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Oil tanker ban

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  • 28-11-2002 9:01pm
    #1
    Gordon
    Registered Users Posts: 35,523 ✭✭✭✭


    http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-12181829,00.html

    well it's about time that this sort of thing is happening. It seems that France Spain and Portugal are banning old single-hulled oil tankers from its waters.
    France and Spain decided on Tuesday to push ahead without their EU partners and impose immediate new regulations making it almost impossible for single-hulled tankers older than 15 years to enter their waters.

    Modern double-hulled tankers mean oil containers are protected even if the outer hull is punctured.

    The new rules mean France and Spain can start immediate inspections of potentially dangerous oil tankers in their waters and ban them from within 200 miles of the coast.
    Good news for some parts of the oceans, I think, but do you think that this should be the case?


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    #2
    mike65
    Closed Accounts Posts: 88,978 ✭✭✭✭mike65


    I guess it depends on how many double skinned tankers there
    are to move oil from a to b. I suspect not as many as is required.

    If Europe were to institute a ban all that would do is push these rust buckets further towards the margins and that may actually be a bad thing as the third world is less able to clean up after a spill.

    Mike.


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    #3
    Typedef
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,564 ✭✭✭Typedef


    Clearly this leakage has the potential to do some serious damage to the Northern Coast of Spain now that the tanker has broken up. So, for me, this incident is indicitive of why it is I am opposed to transportation of hazardous materials by sea, namely the potential for accident.

    The Exxon Valdez, this incident in Spain, perhaps an incident with the transportation of Nuclear materials could happen to, because basically the system for transportation is not fool proof and chance can and does mean that accidents happen. So, if one takes it as a given that accidents will happen.

    In the case of Nuclear waste, I personally opposed it's very existance, never mind it's transportation. In the case of oil, again I question the actual necessity for using oil and transporting the stuff as there seems to be the beginnings of a sound platform of scientific proof to corroborate the usage of non petro chemical fuels to supplant the traditional use of petroleum fuels. By that of course I mean hydrogen extracted from water.

    Yes I know that is a political misnomer to expect hydrogen fuel (not fuel cells or batteries) to replace petrol, as there are huge global interests to prevent any serious effort to supplant fossil fuels, but that doesn't mean the science behind the argument is bad. Call that whinging if you like, it is fact and if the ecologists are right about the damage fossil fuels are doing the the planet, then long term, it is ultimately 'us' normal average Joe Soaps, who will bear the brunt of the consequences.


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