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207 comments on Saturday Open Thread and News Dump

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Marotti32 on March 11, 2006 - 1:16pm

There is another tunnel being planned. The Brenner base tunnel in Austria and Italy. Expected to become 56km long. It is, though, far in the future. In the end it should bring relief for the heavily congested Brenner Pass. Further it is part of the highspeed railway connection from Berlin to Naples.

But I think the swiss neighbours are better in organizing such large procjects than the EU.

http://www.ita-aites.org/cms/1075.html

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Gets IT on March 12, 2006 - 8:47pm

I don't know what you base your organization comment on? I think you'll find that a 56 km tunnel will not be a problem. I have been working with Swedes that have build a 12 km long tunnel at 3000 meter elavations and another 24 km long tunnel at 1500 meter elevation in Saudi Arabia and 5 underground strategic fuel storage projects, each with somewhere around 20 km of VERY BIG tank tunnels. I'm sure if they could do this in Saudi Arabia, they will be able to handle it within the EU borders. Besides, anybody that can only think of bridges to put on the back of all the Euro bills will most certainly be able to handle any kind of a transportation problem. ^|^

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DuncanK on March 12, 2006 - 11:28pm

Gets IT,

Can you tell us more about these Saudi fuel storage tunnels?

Matt Simmons talked about the Saudis having storage which he suspected that they used to ramp up 'production' when the need arose.

I just tried Googling for your fuel storage tunnels and found no information about them.

Are these the secret fuel storage that Matt aludes to?

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Gets IT on March 13, 2006 - 8:01am

These underground storage plants are a Ministry of Defense project that are now operated under a joint agreement between MOD and Saudi Aramco. These are not crude storage facilities, but hold refined diesel, gasoline and jet base fuels in many tanks, the larger ones approaching 1 km in length. There are 5 at present.

I have a long term informal discovery project ongoing concerning S.A. crude storage tanks outside the Kingdom. S.A. and Shell share 50% interest in Motiva Enterprises' refineries located in Port Arthur, Texas; Convent, Louisiana; and Norco, Louisiana. Motiva refineries can process approximately 780,000 barrels per day, and have a distribution system including appx 47 product terminals with 19 MM BBLS of storage. Since these are product terminals, fortunately I don't have to identify those.

Using a WAG of 20X refinery capacity, I can get around 50MM BBLS, not counting Rotterdam possibilities.

Ras Tanura Refinery 325,000 bpd
Aramco/Exxon Yanbu 400,000 bpd
Aramco/Shell Jubail 305,000 bpd
@ 20 x 20.6 MM BBLS

Norco, La Crude: 240,000 BPD
Port Arthur, Tx. Crude: 235,000 BPD
Convent Ref, La. Crude: 255,000
@ 20 x capacity = 15 MMB

S.A. may be leasing tanks from Valero Corp http://www.valerolp.com/Customers/TerminalDataSheets/
At this Caribbean Island VLCC "service station" from Valero Corp.
http://www.valerolp.com/NR/rdonlyres/83C1FDE0-ABE8-4B18-B64E-F17DA79FE3A8/0/StEustatius1_25_06.pdf
with 51 tanks 11.3 MM BBLS of storage. (they can process only 15,000 BPD of light stuff)

Rotterdam?

S.A's. transportation subsidery can probably hold almost 10 MMB in their ships alone.

OFF TOPIC
13 March 2006
"Iran's Nuclear Plans Complicate China's Energy Security"
http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=456&language_id=1