateway to the Far East and the Pacific.

Introduction:
In August 2009, the heavy lift carrier vessels Beluga Fraternity and Beluga Foresight, owned by the Bremen-based Beluga Group, successfully completed an East-to-West passage along the Northern Sea Route. This route, sometimes known as the North East Passage, is a shipping lane from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean along the Russian Arctic Coast. With the advent of climate change, this shipping route is increasingly navigable, offering the opportunity for freight to avoid the traditional bottlenecks for shipping – the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Bospurus, the Straits of Hormuz and the Straits of Molucca. The Northern Sea Route is not the only shipping lane that whose importance is predicted to increase in the coming years – the Arctic Sea Bridge is a trans-Arctic route which links Russia and Canada.

Lough Swilly, County Donegal, is a natural deep water port with a historic capacity to handle heavy commercial and naval sea traffic. I propose that we must ensure that Ireland is in a position to be a key component of the coming transformation in Northern European maritime traffic. Lough Swilly has the capacity to be a major port of the North Atlantic, and one which would be an accessible landfall for sea traffic both from the East (the Russian Far East, Japan, China) as well as Canada and the American West Coast.

We need to develop a facility at Lough Swilly that will act as the port of entry to the European Union for sea traffic from both the Northern Sea Route and Arctic Bridge. We need to develop high speed rail links to Rosslare Europort and to Larne, to ensure that the Lough Swilly port allows freight into the UK and Continental Europe. Elements of the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway Company Network (the company is still active, although it moved to road freight operations in the 1950s) could be reactivated and redeveloped to help create this infrastructure.
Creation of Jobs:

The predicted savings in terms of sea freight from this transformation in shipping are considerable. Beluga Group estimated that the route saved each ship EURO 300,000. Savings of this magnitude make these routes extremely attractice to freight, and if Lough Swilly can be positioned as a port allowing access to the UK and EU for traffic on transArctic routes, considerable sea traffic would be attracted This would lead to the development of many jobs both directly in the port and in support services.
Lough Swilly is ideally placed as a gateway to the North Atlantic. It is also a project which could act as an enormous economic opportunity for both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Clearly there would have to be considerable infrastructural investment in Lough Swilly’s own facilities to ensure that the port was capable of handling the volumes of freight possible. These projects will lead to considerable job creation.

Plausibility

Clearly this is an extremely ambitious proposal, and one whose cost would far exceed that of the sums available via this competition. I propose that the sum of money specified in the competition rules be used

a) to do a full feasibility study on this issue. Other Irish ports should of course be considered in this study, which look at all the ways in which Ireland could potentially benefit from the opening up of sea routes across and around the Arctic.
b) To establish a Lough Swilly Arctic Port Company to begin the process of developing the port.
c) To explore with the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Rail Company the re-establishment of their rail network.
As written above, sea traffic in the Northern Hemisphere is being transformed. Even if the full scale proposal to make Lough Swilly a hub in this network does not pan out, by examining how we can best approach this situation, and by improving maritime and land infrastructure in the Northern half of the country, there would be many knock on benefits which would create jobs directly and create the infrastructure for the improved trade with North Atlantic nations and beyond.

References:

International Herald Tribune: “Arctic riches coming out of the cold” by Clifford Krauss, Steven Lee Myers, Andrew C. Revkin and Simon Romero, The New York Times, Monday, October 10, 2005;
National Geographic. “Space Radar Helps Shipping Dodge Arctic Icebergs". December 2, 2008.
New York Times (2009-09-04). "Commercial Arctic Passage Nearing Goal”. Andrew Revkin

"German vessels ready for the Northern Sea Route". BarentsObserver.com. 2009-08-05.
“German commercial ships make historic Arctic journey". Deutsche Welle. 2009-09-12.
http://www.beluga-group.com/en/#News-News</blockquote&gt;

who the fug

Rotterdam can handle these ships why have double handling

ednwireland

your country you call

says it all really

complete utter waste of time and effort

North_West_Art

Hi, I think its worth a shot. Rotterdam can get very congested and they are facing a crisis in the near future

http://www.portworld.com/news/2006/11/66246

Our problem here is the development that would be needed on Lough Swilly would seem like a humungous task to create in a very short space of time.
Plus we would find ourselves competing with the likes of Aberdeen, who are already a well established sea port

http://www.aberdeen-harbour.co.uk/

ps. That article above is v hard to read

Adamcp898

Em there are many many reasons why this could never happen, not to mention the shippping routes such as the Arctic Sea Bridge that such a project would rely on have been attempted to be developed for quite some time without a lot headway been made tbh

fontanalis

Why would any other country bother with a corrupt gombeen infested country?

North_West_Art

because up here its different

Pique

Doesn't Killybegs already have the deepest port in the country? Why have 2 in the one county with the lowest population density?
Besides, if ships have made it west from Russia and east from Canada/US, why stop so close to mainland Europe ? It would make more sense for them to head straight to Rotterdam/Calais/La Rochelle/Bilbao.

who the fug

Pique wrote: »

Doesn't Killybegs already have the deepest port in the country?

The deepest port in Ireland is in Bantry.

Pique

who the fug wrote: »

The deepest port in Ireland is in Bantry.

Oh OK, I thought all the money that went into the redevelopment of the port (and allowed ocean liners to dock there) made it the biggest. Ah well.
How deep is it exactly, in comparison to others?

And wouldn't it be a better option than Lough Swilly (in the la-la planet that the OP referenced in the YCYC article) ?

who the fug

Pique wrote: »

Oh OK, I thought all the money that went into the redevelopment of the port (and allowed ocean liners to dock there) made it the biggest. Ah well.
How deep is it exactly, in comparison to others?

And wouldn't it be a better option than Lough Swilly (in the la-la planet that the OP referenced in the YCYC article) ?

they have 12 Bantry has 23 metres , but we don't let them cruise ships along side

fontanalis

North_West_Art wrote: »

because up here its different

But seriously, hopefully this downturn makes people realise that Ireland has to start taking things more seriously and dealing with other countries will play a big part in improving the economy in the future.

open sesame

I got the feeling he \ she could have written any random port or former port. should have said bunbeg harbour - that looks deep enough.

In fairness of all the proposals I browsed through it is the only one that proposed something specific, even if crazy. Most of the others seemed to involve waving a magic wand and making Ireland the global centre of education/ health / computer games / tourism , "just like that"

open sesame

Should have said "among the only ones" rather than "the only one"

muckish

Looks like sea ice is making a comeback and freezing over the NorthWest passage this year http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=43735&src=eoa-iotd

There goes that idea!:cool:

batman1

we would find ourselves competing with the likes of Aberdeen, who are already a well established sea port

Aberdeen is not an international freight port. It is solely for oil and gas. Anything as large as a container/bulk ship would not fit into Aberdeen.

Both Cork and Waterford have had proposals for Transatlantic ports (like Southhanpton) turned down. Transatlantic freight leaving Ireland is first shipped by feeder ships to Southampton/rotterdam etc and put on large vessels for the transatlantic leg. Ireland is too isolated from mainland Europe for rail/road etc.

The passage made across the top of Russia is a summertime trade, and even then requires sepecialised ships of which companies will not build just for that route as they are VERY expensive.

I think Lough Swilly has more potential as a marine leisure centre, as it is one of the safest and most sheltered loughs in the country. It just has not been exploited to it's full potential.

Harps

Even if this was accepted it would never happen with the culture of appealing every single major planning decision in this country. A project this big would take years to even have a chance of making it through the planning process so theres no hope.

And as said above, ships coming all the way through the Arctic would be stupid to stop here when theyre already so close to mainland Europe. Even if the likes of Rotterdam, Hamburg, Antwerp etc are close to capacity Im sure a new port in Europe would take priority over this country

Graces7

Harps wrote: »

Even if this was accepted it would never happen with the culture of appealing every single major planning decision in this country. A project this big would take years to even have a chance of making it through the planning process so theres no hope.

And as said above, ships coming all the way through the Arctic would be stupid to stop here when theyre already so close to mainland Europe. Even if the likes of Rotterdam, Hamburg, Antwerp etc are close to capacity Im sure a new port in Europe would take priority over this country

How come that dreadful kitchen sales place got in on the Sligo/Bundoran road out of Town here?

Always wondered about that given the general trend?

lucd

it would bring in a fortune

Harps

Graces7 wrote: »

How come that dreadful kitchen sales place got in on the Sligo/Bundoran road out of Town here?

Always wondered about that given the general trend?

Cant say I'm familiar with the place, I'm rarely down that part of the county