At the end of the era of oil we will see an explosion of activities where energy-intensive craziness takes over. Like shipping water from Alaska to India, for a penny a gallon?
Fresh water is set to be the next “big oil” of the world, with supplies in some areas growing exceedingly tight. Technologies from smart metering to irrigation management to purification all seem to be slower to reach areas like India than tankers of exported water. However, while businesses are dashing to find a profit in water exportation, water management will need to become far more popular globally if we’re to avoid a worldwide water shortage.
S2C is set to start shipping water within eight months, using tankers that have a “Ozonating” system onboard to keep the water clean. The shipping of the water alone sounds incredibly energy intensive. According to the release:
[T]his first hub will include a berth for a Suezmax vessel (156,000 cubic meters/41Million USG), an offloading system to a dedicated tank farm and a distribution complex for packaged water. Within 18 months after that we will be able to switch to a very large class vessel (302,833 cubic meters/80 Million USG), as both the ship and the berth for her will be completed within this time frame. Contracts for the distribution hub and ships are being finalized.
The company will be able to sell from its hub bulk fresh water by way of smaller ships that can deliver to shallower ports, like Umm Qasr in Iraq (located within 4 days of India’s west coast). S2C will also sell fresh water in 20-foot containers with flexi-tanks (4623 USG) suitable for pharmaceutical/high tech manufacturing and packaged water (18.9 and 10L) for the consumer markets anywhere containers are delivered in south and west Asia from India.
While water exportation sounds inefficient and potentially environmentally dangerous, it is getting little opposition from Alaskans.
The problem is that Alsakans don’t really own the water in this sense. The premise of existing water rights is that the water will be used locally, will ultimately return to the local aquifers and then to the local ecosystem. It certainly was never considered that local water rights would lead to the water being transported to another continent.
I guess even 9 billion gallons doesn’t seem like much water, so I wonder how much of a benefit is actually involved for India?
Yeah, this water thing has been on my radar for a while now. Back in 2003 I wrote about a water dispute between border towns on the US/Mexico border. More recently, in 2008, I wrote about a number of water-related issues like, the 100th anniversary of water treatment, a great Canadian miniseries called H20, my own tangential connection with water, and how generally water is not a big enough focus in the current scheme of things. Two years later, it still isn’t.
However, seeing other folks post about water gives me a bit of hope. :)
