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Nightline: What does it take to pilot an oil supertanker?

http://rawstory.com Posted by admin 279 days ago

Crude oil traded at a startling 100 dollars a barrel this week, serving as a reminder that, despite talk about reducing dependence, foreign oil is still in high demand. The United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil a day, with most of it coming from afar. How do those millions of barrels reach their destination? Nick Watt of ABC's "Nightline" visited the Warsash Maritime Academy to find out.

Because, as Watt wryly states, "no one has come up with a better idea," 6,000 new oil tankers and container ships will sail the seas in the next five years. The Academy trains 200 pilots and skippers to man the expanding fleet.

Piloting an oil tanker is no easy task. The Knock Nevis, a super tanker twice the size of the Titanic and longer than the Empire State Building, is the largest vessel on earth.

"You are talking a matter of miles before you're able to stop it," said Barry Sadler, a ship's pilot in Southampton. Indeed, it takes 5.5 miles to stop the ship; its turning circle is 2 miles wide. If something goes wrong -- think the Exxon Valdex, for example -- it goes drastically wrong. Thanks to the booming shipping industry, ships are getting bigger and harder to handle; that's where the Maritime Academy comes in.

"It gives you the basics of ship handling and lets you see the dynamics of ship handling without you having to go to one of the captains of one of these ships to ask if you can borrow his ship for the day just to have a little practice," says Sadler, a graduate of the academy.

Pilots have "quite a bit of responsibility," says Gordon Maxwell, a senior lecturer. "Let's say 200,000 tons of crude oil up on the beach: The clean-up costs are astronomical."

So, what makes the job worth the risk?

"I was attracted by the idea of traveling the world at a slow pace and seeing places I'd only ever read about," said Nick Harding of the Maritime Academy.

Due to more efficient loading, shore leave isn't what it used to be. But the money's good -- a ship's captain can earn 120,000 a year -- and, according to Watt, "you've gotta love the adrenaline rush."

The following video is from ABC's Nightline, broadcast on January 04, 2008