Oil Tankers Are Surrounding California with Nowhere to Unload | Hacker News Reader

Oil Tankers Are Surrounding California with Nowhere to Unload

bnnbloomberg.ca

50 pointsprostoalex25 comments

Strategic Petroleum Reserve uses salt caverns to store crude oil and has the capacity of 797 million barrels [1], which is equivalent to roughly 500-700 larger tankers. Both construction cost and carry cost per barrel are, of course, much lower vs. tankers.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_...

Currently about 80% full. Seems like a good time to top it off.

Automated wikipeda page is funny:

At recent market prices ($-37 a barrel as of April 2020),[5] the SPR holds over $-9.26 billion in sweet crude and approximately $-20.4 billion in sour crude (assuming a $15/barrel discount for sulfur content).

This would be only true if the cost of storing would be free.

>Oil tankers carrying enough crude to satisfy 20 per cent of the world’s consumption are gathered off California’s coast with nowhere to go as fuel demand collapses.

What does that mean? 20% of the daily consumption? 20% of the yearly consumption?

It's just clickbait.

Looks like 20% of the daily consumption - the article mentions "more than 20 million barrels" and the global oil consumption is 97m+ barrels per day (https://www.worldometers.info/oil/).

"Surrounding" California on one side? It's not an island.

It must be weird being inboard. You've arrived, you were looking forwards to getting paid and being on shore or going home. Now your boss tells you you need to do overtime. Indefinately, maybe for weeks or maybe for months. Any you can see the shore...

they're often poorly paid foreigners.

lots of Malay/Indonesian etc types. in Australia I see that a lot anyway.

They're very well paid relative to the home country depending on seniority. One of my uncles who was a ship's engineer essentially retired at 50 to settle down in a tier 2 city in India while having enough money to put his child through grad school in the US without taking on debt. Oil pays better than regular cargo due to rapid turnarounds often without docking at ports - so marine folks intent on moving up the ladder prefer oil tankers to rack up hours required for qualifications

They are allowed to leave the ship while moored, fyi.

Aren't there old coal mines where it can be dumped ?

Since its raw crude I presume, you won't have leeching problems.

https://www.mining-technology.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8...

You could store 100 tanker worth of oil here.

Crude oil and it's vapors are highly toxic. Maybe you could store it there if you capped the giant hole, but that wouldnt be feasible.

https://www.amfs.com/effects-of-crude-oil-exposure/

Why wouldn't you have leeching problems? If you filled that mine up the oil at the bottom would be under a lot of pressure.

This is no different than when it's in the ground naturally.

Those pits fill up with water once they're decommissioned unless you're in a dry region. The rocks usually have fractures which allow surrounding ground water to leak into the pit, only reason they don't flood is because you lower the water table around the pit in the years before.

This is one big storm away from being an ecological disaster.

When is the storm season in that area?

Nov through March. But barely.

Unlikely off California. Tsunami perhaps if the big one hits.

I've lived in California over 40 years. There are many storms every season. And your unicorn "big one" would likely be on-shore and produce no tsunami. I think you need a new nickname because your arrogant ignorance doesn't add anything of value here.

Tsunamis are none events at sea: „ Tsunamis have a small wave height offshore, and a very long wavelength (often hundreds of kilometres long, whereas normal ocean waves have a wavelength of only 30 or 40 metres),[33] which is why they generally pass unnoticed at sea, forming only a slight swell usually about 300 millimetres (12 in) above the normal sea surface.“ [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami

It's already causing an ecological disaster called climate change. We must go net carbon negative now, or ecocide and omnicide will be certain. Spilling oil would be comparatively trivial.

These vessels can sit out or avoid storms just fine. They are not abandoned hulks, they have plenty of fuel onboard and an active crew. Weather systems in this area don't develop from nowhere, they originate in the far west and can be seen and their movement predicted a long time in advance. These ships can travel hundreds of miles in the days before a serious storm arrives where they were.

... also, this area is not known for large swell storms.

I got somewhere they can unload. My mother in law is paying 0.68 a gal for fuel in Michigan right now meanwhile here in California I’m still sucking down the crud 91 octane for over $3 a gallon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com