Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Forbes has set a new benchmark in green attempts to somehow demonstrate fossil fuels are subsidised, by suggesting that shipping companies buying heavy fuel oil of their own free will is a form of fossil fuel subsidy.
‘Climate-Farce’: Japan And The UN Shipping Agency’s Attitude To Climate Change
Nishan Degnarain
Contributor Manufacturing…
Shipping’s dirty little secret
Global shipping has a dirty little secret. It subsidizes the entire oil industry.
The oil that is burnt on ships is the stuff that the oil industry does not know what to do with. It is the sludge at the end of the refining process. There are many fancy names for it, but it is highly polluting, carbon-intensive and can cause serious human and environmental health conditions (one study estimates 40,000 deaths a year due to ship engine oil pollution alone).
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If shipping did not take this thick oil residue, the oil industry would have to pay to dispose of it safely. Right now, the ship fuel industry is worth around $150 billion a year.
It essentially acts as a subsidy for the entire oil industry, by giving oil refineries a revenue stream and customer base who would pay to dispose of this material. By having lax environmental controls, the global shipping industry is allowed to just burn this waste product oil into the atmosphere – it is as bad as having coal power stations on the oceans. Actually, 60,000 of them, which is the size of the global ocean shipping fleet.
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So assuming the cost of disposing of oil safely on land was double that of burning this off at sea for free, the true impact of lax environmental standards in global shipping could be as high as a $450 billion a year subsidy on the entire oil industry.
Why is this being allowed? That’s a good question for the G20.
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Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/09/19/climate-farce-japan-and-the-un-shipping-agencys-attitude-to-climate-change/
Forbes describes Nishan Degnarain as a “Developmental Economist”, but it is clear Nishan has a few things to learn about the oil industry.
There is no need to “dispose of” the residue left after lighter hydrocarbons have been removed from crude oil. If shipping companies were not interested in heavy fuel oil, it would be reprocessed, either turned into tarmac, or converted into gasoline through catalytic cracking.
Off subject- sorry, but-
“Michael Moore: Shut down government until Republicans back down on Supreme Court vote ”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/michael-moore-shut-down-government-until-republicans-back-down-on-supreme-court-vote/ar-BB19eD9V
I’m all for it! Shut it all down, no welfare, no unemployment, no food stamps or wic no medicare/medicaid, no social security, nothing from government. And Trump can hang it all around the Democrat Party’s neck like a millstone.
Trump is going to name a SC replacement and they ARE going to be seated, then next year or the one after, etc etc he will name and seat another one. It is going to be glorious to listen to the howling&gnashing of teeth from the left. What a bunch of ‘tards.
Maybe Mikey-Poo ought to spend some time with the Cornell Legal Information Institute:
18 U.S. Code § 2384. Seditious conspiracy
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
Ginsburg herself declared in 2016 that there is no reason for the Senate to not move forward on an election year appointment.
And McConnell said that the people should choose the President before they go ahead with a nomination.
And he was in a position to do something about it
Scalia died in Feb 2016, not 6 weeks before the election
It’s McConnell who is the leading hyprocrite as he pulled the plug on Garland for 8 months saying no confirmation in election year
Hypocrisy is a normal part of politics. I’m sure McConnell doesn’t mind being called a hypocrite as he gets what he wants.
His position was based on Obama being a lame duck, Trump is not. Add to that the fact Democrats are all declaring that this election will have to be settled by the SC, it is imperative there be a full bench.
Is there anyone out there dumb enough to believe that if the situation were reversed, IE Dem President and Dems in control of the Senate, that the Democrats wouldn’t be fast tracking the nomination?
The hypocrites are the ones who are condemning others for what they would do, if given the chance.
if the situation was reversed ?
I was when McConnell was MINORITY leader and he blocked every Obama judicial appointment he could using the cloture vote numbers required
As for seeing if Trump is a lame duck … we wont know till after the election date and the counting has finished.
If the Senate didnt really want Garland they could have just voted NO, but the nomination wasnt proceeded with in any form. After all the constitution says its the elected senators who confirm or deny
Just as Schumer and Pelosi have been trying, and failing, to do with Trump’s nominees. See how that works?
It really does amaze me how progressives actually do believe that history starts whenever it is convenient for them.
Just like they always throw temper tantrums and break other people’s stuff when they don’t get their way.
You planning to join the rioters and looters when your party and Creepy Joe have their collectivist heads handed to them in November? America has a President who is effectively blocking leftist political crap and undoing the leftist political crap that your boy Barri and the Democrat Party have forced on America. And the Democrat Party’s solution is to burn, loot and murder in every city they control. Please do keep it up. Americans are watching and we don’t like any of this leftist, anti-American sh*t.
Yawn. Literally it’s nothing more than political posturing. Literally everyone is a “hypocrite” when it comes to trying to justify their political expediency. Who cares. If the Ds could’ve gotten a nominee through the Senate in 2016, they would have. If Trump can now, he will. There’s no principle that’s violated except the fake one that makes us think there has to be some overarching moral superiority for our political calculus.
rip
It’s very lazy blogging just to recycle these vacuous semi-sentient bodily discharges of left-green media drones. There’s much better stuff out there.
I know, right? And we’re paying Charles such a ridiculous salary. Such a scandal.
How do you handle it on your climate blog?
Speaking of lazy, this site has a mechanism by which anyone can submit an article for publication.
If the issue is so important to you, go for it. If not, then stop complaining about others being too lazy to do your work for you.
“Hundreds of thousands of seaman have been stuck at sea …”.
Is this author completely deranged?
Publishing an outrageously preposterous lie like that in Forbes magazine?
To refresh people’s memories, the highly impactful regulation that greatly curtailed Sulphur emissions in ship fuel – known as IMO 2020 – was just implemented on a global scale 9 months ago.
This has led a huge drop in the emission of sulphur from ships’ stacks.
One surprising beneficiary of these rules has been the US unconventional oil producers as their light, low sulphur product has been shown to be ideal feedstock for Low and Ultra Low Sulphur Fuel Oil as the low asphaltene component inhibits sludge precipitation.
This has certainly been one of the weirder, fact free published articles that I have read in quite some time.
Shipping Goods by water-born craft is the most efficient available and the use of oil is also, there, at its most efficient. Alarmists love to attack efficient things and protect costly and useless things like large scale solar and wind-power.
Is this further evidence,from Gang Green,that madness is contagious.?Naturally the enlightened writer knows that the shipping industry needs not be competitive,that the price of fuel plays no part in their buying decisions.
Forbes has fallen a long way,in true progressive fashion,I am sure they can go lower.
Time to reactivate the NS Savannah?
And build sister ships?
Sue me you green bastards.
I am subsidizing the oil industry by buying gasoline for my car. I am also personally, and wilfully, producing CO2; some may say to the detriment of the planet, but not my wife and children, who will be very dispirited when I stop producing CO2.
To put a point on the mockery;
The world is awash in horribly bad “journalism”.
It seems to me that anyone subscribing to Forbes is subsidizing something the world needs less of and that is intrinsically detrimental to society.
Residual oils are put into the bunker market because the bunker market exists. If there were no bunker market, refiners would either make asphalt cement (not all resids can met asphalt cement specs), process the residual oil in a coker (typically a delayed coker and sometimes a Flexicoker(Exxon)), or shift to a lighter crude slate, which is easy to do nowadays given the abundance of shale oils. In any case, residual oil which did not go into the bunker market would not be processed in an FCC (author is incorrect about this). The net effect of no bunker fuel market is that refiners would run less crude to meet the demand of other markets (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, petrochemical feedstocks, etc.). Possibly, some refiners would go out of business. It happens.
“The Shipping Industry is Subsidising the Oil Industry by buying Oil” So what else do ships use for energy? Nuclear? Sure they burn oil. It is called buying what you need to operate. Subsidising doesn’t sound like the right term to use here.
” – it is as bad as having coal power stations on the oceans. Actually, 60,000 of them, which is the size of the global ocean shipping fleet.”
Yeah. 60,000 of the smallest coal power stations ever built. Before oil, they were powered by coal.
Forbes is majority owned by a Chinese co. The ships produce clouds as seen by satellite images…..long narrow clouds.
Farmers are being subsidized by the ethanol industry or is it the other way around?
Sounds like an exemplar of efficiency to me. Who will pay to take away worn out renewables?
I am a Naval Architect and regular attendee of the marine Environmental Protection Committee at IMO (the UN specialised agency for maritime affairs).
Yes, we burn ‘dirty fuel’, but are making huge steps to improve this. But what this doesnt account for is that this ‘dirty fuel’ transports well over 90% of world goods, and in a far more fuel efficient manner – up to 17 times more efficient than air and 10 times more than road.
So you all rely on our fuel and it is less polluting tha your cars, lorries and airplanes.
Pete
One advantage to using the sludge oil is that there is less of a fire hazard. During WW II as the Japanese navy fuel situation became more critical and refining capacity was reduced by the bombing of their facilities they started using unrefined light crude from Borneo to fuel their ships. That fuel contributed to the loss of ships in battle due to fire. The fuel also had a high enough sulfur content to cause the steel in their boilers to become brittle and fail over time.
What are the thoughts on Elon Musk? He is constantly saying that global warming is real, that fossil fuels must be replaced by Teslas, renewables, and Powerwalls to save the earth, and that Big Oil is heavily subsidised. Meanwhile Tesla receives billions in carbon credits.
In case it’s not completely obvious to you, Elon Musk is above all else an egotistic SALESMAN.
Sure, his companies have developed some commercially useful and sellable products, but that does make his pronouncements meaningful, let alone true.
Blame the politicians and bureaucrats for the “carbon credits” that Tesla receives, and which any money-digging capitalist like Musk is all too willing to take. Ethics? . . . don’t bother to go there.
Bunker is highly polluting, it is true. Anyway, they are building ships to run on LNG. Container ships, cruise ships, bulk carriers… The greens say these emit more methane. Well stop buying Chinese crap then. Knit your own socks.
Preem , a company known for its small environmental impact, would like to clean this heavy oil so it is more usable and less pollutant.
But the Swedish government and the green party hesitate.
We have to think of our reputation, let someone else do the dirty job!
By that logic, everything is subsidized – nobody is forcing the shippers to buy that stuff, right?
Only their evil killer ships, they are as insidiously evil as evil oil is. We are doomed, DOOMED I say! Evil oil has permeated the entirety of human civilization!( I really need to make a sandwich board if this keeps up)