St Dimitrios

[Whickham]

ST. DIMITRIOS alongside the Tyne Bulk Terminal 27/10/2017. Photo taken into the sun, so not the greatest.
Apparently she is unloading a record cargo of 62,000 tons of wood-pellets (record for the Tyne).
The pellets are being rail freighted down to the Drax power station in darkest Yorkshire.
She is a recent renaming not listed in Miramar yet but I think it was this year.

Built as: BAROCK
Yard: Tsuneishi, Numakuma
Year: 2007
IMO: 9401518
Names: 2017 ST. DIMITRIOS
End:
Fate: Still in service
Data courtesy of Miramar

[northeast]

So to avoid pollution from burning Yorkshire coal, 62000 tonnes of wood pellets are presumably railroaded to a port behind some big diesel locos, a ship burns oil all the way across the Atlantic, then more diesel burned to get them to the power station .... does it all make sense?

[Whickham]

Yes, it does sound crazy but apparently it made sense just a very few years ago to import coal into the Tyne from places such as Russia, America and Australia and then rail freight it down to Drax. So the real comparison is just the economics / environmental impact of coal v wood-pellets. Coal straight out of the ground v wood chopped, hauled, processed and resulting in a lower calorific value than the coal.

[northeast]

It won't work when we apply WTO import duties at the border of the People's Republic of Yorkshire