Thursday, October 23, 2014

Mapping the movement of oil tankers to ascertain the importance of sea lanes and ports through Social Network Analysis

Nemmani Sreedhar
(I will not do this project in second module)

Background
Even before the relentless juggernaut of globalization started rolling, there was one most-traded commodity in the world - crude oil. Compared from 1950's, the annual tonnage of oil transported through the world increased by about 10 times. Recent statistics point out that more than 3.5 billion tonnes of crude oil is being produced every year.
With crude oil being the driver of economic development, the developed, as well as emerging, markets are its biggest consumers. According to estimates the United States, the largest oil consumer, imports 60 per cent of its annual requirement. In the same way, India imports 68 per cent of oil and China imports 46 per cent of oil each year. It is estimated that by year 2025, India will be importing about 85 per cent of its oil requirements and China about 75 per cent of the oil.
A major portion of these imports, as much as 90 per cent, is transported through sea lanes in oil tankers. This makes the sea lanes, and consequently shipping routes to be of at most importance for the countries not just to depend on, but to defend them when required from terrorist and other external threats.
Primary question
Given that oil producing nations are located in clusters and consumers of this precious commodity are spread out across the world, my primary question would be to find out which sea lanes are important and where are the choke points that threaten the free flow of oil across the world.
Hypothesis
By finding out the choke points that are of key importance to the nations, we will be able to identify the areas that particular nations need to monitor and defend. This will also help me to analyze the requirement of the nations to position their strategic assets, military bases, long-range nuclear submarines, patrol vessels, and other naval assets, across the sea lanes to ensure seem-less flow of oil across the important sea lanes.
Data
Since the primary mode of transporting oil through sea is by oil tankers, primary data can be collected from online resources that track the movement of oil tankers and ships, on a real-time basis. Government resources, like US Energy Information Administration, are other resources that analyze the  importance of the sea lanes and Straits through which the oil is transported.
Inferences
By analyzing the frequency of the oil tanker movements through the sea lanes and ports, we can understand the importance of the ports that are considered important, the frequency of the movement between them, the centrality of these ports among other things. By collecting the data that is spread over three to six months, we can also ascertain their continuing relevance and emerging trends that countries should take into consideration.

1 comment:

Peter said...

Interesting topic that would require a more focused question and deeper analysis. The difficulty would lie in nailing down the question and further parsing the inferences you're trying to make. The frequency of movement between tankers, for example, is data that you say is publicly available. What would the next step in analysis be?