In the air, there have recently been a number of bankruptcy or forced mergers in the airline industry, as increases in the price of crude oil and general rises in basic cost of living, negatively affect ticket prices. Forcing passengers to postpone or eliminate non-essential travel and requiring cargo customers to rethink their options (instead of overnight delivery of sample products).Across the seas, the fuel may be cheaper, hence passenger tickets should cost less, at least on paper but because of the vibrant cargo business, vessels are scarce as manufacturers’ orders are for more cargo vessels. Passengers are limited to relatively short journeys via water-taxi or ferries and even then, sea sickness, pirates, the journey time and turnaround time are difficult issues, as the weather has become so unpredictable and most port terminals are designed to handle cargo rather than passengers.
Now on dry land, the road network, having originally been designed for people to access shopping centers, production areas and housing, have been expanded to, and in some cases, replaces mass transit pathways. Whether this road expansion took place to accommodate the automobile or not, it has led to the dominance that crude oil has in the transportation sector. Now as gasoline prices become uneconomical people are reverting to only driving on their local community roads and using mass or public transportation for longer and routine journeys. This trend is forcing a redesign of many highways to incorporate high speed trains.
Hence, the major issue in the transportation sector is clearly the increasing price and dependency on crude oil. Taking us back to our blog titled Energy cheap & clean and the need to diversify away from one power source. We are still waiting for a synthetic fuel, made from a 50-50 blend of traditional crude oil based fuel and a Fischer-Tropsch fuel derived from natural gas, promised in 2006 to be used commercially in aircrafts. This should reduce the cost of airfares. The use of wind and solar power in sea vessels is expanding but there are more issues to be addressed before sea travel can be anything more than a short trip or vacation product. Hybrid has become a marketing term for vehicles that can operate on both crude oil and non- crude oil products but many users of such vehicles prefer to power it using gasoline. The majority of automobiles on the road s still consume crude oil products as its chief power source.
The electric cars and trains are coming soon.
Rationale
T.A.J & Associates Company Limited uses this occasion to comment on topics that have been covered, both academically and by the mainstream media, to add its opinion and point out investment opportunity, not to invoke any social action.
