22 May 2007
Choke-Point
When I went down to the sea, I went as an office worker. The ships in which I sailed were enormous mobile airfields, which is a remarkable capability that Odysseus would have admired. Out in the wide ocean, there was remarkable feeling of solitude when flight operations were secured and the lights of the escorts twinkled on the horizon.
We were at our most free outside the shipping lanes, where there was nothing to impede our stately passage. But passing from one body of water to another meant passing through a choke point, a narrowing of the waters that forces all the sundry traffic into tight lanes. It can be quite hair-raising.
The Straits of Gibraltar are not so constricted. I waited once on deck to see the great Pillars of Hercules, but they passed unnoticed below the horizon on either side, the wine-dark sea of the Med not much different than the Atlantic from whence we came.
There is a remarkable feeling, passing through the Straits, whichever they might be. Messina is a hard one, and I am glad I was not on the bridge team for that. The currents and whirlpools are fierce, caused by the different times of high and low water in the Ionian and Tyrrhenian Seas, and further complicated by strong winds from opposing directions. An acquaintance, a submariner, was proud of a submerged transit; another, an old Cruiser sailor, recalled the heavy ship losing power, and going dead in the water, drifting in the night with the lights of the swift-moving ferries and merchants, ready to be sucked down into Charybdis, the classical giant whirlpool.
Messina is blessedly a short transit, even if crowded and edgy. That is the way of the Med; it is a busy place. The Pacific is so vast that it boggles the imagination when crossing it at fifteen knots. The Indian Ocean is my favorite. The swells are long and glassy, and the skies are composed of pastel water-colors.
Linking the two oceans is a daunting choke-point, and a long one. The Strait of Malacca is the shortest route between the great bodies of water, but it is a long and chaotic transit. 100,000 ships travel it each year, six hundred miles each way. It links three of the largest populations in the world, India, China and Indonesia, and is the heart of regional commerce. All the ships passing between are funneled into the narrow waters.
It is quite astonishing to be part of the parade, looking through the Big Eyes into the bustling harbor at Singapore, lusting after a Sling at the Long Bar at the Raffles.
The shipping channel causes the heart to beat faster. It is beyond apprehension and verges on the claustrophobic. In the Phillips Channel in the Singapore Strait, which is only 1.5 miles wide. It is a tiny valve on a gigantic pipe, a natural bottleneck seeking a cork, which it can provide suddenly with a collision, grounding, and the release of oil.
All that oil. Eighty percent of Japan's imports come this way. The only alternate route in nearly a thousand miles longer, and hence much more costly. Closing the Strait of Malacca would have an immediate impact of the world economy, and now the rising Chinese imports are stressing traffic management to the breaking point.
The threat of collision is high. A warship I will not name gained our contempt when it skewered a hapless merchant and ripped its bow to pieces, forcing us to take an un-programmed commitment in the Indian Ocean in its stead.
Add terrorism to piracy, stir in congestion and challenging navigation and you have a potent maritime cocktail for disaster. It is enough to choke on. The insurance companies know it. There are "war-risk" premiums for some Indonesian ports, and fortress Singapore and Malaysia have begun escorting oil tankers and increasing their naval patrols in the waters under their jurisdiction. The Japanese and the Americans look on with great interest, the Australians with some apprehension, and the Chinese are beginning to deploy their own warships to the area.
The Indians say they will have three aircraft carriers within the decade, and the Chinese have embarked on a naval program of quite astonishing dimensions.
It comes as no surprise that the Malaysians intend to construct oil pipeline across the peninsula to pump oil Middle East crude. The project will lower transit costs for delivery to China, Japan, Korea and the other China on Taiwan. It would avoid the Rock of Singapore and the Straits of Malacca altogether.
The Malaysians are prepared to spend around $15 billion to construct a refinery and two deep-water ports on either end, which is peanuts, considering what is at stake. The scheme would reap profits on refined product, and significantly reduce the environmental risk of tanker accidents and pirate attacks. The Thais are interested. They would like to promote a refining center that could connect with the Malaysian pipeline, and rival Singapore on the Indian Ocean side of the Strait.
A look at the globe says the way for the oil to flow most efficiently is overland, north and east from the desert. But that way lies the provinces of hard-eyed men of adamant and fiercely contrarian demeanor. They are the source of strife and not good for commerce.
That forces the oil to sea, in the gigantic ships with the tiny crews. The increasing and insistent demand will cause the traffic density to increase in the restricted waters. Interest will be significant, and the giants will be watching closely for signs of disruption.
Accordingly, the black stuff will, for the time being, continue to be poured into the huge tankers and ply the long swells of the Indian Ocean, headed for the long choke-point at Malacca.
It could come through mischance or mischief. There is a regional maritime arms race in progress, and those with an interest in global disruption have six hundred miles of opportunity.
They call the Straits that for a reason.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com