True unless they put them in anchor with a skeleton crew and no working budget. “Out of sight out of mind” is what caused Red Hill to leak in the first place and I could see it happening again with this idea.
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Of course it will. The navy is not even competent enough to run a gas station. The present quandary is how to make fuel available in that region. Rest assured that no matter what the short or long term solution is, the navy will create another social and environmental clusterf**k out of it eventually.
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Are you sure putting that much fuel oil in skin tanks is a good idea?
It seems like we’re drifting into questions about survivability more than storage, and the issue is about storage, not portability or survivability. The point of a tank farm is to consolidate the eggs in your basket, not to shrug off a Jdam or foreign equivalent. To that end, purchase and berthing of a VLCC or 3 seems more feasible and less complex than Swiss-Army’ing more ships and doing to them what was done to the LCS ships.
You all know Swiss Army knives, right? They can do many things, but none of them can be done well.
There’s a few little old foreign-built chemical ships running teeny tiny little parcels of jet fuel around the Pacific for MSC. No reason why that can’t be expanded upon that I know of.
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If you can specify what the next world wide one will look like, we’d all like to hear it.
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I can tell you what it won’t be like … it won’t require the establishment of another Kings Point or digging another Red Hill.
There will not be time to spend 3 years digging giant holes in the ground to store fuel to supply a hemispherical conflict of land and sea engagements.
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I disagree. Look at Russia and the Ukraine, it’s turning into a slow burn. I could see it slowly escalating over the next few years while China increasingly tests our boundaries and takes every inch they can.
Not say it’s a likely scenario but certainly it’s plausible.
And if it does blow up overnight then those tanks might not be refueling ships but I’m sure the good people pf Hawaii would find a use for it. It’s hard to think of a scenario where a little extra diesel and jet fuel isn’t helpful.
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Russia invaded Ukraine only a few weeks ago and that is not going well. May escalate but nothing to be alarmed about as yet. Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and the world didn’t end nor did China get involved. Granted Ukraine is much bigger however they seem at this point to be holding out well. China? There is no way they will get involved beyond the periphery. They are busy enough with a new Covid outbreak and MANY other problems. As soon as some US political scandal erupts the headlines will pivot to that and off the Ukraine. At that time Putin won’t be so embarrassed and some deal will be reached.
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Yeah, the Hawaiian equivalent of a Ukranian subway shelter.
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I guess they could try adding a few tanks over at Barbers point and have them blend in with the others at the refinery.
Ukraine vs. Russia isn’t a war between major powers.
The Ukrainians may be able to stall the Russians for weeks/months and eventually fight a guerilla war for years. Thar type of thing has happened before. They may even come out tops in the end. (that has also happened before)
Let’s just hope that USA and NATO doesn’t get sucked into this one, either by do-gooders that rush in to “help” without understanding the consequences.
Or by hotheads on both sides that is spoiling for a fight without regards for consequences.
A war between major nuclear powered countries is something else all together. It could quickly escalate to World War III, with rockets flying every which way.
Right now it looks like Putin/Russia is looking for a face saving way of ending this mess. Let’s hope they find one, before more innocent people dies.
In any case, whichever way it goes, it is unlikely that anybody need to dig big holes in Hawaii, or activate the Sealift Command.
If it stays local, no need for that
If it escalate to WWIII, no time for that.
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Hopefully cooler heads prevail. Don’t expect it from Putin, I believe he is looking for a way out of his mess and still say “I won”. What did he win? Nothing. His pals are broker than they were before this crap… They are not happy with him.
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MSC doesn’t deactivate in peace time. If you’re thinking the reserve fleet, it’s a dead horse.
Sorry. Yes, the reserve fleet.
No matter if the planet is pretty much is destroyed in a MAD nightmare scenario, survivors will value fuel. Russian convoys are stalled outside Kyev because their supply chain has fallen apart. Maybe fuel is a factor.
I believe the tender for long-term tanker charters related to offloading, storing, and transporting Red Hill fuel has closed. Not sure how long it takes to hear who is awarded the contracts, but I will keep checking.