Pirated Crude!

 It will be hard to sell it On?

The U,S, now have five crude oil tankers seized and no one with any sense will want to buy them, since the sanctions on Venezuela are not UN, Congress or Internationally approved and the U.S. President is discovering it is hard to get rid of stolen goods!

His justification will not work for the oil companies ethos to both update and recover the industry, when it appears to be colonized and taken without a Internationally recognized treaty?

Meanwhile the capture of Greenland will be another headache for a leader who refuses now to drill and dig in his own backyard and create those promised Jobs.

Another Cop-out Conference?

 Saudis are doing fossil fuel sales under the cover of green energy!

The truth to the matter is that people are meeting together for many other reasons than what they claim is on the agenda for the future of alternative green energy and despite the fine speeches, most have arrived and will leave in their high energy burning jets!

Sp much for the future is being swept away, by the people with the money and what remains of oil in the Middle-East and Russia out pricing the Arabs. So Africa has become the new market for the Gulf States, whiles solar works on a local basis to charge mobile phones and tablets, vehicles still need fossil fuels along with the generation of power?

Here is the U.K. we are seeing the demise of Dowlais top (South-Wales) open cast mine, but there is no plans to do anything with it for now but later on it may re-open to meet the needs or demand on the power grid if needs be!

The pedal bike without a Chain?

 Bar and Cogs!

The Netherlands has come up with a cleaner bicycle, that has no chain and the Brick is much lighter stronger and in demand more so than when it came so popular one hundred years ago?

There have been many attempts made to do something new and yet this is one of if not the best yet? At the moment price is its hold back but in the years to come with the continues push for green energy it will become more affordable and many chin bikes will end up in museums?

Much more is coming our way with the push pedal power, which could lead to short distant travel using this new system, depending on weight!

Oil extraction and Drill-Ships!

SERTAO?

Port Talbot S-Wales to Falmouth, Cornwall, SW-Great Britain and now to a new buyer, after spending over a year being impounded for debts from a Brazilian exploration company!

The U.S President says that he likes oil and he is not alone, despite what we may think of Greta Thunberg and her campaign to end the use of fossil fuels it does not seem to be giving the drillers and consortiums a guilty conscience?

Africa is the new prospect for the black gold and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire is where this rich harvest of crude is to be found! It is also time for the African nations to become rich that all goes with the oil industry and some Europeans might find that worrying for one reason or another?

White dominated exploitation is the traditional idea of the African and this is true from 1500 and the first European conquests by the Portugese and human slavery that eventually lead to the division of Africa and the gold/diamond mining that made South-Africa what it is today. 

Drilling at sea for both oil and gas is continuing world wide, closer to home is perhaps happening fifty-five miles NW of Belmullet in Co. Mayo Republic of Ireland!

Helicopters 75 Years! Part-One.

Come a long Way!

The day of the helicopter is not yet over, despite many new drones are cheaper than keeping an helicopter in the sky? The helicopter derived from gyro-dynamics in aircraft to act like an early form of the Boeing-Vertol Osprey BV-22, which still occupies U.S. military research into the development and deployment of much newer and stable platform, which is changing the battlefield from science-fiction to reality!

Today nearly anyone can go up in a helicopter from pleasure flying to search and rescue? The small machines are in the Robinson family, while Bell and Sikorsky have held both the military and commercial market, go to any horse racing event and there are more helicopters between the tracks now parked up since riders cover more than one meeting a day?

The largest machines are still dominated by the Russians and Ukrainians with the Mil Mi-26 capable of carrying three tracked vehicles and one hundred and twenty-five combat troops! This helicopter was a development of the Mi-6 well known is Russia as the Cow because it was slow and vulnerable to ground rocket fire?

Mid range giants are the Chinook, Boeing-Vertol CH-47, which has been around since the Vietnam wars of the 1960s and the Sikorsky CH-53 Super stallion, S-92 SAR after that is the successful Westland-Leonardo EH-101 and the various derivatives of the Puma SA-330 to the H332 Super Puma that dominates the North Sea oil and gas supply rigs and wind turbines.

Europe has also taken the lead of the world market with the H-135/145 helicopter in Air Ambulance and police, electric line work along with several other smaller types?

Electric Progressing!

Many nations are trying?

Sometimes I think environmental groups can or are being to hard on those who are trying to introduce battery powered vehicles into their fleets such as TFL (Transport for London and Royal Mail)?

This new technology will take time as both NASA and Boeing say that they too have now entered the race with Embraer in Brazil! But what we are not hearing in the west is what is happening in China and Russia in this technology?

The protest currently in the U.K. are trying to wake up people to the serious situation that pollution is now going to cause, if we do not stop wanting our independence with the car and the petrol engine?

There are many areas not being mentioned in the media re-the burning of oils in their various forms and their emphasis has been on plastics another product of petroleum! Banks and investments need to be exposed if we are ever going to get on top of global warming in relation to human activity?

Oil drill rig Platforms.

SERTAO.

Anchored at Port Talbot in South Wales, U.K. this ship is surprisingly large for its work of oil exploration and awaits a new buyer? 

But since the Belfast shipyard Harland and Wolf has finally gone under and the lack of new construction of oil rigs Sertao  may soon be bought up for new work in the Artic ocean for fossil fuels?

She is a ship with everything I think one needs to experimentally drill and be serviced to other vessels with her own helicopter deck and various cranes and the like?

One needs to get down to Port Talbot Tata steel dock or the Aber Afan river to see her before she goes, perhaps never to be seen again?

Falmouth Russian GroundedI

Another Putin Ploy?

Or did all the action was because it slipped off its anchor?

Things look better this evening with the KUZMA MININ      being re-floated, all that action I missed down in Cornwall/Curnow? 

Hope to see some of it all up on You Tube soon?

The weather remains a serious hazard to all forms of transport, for shipping this can be the terror of an oil spill and something that Falmouth Bay does not want since it really relies on tourism!

Time will tell what damage if any has been done and then it will be back to business, since all forms of shipping are big bucks!

Oil and Gas Platforms. Two.

Northern Passage.

Russia and the U.S. will in years to come prosper for the access to Oceans resources, despite the hypocritical lies of the British government who is ruining the U.K investment opportunities in Gas and oil support industries?

New ships are replacing rigs and many jobs will be lost in the ship building industries left in the U.K. but this is not the end? This one ship will have a sister, which will be much bigger and in years to come with trial and error or nations will build for their own needs and sea conditions?

The burning of fossil fuels will not end overnight, but pollution levels in our cities will be cut by the introduction of electric battery powered vehicles and now the possibility of suburban trains! But the power for the national grids of the world and industry will still need cheap electricity that perhaps those without Nuclear energy as yet cannot afford?

Ships are better than rigs being towed out, they if viable will be able to construct a platform on site and then introduce the infrastructure to support and pipe the fuel to conventional shipping! If nothing substantial is found money will be saved by marking the site with a buoy and then moving on to the next area!

Oil and Gas Platforms. Part-One.

Steel Islands to New types of Ships!

There is a massive change on the way in this area of sea work from the static rigs to a ship built like a catamaran to replace some of the test platforms! This is now one of the largest ships in the world and if proved to be a success we will see more of them built and put into service?

The rig or steel Island has been around for some time, these structures are in their own right floating vessels but they have to be towed from construction to the drill sites. There they are chained to the sea bottom, as in the Gulf of Mexico, North-Sea and the Persian Gulf!

These shallows are ideal for rigs and over the years many designs have come and gone with three to four legged ones being common, but their some with five legs. Four seems to be the best for stability, while these steel islands are more than just drilling platforms they are also accommodation blocks and are serviced by helicopters.

Over the years safety has been improved, after many serious fires in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. But the dangerous part of working on these today remains the journey to and from, with there being several fatalities because of bad weather, poor maintenance of machines?

Alternative Energy.

Diesel and bio-Fuel.

Most of the machines that are working today around the world are operated by Diesel engines, until recently this was thought to be the best performance fuel over that of petrol?

Many nations want to use alternative energy over that of the fossil fuels of coal, gas and oil, but two factors come to the fore?

One cost and two much of what we have in alternative energy will not power the plethora of machines in existence around the world?

When Diesel invented his first engine it was powered by peanut oil and this has lead to much research into various forms of bio-fuel mixtures, lead by the aviation industry! Cost is the main factor in the production of hybrids other than motor cars and it may be some time before we will get over our new pollution problems?

Electric engines are and can be made across the board in relation to the railways, the main problems is again cost as in the GWR Padding to Swansea plan being cancelled in the U.K. The other is that third rail is susceptible to the weather from slipping leaf fall to frost, ice and snow fall?

Never seeing the light of Day. ONE.

Bores.

Boring machines come in various sizes and uses, we tend to associate them with tunnel construction as in the London Tubes, Channel Tunnel and the new London Cross rail project?

But there are as many used in a variety of roles from water well sinking to the present day need of fracking. Many of the surface drillers are set up for short-term workings, where as the boring machines are constructed under ground and when the jobs are completed they are buried or encased.

Smaller boring machines where developed for the mining industry to take men off the coal face, but today many are no longer used.

Despite computer or robotic automation, humans are still required to clear obstacles and this has lead to some very serious and devastating accidents in China, Russia and South-America.

Ten Day Civil Alerts.

Germany and France Issued Today.

What is one talking about?

During the years of the Cold war between NATO and the Eastern-Block Soviet pact nation regular alerts were sounded in both East and West-Germany. This morning one was issued in the unified Germany for the first time since the fall of the Berlin wall?

Within two hours supermarkets were cleared out of food. Civil alerts were issued in the event of a nuclear strike, but it has been announced in Germany that from tomorrow the alert will be in effect for a serious emergency situation over the next 10 days?

There is much one can do in a nuclear war situation, but just continue life and hope for the best. This may be more in connection with reports of heavy weapons fire reported in the Eastern-Ukraine and the possibility of the shutting down of both the gas and Oil pipe-lines from Russia?

Tugboats. Part-One.

Sea Haulage.

There is quite a lot more to the humble tugboat than meets the eye! Haulage is big business on land, in the air and so it is also at sea. Tugboats have a great expanding history to them from their first introduction, as a ship type in 1830 to the present day.

With the introduction of this seaborne assistant no major changes were made for the first seventy years of service in the British Isles. But over the last 110 years much has changed to the various new classes and their roles, which now include search and rescue, floating fire engines and a few newer type oil rig towing and recovery roles.