Friday, September 16, 2016

Challenges In Crude Oil Transportation

By Stephanie Patterson


Some cons pertaining the transportation of crude oil seem to be very hard to deal with have for a long time faced the petroleum industry. The difficulties will always exist despite the method of transportation used. There is usually the danger of accidents caused by these difficulties which end up affecting the crude oil transportation companies, the general public, and even the industry.

Road trucks, railway tankers, water tankers and pipelines are the basic transportation methods that exist in the industry. None is short of disadvantages. However, there will be no time when these four will be replaced since they serve the industry well despite the difficulties associated with them. Moreover, they are good at complementing each other.

The use of pipeline has existed for the longest time in history owing to its advantage of facing little disturbance. However, they are very slow, especially when compared to the railway transport. Also, pipelines are regularly laid underground where people cannot see. A leakage becomes very difficult to identify, and the spillage may be harmful to people and the environment.

In the event of water carriages, there are the water tankers which are very suitable for carrying large thousands of gallons of the commodity in just a single trip over very long distances. The problem associated with this mode is that the oil spillage experienced in the past years have been tough to handle and control. More so, this mode cannot be used in places with no water bodies.

The railway is a unique mode of shipping this commodity since it can carry considerable large amounts of it over long distances at considerable short periods of time. However, there is a difficulty of frequent accidents that have been facing this transporting mode. In most cases, such accidents lead to explosions that cause a fire.

In the process of ensuring that the product is very much secure, most companies prefer to hide the details of the route the train will be taking so that terrorists and any threats finds it hard to get it on the road. However, when an accident occurs, emergency responders get a hard time to locate the area of the accident something that is attributed to more deaths and property destroyed.

The commonest means is a road where trucks are used to move this precious but dangerous commodity. It is very dangerous since roads are used by very many different people. More so these roads may not be designed to allow being used by such trucks making collision very common. Such accidents will lead to property destruction and death of the many who are around.

As earlier mentioned, these measures are very effective but at the same time prone to accidents. More so, there are no means which have the ability to replace these methods. The only way of dealing with these challenges is to ensure that there are safety measures kept in place to avoid these accidents.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment