Cap’n Ed pointed out a massive refinery project in India that will no doubt soon be sending our way tankers full of refined gasoline — rather than the considerably less-explosive unrefined crude. If headed for the West Coast, the shipping route would go through some fairly pirate-infested waters, not to mention that many of said pirates are likely adherents of the religion of peace.
Can you say “hijacked gasoline supertanker rams Golden Gate Bridge,” boys and girls? I knew you could.
The waters of the Northwestern Pacific are not as infested with pirates, but they will soon contain many new LPG bulk ships, takng natural gas from the newly-developed Sahkalin Field to China, in whose waters there is a bit MORE piracy.
Can you say huge danger to friendly interests in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, not to mention Guam or the Phillipines?
You’re getting right in stride.
BTW, Phil, a BLEVE (boiling liquid explosive vapor explosion) involving all three or four large spherical LPG tanks on one of these ships has the explosive power of a largish tactical nuclear weapon, but much more incindiary potential.
BTW2, the tecnology exists to assign all these ships electronic trip documents, and track their progress with satellites, and have a computer silently monitor their actual progress against their planned progress. The exceptions can then be challenged to identify whether they simply have an undisciplined Captain and crew, or whether they have evil intent.
This should be a real assignment for the UN, if it was actually worth a damn, which it isn’t, so if we want this technology to protect us, we will have to impose it on the rest of the world. Can you see (D)emocrats doing that? I can’t.
BTW3: In case you think that the various world governments won’t submit to such regulation of their vessels’ navigation, think again. The same nations submitted to identical regulation of international aircraft navigation decades ago, under the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization). The simple penalty for not following the rules is that the aircraft of the offending nation are not allowed to land anywhere else but their own nation’s runways.
As an example of NIMBYism conflating with security concerns, not long ago there was a proposal to construct a very large civilian LPG terminal at the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard. It would have provided lots of jobs (especially for dirt-poor Vallejo right across the river) but noooo, that would have interfered with the flower children’s dream of turning the former naval base into open space and low-income housing. After 9/11, they happily glommed onto the threat of terrorist attack on the LPG tanks as another reason why it shouldn’t be built. That argument ended up scuttling the idea.
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