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in Portugal’s first wind farm, and is always pleased to see the huge wind turbines turning on the North Atlantic coast. He understands however, that the change from burning fossil fuels to using renewable energy sources will not happen overnight. There are many renewable energy sources available: hydroelectric and wind power, solar power and bio gas. But at the current uptake rate, these sources won’t be able to cover even a quarter of the world’s energy needs in 20 years time.
    Raul is also frustrated by other nonsensical ideas about oil tankers that he comes across in online environmental chatrooms. For example, the comment, “The distance oil tankers have to travel to transport oil is the reason petrol is so expensive.”
    “This is not true!” Raul explains to other users in the chatroom. “Renting a super tanker costs anywhere up to $80,000 US dollars a day, which means in comparison to the price of oil, transport barely costs anything. If, for example, we were carrying 1.5 million barrels of oil (240 million litres) over a long distance, say 10,000 kilometres, it would take approximately twenty days for the journey there and back.” Raul works out the calculations in his head. “Twenty days at $80,000 dollars is a total tanker rental cost of $1.6 million dollars, divided by the cargo of 240 million litres of oil, equals a transport cost of approximately $0.0066 dollars per litre! Transportation costs less than half of one per cent of the sale price of a litre of oil.”
    At the same time, someone else involved in the discussion asks the most frequently asked question in the chatroom, “How long will oil supplies last, in light of the world’s increasing demand for energy?”
    Someone called Warner replies, “The government is lying to us all. The oil has almost run out and soon the world will be left in darkness.”
    Raul won’t stand for this kind of scaremongering. “There are plenty of reserves left for the foreseeable future, plus oil extraction technology has recently made great advances,” Raul replies. “Fields that were once overlooked or at great depths can now be found and exploited. At the moment we know of at least 42,000 oil fields, many of which have not yet been explored.”
    “That’s completely wrong,” Warner says. “The largest oil fields are all but used up. And only 300 of these 42,000 fields are economically viable. There will be a dramatic oil shortage within a decade!”
    “No,” Raul disagrees. “In ten years time, oil processing will have developed in ways that are currently too expensive to be economically viable. For example, at the moment, if oil is mixed with sand, we don’t process it, as it is too expensive. The bigger question is when will oil production become so expensive that it is no longer worth producing? When will petrol be too expensive for the average car driver? The production of cost-effective energy depends not only on oil, but also on the discovery of other energy sources and the needs of the consumer. In a recent survey, 80 per cent of European car drivers stated that they would cut down their car use if petrol prices continued to increase.”
    Raul shuts down his computer. While leaving his room and taking the stairs to the ship’s bridge, he goes over the debate in his head. He is amazed by the lack of public knowledge about fossil fuels and the global energy supply. Despite all the modern technology used in the oil industry; GPS systems that can pinpoint the whereabouts of a ship to the metre and instruments that can measure crude oil to the litre, when it comes to questions about the worldwide energy supply, the general public really have no idea.
     
    22 August 2005
    When the Madras reaches the Bay of Bengal two days later, it sails past more oil platforms rising out of the water. Bangladesh actually has its own offshore oil fields, and the oil is transported through a pipeline to the city of Chittagong. In spite of this, Bangladesh still