Oil Tank Inspection
Oil Tank Inspection
An oil tanker , also known as a petroleum tanker , is a ship designed for the bulk transport of oil. There are two basic types of oil tankers: the crude tanker and the product tanker . Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries. Product tankers, generally much smaller, are designed to move petrochemicals from refineries to points near consuming markets.
Oil tankers are often classified by their size as well as their occupation. The size classes range from inland or coastal tankers of a few thousand metric tons of deadweight (DWT) to the mammoth ULCCs of 550,000 DWT. Tankers move approximately 2,000,000,000 metric tons (2.2046 × 10 9 short tons) of oil every year. Second only to pipelines in terms of efficiency, the average cost of oil transport by tanker amounts to only two or three United States cents per 1 US gallon (3.8 L).
Some specialized types of oil tankers have evolved. One of these is the naval replenishment oiler , a tanker which can fuel a moving vessel. Combination ore-bulk-oil carriers and permanently moored floating storage units are two other variations on the standard oil tanker design. Oil tankers have been involved in a number of damaging and high-profile oil spills. As a result, they are subject to stringent design and operational regulations.
History
For more details on this topic, see History of the oil tanker.The technology of oil transportation has evolved alongside the oil industry. Although man's use of oil reaches to prehistory, the first modern commercial exploitation dates back to James Young's manufacture of parafin in 1850. In these early days, oil from Upper Burma was moved in earthenware vessels to the river bank where it was then poured into boat holds.
In the 1850s, the Pennsylvania oil fields became a major supplier of oil, and a center of innovation after Edwin Drake had struck oil near Titusville, Pennsylvania. The first oil well in the United States was dug here in 1859, initially yielding around ten barrels per day. Within two years, the Titusville field was providing 3,000 barrels per day. By this time, petroleum oil had already begun to supplant fish, whale, and vegetable oils for applications such as indoor and outdoor lighting, and transatlantic export had already begun.
Break-bulk boats and barges were originally used to transport Pennsylvania oil in 40-US-gallon (150 l) wooden barrels. But transport by barrel had several problems. The first problem was weight: the standard empty barrel weighed 64 pounds (29 kg), representing 20% of the total weight of a full barrel. Also, barrels were leaky, and could only be carried one way. Finally, barrels were themselves expensive. For example, in the early years of the Russian oil industry, barrels accounted for half the cost of petroleum production.
The movement of oil in bulk was attempted in many places and in many ways. Modern oil pipelines have existed since 1860. In 1863, two sail-driven tankers were built on England's River Tyne. These were followed in 1873 by the first oil-tank steamer, the Vaderland , which was built by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company for Belgian owners. The vessel's use was curtailed by U.S. and Belgian authorities citing safety concerns. By 1871, the Pennsylvania oil fields were making limited use of oil tank barges and cylindrical railroad tank-cars similar to those in use today.
The Nobel Brothers
In 1876, Ludvig and Robert Nobel, brothers of Alfred Nobel, founded Branobel (short for Brothers Nobel) in Baku, Azerbaijan. It was, during the late 19th century, one of the largest oil companies in the world.
Ludvig was a pioneer in the development of early oil tankers. He first experimented with carrying oil in bulk on single-hulled barges. Turning his attention to self-propelled tankships, he faced a number of challenges. A primary concern was to keep the cargo and fumes well away from the engine room to avoid fires. Other challenges included allowing for the cargo to expand and contract due to temperature changes, and providing a method to ventilate the tanks.
Nobel's first oil tanker was Zoroaster . He designed this ship in Gothenburg, Sweden, with Sven Almqvist. The contract to build it was signed in January 1878, and it made its first run later that year from Baku to Astrakhan. The Zoroaster design was widely studied and copied, with Nobel refusing to patent any part of it. In October 1878, he ordered two more tankers of the same design: the Buddha and the Nordenskjöld .
Zoroaster carried its 242 long tons of kerosene cargo in two iron tanks joined by pipes. One tank was forward of the midships engine room and the other was aft. The ship also featured a set of 21 vertical watertight compartments for extra buoyancy. The ship had a length overall of 184 feet (56 m), a beam of 27 feet (8.2 m), and a draft of 9 feet (2.7 m). Unlike later Nobel tankers, the Zoroaster design was built small enough to sail from Sweden to the Caspian by way of the Baltic Sea, Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega, the Rybinsk and Mariinsk Canals and the Volga River.
Nobel then began to adopt a single-hull design, where the ship's hull forms part of its tank structure. In November 1880, he ordered his first single-hulled tanker, the Moses . Within a year, he ordered seven more single-hulled tankers: the Mohammed , Tatarin , Bramah , Spinoza , Socrates , Darwin , Koran , Talmud , and Calmuck .
Branobel experienced one of the first oil tanker disasters. In 1881, the Zoroaster' s sister-ship, the Nordenskjöld exploded in Baku while taking on kerosene. The pipe carrying the cargo was jerked away from the hold when the ship was hit by a gust of wind. Kerosene then spilled onto the deck and down into the engine room, where mechanics were working in the light of kerosene lanterns. The ship then exploded, killing half the crew. Nobel responded to the disaster by creating a flexible, leak proof loading pipe which was much more resistant to spills.
In 1883, oil tanker design took a large step forward. Working for the Nobel company, Colonel Henry F. Swan designed a set of three Nobel tankers. Instead of one or two large holds, Swan's design used several holds which spanned the width, or beam, of the ship. These holds were further subdivided into port and starboard sections by a longitudinal bulkhead. Earlier designs suffered from stability problems caused by the free surface effect, where oil sloshing from side to side could cause a ship to capsize. But this approach of dividing the ship's storage space into smaller tanks virtually eliminated free-surface problems. This approach, almost universal today, was first used by Swan in the Nobel tankers Blesk , Lumen , and Lux .
In 1903, the Nobel brothers built two oil tankers which ran on internal combustion engines, as opposed to the older steam engines. The Vandal and Sarmat —which were also the first diesel-electric ships—were each capable of carrying 750 long tons of refined oil and powered by 360 horsepower (270 kW) diesel motors. This same firm soon went on to make much larger oil tankers, such as the Emanuel Nobel and Karl Hagelin , 4,600 long ton kerosene tankers with 1,200 horsepower (890 kW) engines.
The Glückauf represented a large step forward in tanker design. Another design of Colonel Swan, the ship has been called the "true progenitor of all subsequent tanker tonnage." Its features included cargo valves operable from the deck, cargo main piping, a vapor line, cofferdams for added safety, and the ability to load seawater ballast when empty of cargo. Wilhelm Anton Riedemann, an agent for the Standard Oil Company purchased Glückauf and several of her sister ships. After the Glückauf was lost in 1893, Standard Oil purchased the sister ships.
Breaking the Standard Oil monopoly
The 1880s also saw the beginnings of the Asian oil trade. The idea that led to moving Russian oil to the Far East via the Suez Canal was the brainchild of two men: importer Marcus Samuel and shipowner/broker Fred Lane. Prior bids to move oil through the canal had been rejected by the Suez Canal Company as being too risky. Samuel approached the problem a different way: asking the company for the specifications of a tanker it would allow through the canal.
Armed with the canal company's specifications, Samuel ordered three tankers from William Gray in northern England. Named the Murex , the Conch and the Clam , each had a capacity of 5,010 long tons of deadweight. These three ships were the first tankers of the Tank Syndicate, forerunner of today's Royal Dutch Shell company.
With facilities prepared in Jakarta, Singapore, Bangkok, Saigon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Kobe, the fledgling Shell company was ready to become Standard Oil's first challenger in the Asian market. On August 24, 1892, the Murex became the first tanker to pass through the Suez Canal. By the time Shell merged with Royal Dutch Petroleum in 1907, the company had 34 steam-driven oi
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