Mastering the Commodities Markets

WATER CONVERSION AND DESALINATION

Naturally there are great incentives to convert seawater into freshwater for agriculture or into potable clean drinking water. The reader may be aware of these schemes:

• Transporting an iceberg from one of the poles to areas of water shortage, e.g. Texas;
• Desalination of seawater.

Iceberg transportation

In the 1970s an engineering graduate named Georges Mougin had an idea. He suggested that icebergs floating around in the North Atlantic could be tethered and dragged south to places that were experiencing a severe drought, such as the Sahel of West Africa. Mr Mougin received financial backing from a Saudi prince, H.E. Mohammad al-Faisal, but most ‘experts’ at the time scoffed at his idea and the whole scheme ...