Article by Assoc.
Prof. Dr. Satapon Keovimol
BSIE. (
Faculty of
Engineering. King Mongkut’s
Advisor of the
Special Committee for Studying Thai-Canal Project of the Senate
Advisor of the
Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights of the Senate
Project potential
comparison between the Land Bridge Project and the Thai Canal Project
The Land Bridge project is a project to create a road to connect
the Andaman coast to the Thai coast or creating what we call a “Land Bridge” to
connect transportation by sea from one side to the other.
Practically,
the benefits will not be different from the country’s main roads in the present
except that the objectives and usage of the land bridge will be in transport
between the two coasts of
Image 1 Road Project, Krabi
– Khanom route
by creating an oil line from one side
to the other. Practically there will have to be a large oil reservoir to keep
the oil for sales, and there must be a large deep-sea port to service ships
from both sides. The land route will be similar to the sea route, if there is
transportation from one side to the other by using trailer trucks, a large
number of containers will be transported all the time and there will be a need
for a large storage house with lots of space. There will have to be large
cranes to lift large containers from the ships to the trailer trucks and to
lift containers from trucks onto ships at the other side of the ocean. There
will have to be a deep-sea port at both sides of the ocean to service large
cargo ships. The cost of construction will be more than the Land Bridge project
itself (not less than the construction cost of Port Lham
Chabang). The costs for the Land bridge project do
not come from only the road construction cost but from the port construction at
both sides of the ocean too.
Image 2 Map Project, Krabi
– Khanom route
Can the
Land bridge project objectives respond to the needs of the sea vessels that
will use its service? There must be a circumspect systematic study.
Image 3 Road Project Plan, Krabi – Khanom route
Benefits and
Potential comparison between the Land bridge project and the
To
make the comparison clear, let us assume that the Land bridge project is
finalized and there are ports at both the Andaman coast and the Thai coast and
there is a ship containing 5,000 containers docking at the Andaman side. 5,000
containers transporting to the Thai coast will take 1 trailer truck 5,000 trips
to the Thai coast side and 5,000 trips back to a total of 10,000 trips. If the
cost of one trip is 7,000 baht, the total transportation cost will be 70
million baht. If we add the crane operating cost, ship daily rental cost, ship
docking cost along with other service costs, the total cost will be more than
100 million baht. It is clear that the Land bridge project or economic bridge
creates more risk to the cargo, wastes more time and costs more to use. This
simple evaluation shows that the sea transport company owners won’t use the
facilities of the project.
The
Land bridge project to transport oil by pipes must be considered also. By the
types of ships that will travel to use the services, because each type of ship
has different daily costs such as a cargo ship that contains 5,000 containers
(5,000 TEU) has a daily rental cost of 3 million baht. The ship wouldn’t travel
to fuel up and travel to another place to transfer cargo because the
operational cost of the ship is higher than the fuel cost difference.
For the project to build an oil refinery
at the Andaman coast to refine oil. And transport the oil by pipes to the Thai
coast to sell it to sea vessels docking for service. Theoretically, an oil
refinery at the Andaman coast can refine oil at a cheap price because Oil
tankers can save distance from traveling to oil refineries on the other side
(not going around the
So
if Thailand is thinking to compete in selling oil with Singapore by using the
Land bridge project along with an oil refinery. I don’t know if it’s a friend’s
deception plan?
At present, Singapore has a large oil refinery placing 3rd in
the world, selling more than 56,000 tons of oil everyday (1 month of Singapore’s
oil sales is equal to 1 year of Thailand’s oil sales) the customers buying the
oil are the 600 cargo ships docking there everyday. During the cargo
transportation, the oil refinery will transport the refined oil through pipes
to the piers to refuel the ships docking. It’s a one-stop service for the ships
to save costs and time.
Recognizing
that
Sources
for this report include: CIA World Fact book; Dow Jones News Wire; Economic
Survey of Singapore 2003; Economist Intelligence Unit; Global Insight Asia
Economic Outlook; Government of Australia Singapore Statistical Fact Sheet;
International Monetary Fund; Oil & Gas Journal; Petroleum Economist;
Reuters News Wire; The Straits Times (Singapore); U.S. Department of State;
U.S. Energy Information Administration.
So the Thai government must consider the
matter thoroughly whether the Land Bridge project along with the oil refinery
to sell oil is feasible practically or not. In the present, PTT’s
(Petroleum Thai) oil refinery refines more oil than used in the country and has
to sell some of the oil to foreign countries.
If the Land bridge project is feasible economically, using land
transportation to replace sea transportation, the main canals of the world
wouldn’t have been created such as the Panama Canal or
Both the Land Bridge project and
the Thai canal project create benefits but if compared to each other the
difference of both projects are very high.
In summary, if we build the Land bridge with the oil refinery to compete
in oil sales with
The Land bridge project from Krabi - Khanom has already been approved by the government on 22nd
June 1993. I think that it should be quickened and completed soon because it
will help a part of the economy and when the
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