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Oil Spills – A bigger problem to the environment than is generally realised – do we have a solution?
By David Weaver, ERG
We are currently looking at rapidly rising demand for energy throughout the world. In fact, highly respected sources generally agree that the world primary energy demand is set to rise by 59 per cent over the next 25 years. 85 per cent of this increase is expected to be provided from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, two-thirds of this new demand will come from rapidly developing nations, especially China and India. Over the next 25 years, even if present trends continue without increase, oil demand will grow by 1.6 per cent per annum.
This will create a doubling of inter regional trade. This may not sound a big problem, but if you look closely at the figures, the world’s oil supplies have been stretched already to supply enough fuel for the current energy demand around the world, this is resulting in serious increases in the price of oil in the world market.
With this in mind consider the following issues:-
To cope with these trends, we will require more oil from fewer countries.
Gas use will double and coal will continue to supply up to 20 per cent of world energy use, particularly in developing nations.
There is a lot of discussion currently about alternate or renewable energy sources displacing traditional carbon based fuels, but there are commercial problems with most renewable energy sources, wind turbines have a negative visual impact and have high capital cost.
Nuclear power is being phased out across developed nations such as Europe and the United States because of the political unacceptability of the issues concerning irradiated fuel waste. All of this suggests that a dependence on carbon based fuels, particularly oil is not likely to decrease over the next 25 years. In 2003 oil consumption grew by 2.1 per cent which is equivalent to 1.5 million barrels a day against a 10 year average of 1.6 per cent.
In 2003, 80 million barrels of oil per day were consumed worldwide. As more oil production is being sought, the oil sources are likely to become more widespread from smaller sources to try to maintain the supply/demand balance.
From past experience, this means that the world could be facing an ecological disaster of a proportion never seen before with more oil being pumped through pipe lines, transported in tankers at sea, off loaded from sea to shore, being carried in road bound convoys, more and more storage tanks will appear and more and more movements of carbon based fuels will be seen. The potential for oil spillage both at sea and on land is of concern and this concern is increasing.
The current situation provided by recorded statistics is that .25 per cent of oil produced off shore worldwide is spilled at sea, this equates to 6 million tons of oil spilled into the sea each year. In addition to this a further .25 per cent of oil produced on shore is spilled on land each year which equates to 14 million tons of oil spilled on the land each year.
If we consider the increase in demand creating increase in production of oil as we have discussed, these figures should worry everyone, particularly as current oil spill management techniques are inefficient and incomplete in their ability to clean up and remove the pollution.
Current methods of oil spill containment at sea, for example, result in the oil being dispersed and sunk to the ocean bed, this method does hide the problem and take it out of sight but it just moves the pollution to a different ecological point where damage is now done to plant and animal life deeper in the ocean.
Pollution is one aspect of this problem, the other aspect is the loss of this valuable energy source, if we could find a product and a process which would effectively and efficiently recover this spilled oil in a non toxic form which could then be burned as a fuel wouldn’t this be a major advantage for the world’s environment?
This now at long last appears to be possible, a product called QU94 produced by Enviro Resource NV is currently completing laboratory and field trials and the results indicate that this product could be the answer. Unlike other competitors, this material, which originates in Scandinavia and was discovered by a group of Scandinavian scientists, is completely natural and organic made from parts of a particular tree.
It absorbs oil and not water and has been proven to absorb all the difficult liquid materials that currently have not been able to have been recovered, from crude oil through to aviation spirit to diesel to lacquers, shellacs and ethanol products. The material is non-toxic, non poisonous and when it is recovered after absorbing the spillage can be burned safely thus recovering the potentially wasted energy.
Further trials are being conducted at the moment for a sludge management process using this material which is proving to be highly effective. When a revolutionary product such as this is introduced to the market you would normally expect the down side to be the cost, in this case it is actually cheaper than the competition. In summary, what we have here is a quick, easy to administer, cheap and effective solution to oil spills, it is not often we get good news such as this that actually protects our environment.
It seems an easy decision to make for oil companies, governments, military and the like to put this material to the test and see if it does what it claims. What a better world it would be for this to happen | |
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