To Tow An Iceberg; Or, How Not To Relieve Water Scarcity
Water scarcity has always been a problem for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The desert nation receives an average annual rainfall of about 100mm, or 4 inches, in most regions. The nation relies mainly on desalinating sea water and tapping ancient aquifers to supply its water today, but that was not always the case.
In the 1970s, the Kingdom was at a crossroads. They were swimming in cash due to soaring oil prices, but they weren’t swimming in the traditional medium: water. The desalination process was still new, and the Saudis were looking for a solution to their water problem. While most authorities in the Kingdom had decided that desalination was the best alternative, a prince had another idea.
Mohammad al-Faisal (pictured right) was the nephew of the Saudi King Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. He earned his B.S. in Business Administration and was put in charge of Saudi Arabia’s water affairs in 1974. As the process began to focus on desalination, however, he resigned his position, and began work on his own grand scheme to solve Saudi Arabia’s water problem.
And a grand plan it was. Al-Faisal planned to haul a 100-million-ton iceberg from Antarctica to the Red Sea. The amount of potable water that could be gained from the iceberg would be, “... equal to 22 times that of the Nile.(1)” But how does one haul a mile-wide iceberg over that distance without it melting?
Al-Faisal was certainly not alone in figuring out the answer. Investing millions of his own dollars, he founded Iceberg Transport International, his venture into the iceberg-towing business. He also enlisted the help of a French polar explorer named Paul-Emile Victor, as well as a French engineering firm, to assist in the logistics.
What they came up with is this: they were going to wrap the entire, gigantic iceberg in plastic. Paddlewheels would be attached to the outer edges. Then, six or seven enormously powerful tugboats would haul the iceberg on its eight-month journey(2).
The American press was jocular about the prospects, but then, they could afford to be: America has no shortage of water. One newspaper wrote, when commenting on the amount of water al-Faisal thought to gain, “That’s a lot of liquid assets.(3)” Others were just generally dismissive.
Not everyone was laughing, however; conferences on the topic of icebergs as water sources had already been held in Paris. Another was to be held in Ames, Iowa, in 1977. This First International Conference on Iceberg Utilization was to host 18 representatives from various nations around the globe. Al-Faisal planned to wow them with his concept.
He arranged for a 2,500 lb. ice slab from Alaska’s Portage Glacier to be helicoptered, then flown via airplane, then trucked into the venue of the conference, at a cost of $7500. They made it, and the slab was the talk of the town in Ames for weeks to come. People chipped off pieces of the slab and kept them as souvenirs. It was joked that the scientists at the conference would have plenty of ice for their beverages.(4) Faisal did indeed use ice from this slab at the conference, as can be seen in the photo above.
Not much came from al-Faisal’s plan after that. Saudi officials decided to go with the desalination process as a more feasible choice. Al-Faisal did not disappear into obscurity, however; he went on to found the Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt, the Dar Al Maal Al Islami Trust, and the Faisal Private Bank. He is also the chair of the Islamic Finance Group.
Other players did not give up hope. One member of the engineering firm that was originally involved with the project, Georges Mougin, has continued to display confidence in al-Faisal’s idea a recently as 2011. He invented a new method of transporting icebergs that utilizes new technological advances, such as 3-D rendering, to make al-Faisal’s dream a reality. The video below shows Mougin's journey.
Below is an original news broadcast from the Iceberg Utilization Conference in 1977.
What do you think? Should icebergs be considered as a realistic solution to water scarcity? Let me know in the comments.
1. Saudi hopes to start iceberg tow. (1979, May 3). The Bangor Daily News. Retrieved from https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=8AQ1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=H08KAAAAIBAJ&pg=934%2C994956
2. Jones, T. C. (2010). Desert Kingdom. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
3. Hauling in the Ice. (1977, July 7). Rome News-Tribune. Retrieved from https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=x-stAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FTMDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5273%2C896134
4. Huge ice slab to cool drinks for scientists. (1977, September 30). The Sumpter Daily Item. Retrieved from https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=A4giAAAAIBAJ&sjid=iqoFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5406%2C3430914
Further Reading
Iceman like fairy prince. (1977, October 8). The Gadsden Times. Retrieved from https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=5HMpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=M9YEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4155%2C1325747 Saudi Iceberg Plan: Will It Hold Water? (1977, June 28). The New York Times, p. 3. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1977/06/28/archives/saudi-iceberg-plan-will-it-hold-water.html?_r=0
UN-Water. (2007). Coping with water scarcity: Challenge of the twenty-first century (Rep.). Retrieved http://www.fao.org/nr/water/docs/escarcity.pdf
