“Thanks as always to you and David for the rich and valuable service and for the wide coverage of topics.

“As a “guy of water”, working for a utility Company, I got especially interested in your article on the venture to “export water” from Iceland.

“Here are a few numbers for your reference and to put things in perspective:

“Tariff: Tariff for tap water (to cover for the service costs) is in the range of 0.1 (water supply in China for example) ~ 10 € (desalination) per cubic meter (1m3 = 1000 litres)

“Oil cost ~ 100 USD per barrel, with 1 barrel ~ 0.1 m3 so we get here 1,000 USD/ m3 of oil

“So we have a factor of 100 between oil price and water price…

“Capacity: The pipe capacity mentioned by the document is 7,000,000 litres/ day so 7,000 m3/ day: this is the consumption of a city of less than 50,000 inhabitants

“Even if this is ~ 1% of the capacity as mentioned in the document, then this Company would get enough water for a city of 5 million inhabitants…

“I am referring here to a total water demand, including uses for residential, industrial, commercial, greening, road cleaning, etc. (the average around the world is about 150 to 200 liters/ day/ capita)

“Water export” is a nice concept. However, we can see that water supply always remains a local business handled by the local Municipality (with, in some cases, part or all of the services subcontracted to a private Utility Company).

“I guess we can see 2 main ways for the “water export”:

“Big infrastructure projects, including long pipes and pumping stations along the way (up to few hundred kilometers maybe; but not thousands) or damns, canals, etc, like we recently saw in China for example (disadvantages: high costs, environmental damages)

“The water is then delivered to the local Municipality's Utility and will then cover all purposes

“Bottled water just for the drinking portion (say ~ 2litres/ day/ person) of the water demand (~150 litres/ day/ person, all purposes included)

“That's the business described in the document I believe, and competitors include the mentioned Evian water (Danone) and other mineral water companies

“By the way, let's note that such bottle of water costs ~ 1€ / litre, to be compared to the water produced from desalination which is more in the range of 0.01 € / litre or the one you get today at your tap in the range of 0.001€ / litre"

Eoin Treacy's view Thank you for your kind words and for sharing your expertise in the spirit of Empowerment Through Knowledge. Exporting water has a certain romance but is by no means a simple exercise and particularly over long distances, as you point out.