DISCUSSION The Rising Cost of Bunker Fuel and Its Impact On The Competitiveness of Merchant Vessels - Figure 1 shows the rise in the OPEC base price per barrel of crude oil in dollars percent of the cost of crude, although, at times, depending on supply and demand, spot bunker prices in some ports of the world may be as much as 150 percent to 200 percent of the basic crude price. For example, October 1979 spot bunker prices in Rotterdam were as high as $45 per barrel. It is this extraordinary rise in bunker prices together with the inherent thermal efficiency of a low-seed diesel engine that has skewed the present operational cost advantage so highly in favor of the low-speed diesel engine. Figure 2 depicts the inherent thermal efficiency of a low speed diesel engine versus that of a marine steam turbine system and Figure 3 shows how this advantage can be visualized in terms of ship's operating Figure 4 shows how range. this efficiency, together with the increasing predominance of fuel oil costs when compared to total operating costs has provided the diesel driven ships a substantial competitive advantage. As noted in the introduc tion to this paper, the U.S. Merchant Marine is to date almost totally steam propelled. Appendix E is a listing of U.S. flag vessels over 2000 gross tons in operation on 1 April 1979. Four hundred and eighty one of these vessels are steam turbine or turbine electric propulsion, twentyfour are diesel and five are gas turbine. See Figure 5. In turn, almost all foreign owned flag vessels of less than 20,000 shaft horsepower are propelled by diesel engines and almost all merchant vessels being built in the world today are diesel powered, see Appendix A and Figure 6. The U.S. merchant vessel owner owes little apology for this situation. Steam propulsion in this country evolved through National needs and through logical technical evolution. See Appendix B. In turn, it was not until the early 1970's that the modern low speed diesel engine had developed to a point where it could meet these National needs, see Appendix C, and it was at this very time that the last of the relatively large merchant ship building periods in this country's history was coming to an end. Hence, today a wide disparity in U.S. and foreign merchant fleet propulsion exists both with respect to configuration and performance. The U.S. Merchant Fleet Consumes Approximately 85 Million A strong well-balanced energy o Accomplishment of a detailed energy audit with The energy conservation element to be accomplished on a criteria that was used to make a first-cut selection of sev- For the balance of the ves of steam system modernization. sels an energy audit with associated corrective action would be implemented. Figure 7 depicts the relative fuel savings to be realized by implementation of each of the program elements. The energy conservation element which has a significantly higher potential fuel savings than the other elements, is the replacement of existing steam propulsion systems with a low speed diesel propulsion system. |