These fl oating oil fi elds carr y
the energy needs of a nation
in their ample bellies
T
he world thirsts for oil. Ever y day our cars,
trucks, furnaces and planes drink up 85
million barrels of crude oil in the form of
gasoline, diesel f uel, kerosene, jet f uel and dozens of
useful petroleum by-products including that
Vaseline you rubbed on your lips this morning. Try
to imagine what 85 million steel drums of oil look
like – and that’s one single day. While Europe and
North A merica remain the largest consumers of oil,
our addiction to energ y is now a global phenomenon.
There is only one way to transport millions of barrels
of black gold from the rich oil fi elds of Russia and
Saudi A rabia to the US, Japan and beyond: w ithin the
bellies of the largest ships in the world.
Supertankers are high-seas oil tankers that have
been supersized to satisfy our colossal modern
energ y appetite. The biggest of these fl oatingbehemoths can carr y the equivalent of over 3 million
barrels of crude oil in its dozens of below-deck
storage tanks; that amounts to more oil than
England and Spain consume ever y day.
Over the course of a year, hundreds of
supertankers criss-cross the world’s oceans and
arctic seas transporting over 2 billion barrels of oil
with tremendous effi ciency. Second only to oil
pipelines, these massive ships cost the equivalent of
t wo US cents per gallon to operate.
That’s not to say they’re cheap. A brand-new ultra
large crude carrier (ULCC) w ill cost £80-100 million.
They are constructed in the goliath shipyards of
South Korea and China, which combine to handle
over 80 per cent of the world’s shipbuilding.
Supertankers are welded together from huge prefab
structures called megablocks. The vessels aredesigned w ith t wo chief goals in mind: to ma ximise
the amount of oil the ship can carr y; and get it to its
destination safely.
The fi rst way to maximise carrying capacity is to
get bigger. The largest supertanker ever to sail the
oceans was the Seawise Giant, weighing in at 564,763
deadweight tons (DWT). If you stood the Seawise
Giant on its stern, it would be taller than nearly
ever y sk yscraper in the world. Today’s supertankers
hover around the more reasonable, but still gigantic,
300,000 DWT mark.
In addition to sheer size, supertankers maximise
their carrying capacity by fi lling nearly the entire
hold with storage tanks. Modern tankers don’t carry
actual barrels. Oil is pumped from the shore through
a system of on-deck pipelines into dozens of
below-deck storage tanks. By using many smallerSupertankers
explained
SEA