You're listening to AC N A podcast. It's fair to say Singapore's been shocked and a bit saddened by the fallout of the oil spill that happened on June 14 weeks on the situation is still unfolding, containing thousands of tons of oil in the environment is a major challenge and the cleanup will take a long time. Even as we wean off fossil fuels, oil is all around us. Today. We're looking at how to live with it.
Hello and welcome to climate conversations. I'm Jack Ford, coming to you from Bangkok and Hello Li Ling Tan in Singapore. I hope you're good. Yes, I am. Thank you very much for asking. I hope you are too. I am. Now, this story though has really captured people's attentions and emotions, hasn't it? And we will get into the nitty gritty. But what sort feelings have you experienced? Kind of seeing all these horrible images of oil in what is normally a reasonably clean environment? Yeah,
it's really jarring and very surreal. A lot of the attention was along the beaches of Sentosa. A lot of the spill was there and I go there a lot, usually to the beach clubs at Tanjong Beach. I'm sure you've been there too. These are beach clubs where family go during the day and party people go at night and these are also the beaches where our Children play. And for our international listeners, the hotel that hosted the Trump Kim Summit is right there to Capella Sentosa, right
by Palawan Beach. So to see these pictures of the oil slick on the water of this getaway destination and the blackened sand, it's hard to believe, Jack. It's difficult to imagine that something like this could happen. So, are you the family person going during the day or the party person going at night? I will neither deny nor confirm anything. Both actually. Well, it depends on what point of my life. Gotcha. Gotcha. Let's get into our weekly quiz. Everybody's favorite time of
the episode. We will be talking about alternative marine fuels a little bit later. But developing a cleaner global shipping fleet is a big challenge. So I would like to know how significant do you think the pollution is from one typical large shipping container vessel? One of those big ships that you probably see every day. If you live in a condominium, you're looking into the sea,
the Malacca Strait, you'll see these vessels everywhere. One of them, is it the same amount of pollution as 50,000 cars b the same as a million cars? And for context, that's about how many cars Singapore has in total or c the same as 50 million cars. Le Ling any early thoughts or you wanna save it to the end. I'll save it to the end. All right. It's news time, Le Ling. What stories have captured your attention from the newsroom this week? Well, the
first one comes from your motherland. Time is running out to save the Great Barrier Reef. Jack. That's right, Australia. So time is running out to save the Great Barrier Reef but not so bad that it needs to be on the unesco's list of endangered heritage sites. Yet, a new report from the UN S Education science and cultural arms says the reef remains under serious threat and urgent action is needed to protect it. This includes calls
for more ambitious climate targets. It's among a list of recommendations from the UNESCO report about preserving the reef status as a world heritage site, but the report stopped short of recommending that the reef be placed on its list of endangered heritage site, something that Australia wants to avoid. Now, it did however suggest that Australia submit a progress report by February next year. The committee could consider including the reef in
its list of endangered sites. Later in 2026. The report cited concerns about pollution from land clearing that then flow into the reef about invasive starfish that feed on the coral as well as the mass coral bleaching over the
past few months. And it wants Australia to make the extent of coral die off from this latest bleaching event going on for a couple of years and particularly the previous Australian government was very strong on not having the reef listed as endangered, something that it considers a hammer blow to one of the most important sites that Australia has. But something has to be done. And I feel like a lot of this is just putting our head in the sand pretending that there's not a big problem.
There's clearly issues at the reef. Why does Australia not want to be on the endangered heritage sites for the reef? Why not? It suggests to me that there will be blame placed on the lack of protections that have been implemented, that activity that continue all around the reef, including mining, including shipping continues and that is putting the reef at further risk. So there's a political angle to that. There's a lot of politics being played between the government and unesco interesting
space to watch. I think. So. Next up, Jack remember how just over a month ago before the oil spill in Singapore took up all our head space here. What the big news was the extreme turbulence on SQ 321 that led to one death and more than 100 people injured. That's like just over a month ago, it seems much longer than that, doesn't it? Well, we got word this week of technology that can reduce the danger of air turbulence. Something that is reportedly becoming much more common due to climate change.
And interestingly, it's not new technology. It's actually something that's already being used in self driving cars. Jack, you ever heard of Lidar? I've heard of it, but I don't have a self driving car. So maybe you better explain it to me. So it's a type of 3D laser scanning technology that can apparently also detect clear air turbulence up to 20 miles or 32 kilometers ahead of an aircraft. And this is according to a specialist Chang Chin Wei in an interview with media Corp
program talking point. Now Chung explains how lidar can detect clear air turbulence in the absence of water vapors, which current weather radar systems cannot do. And it does this by picking up the movement of air molecules and sending this data back to the pilots on a screen. Now it's color coded. So red means the object is closer to the aircraft lighter color means it's further away. The question of course is when can it deploy for
aircraft use? Cheng says about 3 to 10 years possibly because there's still a lot of hurdles to overcome, there's a need for high processing power and that also requires a big lighter unit which adds weight to the aircraft in flight. Now altitude also affects the range of detection. Hm Super interesting and it seems like something in terms of safety that would be really useful. We've heard since the Singapore Airlines incident, a bunch of other planes have been encountering something similar.
We know that climate change is obviously making turbulence worse and more frequent. Yeah, maybe three years would be better in 10 years. If we're waiting 10 years, then might take some investment from some of these airlines as well. The good news is it's already existing tax. So it's not something that needs a longer runway to runway, needs
a longer runway to deploy. Ok, let's go to our main story this week, around 400 metric tons of oil was spilled following Friday's shipping crash when a dredger struck a bunker vessel and ruptured an oil tank. And where does all that oily sand go? A big part of cleaning up last Friday's oil spill involves removing and treating oil soaked sand from affected shorelines. Singapore is deploying more oil absorb booms to contain the oil spill along the southern shores.
Two kingfishers drenched in oil have already died despite being rescued. Plans to monitor wildlife with surveys and long term research are in the works. The next stage of cleaning could take up to three months with sea activities only resuming after the water is repeatedly tested, oil and water don't mix. It's an old saying and when it comes to these marine or industrial incidents, it's
true and we hate to see it happen. The good news generally is that the number of accidents and the amounts of oil being spilled around the world is reducing. In the 19 seventies every year, there were 79 spills of over seven tons of oil on average. Now in 2023 there were only 10, the average this decade is 6.8. Let's kind of look at the biggest oil spills. I think we can kind of put the Singapore spill into context a little bit.
The biggest ever Li Ling. You probably don't remember this one in 1910 was the Lake View Gusher in California. It released an estimated 378 million gallons of crude oil, some one 0.2 million tons. And then during the Gulf War, not a single oil spill, but the biggest oil disaster the world has ever seen where especially in Kuwait, billions of gallons were spilled and burnt. And of course, something that you probably do remember and we all remember the Deepwater
Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. That was a shocking incident. Yeah, it was and you know, we were in the US at the time and following it very closely remember that this spill kept on going for about five months from April to September. It was astonishing how long it took to. Yeah, and I remember how mind boggling it was that we were seeing this oil just gushing out from the pipe on the ocean floor happening in real time and how helpless we all felt because for
so long, nothing could be done to stop it. But the difference, that was an ocean rig, the Lakeview was an oil well, the Gulf War was a war. So these spills from ships. So there's a little bit of a difference to the situation we're talking about. Now. That's correct. That's correct. And when you compare apples to apples, we need to consider shipping oil
spills like the Exxon Valdez Supertanker spill of 1989. I think for a lot of people that's still fresh in their minds, that was more than 37,000 tons of oil spilled. Now Singapore's largest maritime oil spill was about 28,000 tons when two tankers collected in 1997. So if you think about the 400 tons spilled in this latest incident here in Singapore, it is small in comparison but still the damage is done. Exactly right. Now, why does it happen? You've been there? You've kind of
looked at the forensics of this incident. A lot of it has been about human error, technical issues and accidents, even weather conditions like hurricanes can cause incidents resulting in oil spills. So when it comes to these oil spills from ships, the question that comes up and something that struck my mind initially, when I saw this incident in Singapore is whether these overly congested shipping ports have something to do with it. That's a very valid question. And you're not
alone in asking this. Others have also asked and Singapore's government says this spill here wasn't a result of congestion and preliminary findings show that it was actually caused by the tragical losing engine and steering controls. The Singapore government also said that the port water here and the anchorages are not congested. But it's a valid question, especially when you consider that this is one of the world's busiest ports and whether having more vessels
in the water increases the risk. I think the simple fact is there are increasing concerns all around the world that just by having more vessels in the water carrying large amounts of toxic cargoes, incidents can keep on happening. And the stakes we know are so high for important ecosystems and the communities that rely on them.
So I want to look at the case of the Philippines, a story called Black Waters that I put together last year in February about seven kilometers offshore from the island province of Oriental Mindoro, a tanker named Mt Princess Empress sank in rough sea conditions. Now it had a toxic cargo of 800,000 L of industrial oil which began spilling into one of the world's most important biodiversity hotspots. It's called the Verde Island Passage and it's a vital
waterway that separates Luzon and Medora. And now this is part of the coral triangle and the VIP as they like to call it over there is kind of the center of the center of global shore fish biodiversity and it's estimated to support about 2 million people in terms of food and livelihoods. So it's not the kind of place where you want industrial oil accidents happening. It's also this fisheries hub. It's a burgeoning e tourism
site and critical shipping pathway. So basically after the spill, the same things you've seen in Singapore happen there across this vast shoreline in the Philippines. The Hazmat suits
the blobs of oil appearing in the sand. And sadly, for many locals there, the decimation of their local fishing industry now all of it was cleaned up, but people are still really scared and there's a fear that the environment and local people's livelihoods are being imperiled by a regional rush to further develop the fossil fuel industry, which I think goes at odds to what we understand of the climate change agenda and especially this is happening in the form of liquefied
natural gas hubs or LNG and potentially more activated oil and gas fields, offshore oil and gas fields and then heavy shipping and those potentially dangerous cargoes are one of the symptoms of the growth of that industry. And so too is the leakage of heavy metals into waterways and heightened interest in the expansion of offshore oil and gas drilling. So I did an interview with Ivan Andres. He's from
the Center for Energy Ecology and Development or seed. It's a Philippine NGO focused on sustainable energy industry and governments and they've been monitoring the situation closely. Um
The most recent pressure that the VIP felt we believe are the impacts of the fossil gas industries. We saw the impact of bankers passing through the Red Island Passage. And as a result, there are locations of oil spills both documented and undocumented because there are, there are capsizing of ships in the area that are not being picked up by the media.
And we see that as the fossil gas industries and the LNG terminals are being built more and more tankers, LNG tankers will be able to pass through the area. And of course, with the elevated number of these tankers in the area, there is more chances of capsizing and catastrophic events such as the one we saw in Oriental mind.
Of course, Singapore is a major importer of LNG liquefied natural gas. It's the region's second largest gas importer and has been expanding its existing LNG importing facility and then it also imports large amounts of oil and petroleum. So there are inevitably toxic cargoes in the surrounding waters all the time and that has to be carefully managed. Yeah, exactly. And as renewables increasingly enter the energy mix, you'd expect that these movements of
fossil fuels will inevitably reduce. But at the same time, we are actually not weaning off oil as quickly as you might expect. Now, OPEC which is the collective of major oil producing nations predicts that the world will be using more oil in 2045 than it does today. Yeah, that's really discouraging when you think about that and you know, Jack, when it comes to greening the maritime industry, there is a will to do that but not enough, I suppose, just based on what we're hearing
from countries in the region, it's challenging for sure. But a lot of it also has to do with the lack of deployable alternatives. The future we know is in greening the fuel, greening maritime fuel, but most ships still run on conventional fuel. And although we are seeing growth in emerging alternatives like ammonia and methanol, these synthetic
fuels may be more sustainable but not zero carbon. They're also still very expensive and much of their green value will be in greening the hydrogen that they're made from and lowering the cost of production. We are clearly not there yet and there's also the safety issue. Ammonia is known to be highly toxic and dangerous in the event of a spill, a ship sinking with a cargo of ammonia could potentially sterilize quote unquote
cubic miles of ocean. And that's according to one leading expert on the issue and that's pretty scary. Now, there are also safety concerns around methanol as it is also toxic and flammable and
must be handled carefully. Lots of barriers to greening up the industry, but maybe let's not forget, electric, it may not be the silver bullet, but there are a lot of ferries especially in Europe and also in Thailand, we are starting to see that are turning to battery powered motors and I think for situations where distance isn't a major factor or you have close to shore operations, it does seem very practical. And we've discussed before that Singapore is looking at, rolling
out more of these types of vessels. And I'm also really on board the wind train or the wind ship in this case. Yeah, let's go old school. Like 20 commercial cargo ships are already using wind power to reduce their fuel use. So imagine a world where the wind rules again. Don't rule it out for the sake of not having to deal with more of these types of horrible spills year on year. And they're also solar powered boats. I don't know if you've heard or seen them. I've read a bit about them.
Not many but they exist and there's even a cruise company that plans to launch an electric ship with retractable cells that have solar panels on them. Can you imagine this solar cells? So there you go, electricity from wind and the sun all in one. Ok. Let's get our answer to the quiz to repeat the question. How significant do you think the pollution is from one typical large shipping container vessel? Is it the same as 50,000 cars, the same as a million cars or the same as
50 million cars? Those are all very different options. So 50,000, yeah, I know. But you know, different variations of big so 50,000 cars. I think it's too small. A million cars. It sounds like that is a reasonable middle ground. 50 million cars is a lot, but we're talking about a huge shipping container vessel carrying all that fuel. So I hope it's not 50 million cars, but I'm gonna go with that. Actually, you're going with 50 million. I'm going with bold, a bold
choice and you are correct. It is 50 million cars. And this, we're talking about a large modern vessel astonishing and further to that, the 15 largest ships in the world emit as much nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide as the world's 760 million cars, 15 ships the same as every car in the world. And these contribute greatly to obviously bad air in cities and they also cause diseases like cancer and asthma.
So the shipping industry as a whole represents up to 3% of global emissions more than the aviation sector and 10% of transport emissions. So lots of work to try and find solutions here because the difference you can make seems like it would be profound. And that's why there are global efforts to try to reduce the amount of these pollutant gasses like sulfur oxide from marine fuel. So in the previous episode, we were talking about low sulfur fuel, which
is what the spill was from this Singapore incident. And that was part of efforts to try and manage or reduce the amount of sulfur content in the fuel and Singapore suffers from bad air. I'm sure you know about it. A lot of that is because of the shipping industry. So let's clean it up. We can have cleaner air to breathe for everybody. All right, that's it for climate conversations this week. Thank you.
As always for your company. Every Thursday, we have a new episode and good to have you all here today and we hope to catch up again real soon. Bye for now. I'm Li Ling Tan and I'm Jack Boyd. Thanks as always as well to the team that put together this podcast, Tiffany Janani, Jahari, Kristina Robert and Sai Ye.