KEP Report

Options For Bringing Water to Perth From The Kimberley: An Independent Review Kimberley Expert Panel ('KEP') WA Government 2006

The work the Committee has done on this project has added greatly to the disseminated knowledge about this subject to Government and the public.

The study highlighted to people the concept of shipping water from the Kimberley which Michael Derry identified some 2 decades ago (before the Water Corporation). The Committee did a lot of work compiling its report, however we are concerned that the Committee was given no role by the Government to challenge or investigate the key information and assumptions given to it by the Water Corporation. These facts were taken as fixed and had a crucial bearing on the Committee's final report. Consequently a reader of the report gets the mistaken impression that comparing a dollar assessment of one option in the report against the dollar assessment of another one gives a correct and accurate assessment of the costs.

Experienced Economists would read the report knowing full well that cost is not an exact science and reports such as this will always have their limitations despite the expertise of those who prepare them. Other people will read the report and quote the various costs in the report as if they were unchallengeable, factual and precise amounts to the cent. The dollar amounts assessed in the report for each option are significantly different to what they would be in reality.

Examples of the information provided which would lead any thinking person to raise questions include:

INTEGRATION INFRASTRUCTURE ORD END

Water Corporation costings are based on a loading point at Still Bay (appendix 4 page 9)
Ships of the size costed require draft in excess of 25 metres yet the draft limitation down the Cambridge Gulf to Still Bay is only 11 metres according to AUS32 hydrographic chart (R.A.N) published 1986 .
Other suitable loading sites are available.

INTEGRATION INFRASTRUCTURE PERTH END FOR 50 GL A YEAR OPERATION

$680 million for the pipeline or canal.
$780 million for the Tankering/Water Bags.

Yet it has costed a 45 GL desalination plant (including integration infrastructure) at $376 million ?

The Yarragadee Scheme was costed at $383 million and this includes source works, 105 km pipeline and integration with the IWSS (Integrated Water Supply System) (ref ERMP, volume 1 page 1-10).

SHIP SIZE

The report makes much of the fact that it is most economic to use the largest ships possible yet it ignores the fact that 3 shipyards have already been constructed around the world to build 1 million DWT ships and the Committee costed its report on 1/2 million DWT ships.
Given that major companies very experienced in supertanker construction have spent tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars building 1 million DWT dockyards indicates that this size ship is absolutely feasible. (Note : a 1 million DWT ship can carry twice the load as a 0.5 million DWT ship, however the physical dimensions such as length breadth etc are only approximately 20 % larger).

SHIPPING COST

The study was costed using new oil tankers.
Water tankers do not need double hulls, segregated ballast tanks, inert gas systems etc etc which were mandated for oil tankers only after they had been operating many decades without them.
Due to the fact that water tankers are not carrying an environmentally damaging cargo such as oil they can be operated for much longer before they would need to be scrapped due to structural concerns. This would significantly reduce the depreciation component in the costings.
The Clough (ie CEIS) costings for fuel required for ocean transportation were affected by the recent spike in world oil/fuel prices yet the desalination costings were done before this time.
Looking at the graph Clough produced at figure 26 on page 75, the amount of fuel consumption increasing with speed looks plausible to the untrained eye. However, someone trained and experienced in bulk shipping economics would be able to pick up that the curve is not steep enough so that according to Clough's figures you would save on fuel per cubic metre of water delivered by speeding up the ship.

12 knots uses 127 tons per day or 1,499 tons for Ord-Perth return trip
( 3,400 nautical miles)

(3,400 divided by 288 = 11.81) (11.81 times 127 = 1,499)

14 knots uses 130 tons per day or 1,314 tons for the Ord-Perth return trip
(3,400 divided by 336 = 10.11) (10.11 times 130 = 1,315)
16 knots uses 137 tons per day or 1,212 tons for the Ord-Perth return trip
(3,400 divided by 384 =8.85 ) (8.85 times 137 = 1,213)

Every motorist knows that to save fuel you slow down, not speed up.

NB SEDO in Appendix 11 indicated that the data provided by Clough on energy inputs was different to other estimates they had and this could 'be due to a transcribing error'.

RELIABILITY

The tanker option is very reliable, however designing infrastructure either end to a high degree of reliability is unnecessary. The Perth IWSS has large buffer storage in our dams and groundwater reserves so if a ship is delayed one day for any reason the Water Corporation just draws a bit more on our dams or groundwater.
Designing for reliability is expensive so the degree of reliability built in must be optimised.

ROBUSTNESS

The infrastructure costed in the study has been designed to the same standards as transporting oil.
Massive savings can be achieved on the capital cost of the infrastructure if it can be accepted that minor leaks can occur.
Unlike oil there is no harm to the environment if water leaks.

DESALINATION COST

The operating performance figures for desalination plants have been provided by the desalination industry to the Water Corporation.
Desalination plants have major problems with reliability.
The Water Corporation has not to our knowledge identified/publicised a functioning SWRO plant of a similar size anywhere in the world with as constantly salty feed water as we can expect in the Sound over summer and presented its track record of performance (normally MSF or the VC processes are chosen for large scale sea water desalination plants, particularly in hot climates where the feed water gets very salty in shallow areas not subject to adequate flushing from the outside ocean).
The plants are often estimated to achieve full output around 90 % of the time however many of them achieve much less such as 54 % calculated for Kuwait (see Water Production in Kuwait - Its Management and Economics, Marafie & Darwish, Desalination 71,Elsevier Science, 1985, page 49)

(see)

The Goverment has been claiming to be using wind power to provide electricity for the desalination plant in recent media broadcasts. We are not aware of any detail about how this has been factored into their costings as alternative energy is nearly always significantly more expensive then using fossil fuels despite being a very good objective to pursue.

ENERGY USAGE

Using larger ships and operating them much slower (unlike oil, water is a low value commodity and does not need to be transported at such a high speed to get to market) results in quantum energy savings (see)
We have done research on using the abundant tidal energy in the Kimberley's to split water into hydrogen and oxygen as a future energy source with zero greenhouse emissions. It may be feasible to use this tidal power to power the supertankers as a major limiting factor with considering using tidal power in the Kimberley's in the past for other purposes has always been the distance from any potential users (see The West Australian, April 6 ,1990, p24).

Below we have summarised Green House Gas emissions SEDO have calculated using the appropriate conversion factors against the information supplied to them by the consultants to the KEP (see the KEP Report at Appendix 11). These figures need further explanation which is not surprising given that SEDO makes comments that at least some of the information provided to them is different to their information and this could be due to 'transcribing errors'.

Emissions of CO2 in kgs per kl of delivered water

	Source	Midstream	Perth	Total
Pipeline	0.09	2.45	0.72	3.26
Canal	0.19	0.85	1.69	2.73
Tanker	1.46	7.70	0.97	10.13
Waterbag	1.46	5.97	0.97	8.40
Desalination	NIL	4.46	??????????	??????????

According to these figures:

Perth Hills downhill to our Perth taps will produce 69 % as many Green House Gas emissions as piping it 300 metres uphill 1900 km from the ORD to Perth ?

Pumping water from a tanker anchored off Perth (same pump head as desalination) into a Perth tap will generate 40 % as many Green House Gas emissions as pumping it 300 metres uphill and 1900 km's ?

Pumping water downhill for the tanker option at the Ord produces 0.0070 kg's of CO2 per km whereas piping it 300 metres uphill to Perth for the pipeline option uses only 0.0013 kg's of CO2 per km (ie 1/5 ) ?

No account is taken of the energy cost of getting the desalinated water into Perth taps ?

There are no scope 3 emissions for the main journey of the 1900 km pipeline option ?

The Water Corporation has not publicised the fact that at 500 ppm TDS design specification, the product water from the Kwinana SWRO plant is not comparable to Kimberley water (approximately 100 to 200 ppm TDS) in that it is too salty to be blended with otherwise slightly too salty water such as from the Wellington Dam or other sources.

The KEP needs to be given a fresh mandate to review the information provided by the Water Corporation to their satisfaction or else be given the resources to obtain the source information free from involvement of the Water Corporation.