Workers on the Arabian Gulf overlook a supertanker owned by Saudi Aramco, the oil company that used a suck-and-salvage American technology to
recover 85 percent of its previously unreported spill in 1993 and '94.
Posted on 05/27/2010 9:48:46 PM PDT by NaturalBornConservative
There's a potential solution to the Gulf oil spill that neither BP, nor the federal government, nor anyone — save a couple intuitive engineers — seems willing to try. As The Politics Blog reported on Tuesday in an interview with former Shell Oil president John Hofmeister, the untapped solution involves using empty supertankers to suck the spill off the surface, treat and discharge the contaminated water, and either salvage or destroy the slick.
Hofmeister had been briefed on the strategy by a Houston-based environmental disaster expert named Nick Pozzi, who has used the same solution on several large spills during almost two decades of experience in the Middle East — who says that it could be deployed easily and should be, immediately, to protect the Gulf Coast. That it hasn't even been considered yet is, Pozzi thinks, owing to cost considerations, or because there's no clear chain of authority by which to get valuable ideas in the right hands. But with BP's latest four-pronged plan remaining unproven, and estimates of company liability already reaching the tens of billions of dollars (and counting), supertankers start to look like a bargain.
The suck-and-salvage technique was developed in desperation across the Arabian Gulf following a spill of mammoth proportions — 700 million gallons — that has until now gone unreported, as Saudi Arabia is a closed society, and its oil company, Saudi Aramco, remains owned by the House of Saud. But in 1993 and into '94, with four leaking tankers and two gushing wells, the royal family had an environmental disaster nearly sixty-five times the size of Exxon Valdez on its hands, and it desperately needed a solution.
Pozzi, an American engineer then in charge of Saudi Aramco's east-west pipeline in the technical support and maintenance services division, was part of a team given cart blanche to control the blowout. Pozzi had dealt with numerous spills over the years without using chemicals, and had tried dumping flour into the oil, then scooping the resulting tar balls from the surface. "You ever cooked with flour? Absorbent, right?" Pozzi says. Next, he'd dumped straw into the spills; also highly absorbent, but then you've got a lot of straw to clean up. This spill was going to require a much larger, more sustained solution. And fast.
That's when Pozzi and his team came up with the idea of having empty ships park near the Saudi spill and pull the oil off the water. This part of the operation went on for six months, with the mop-up operations lasting for several years more. Pozzi says that 85 percent of the spilled oil was recovered, and it is precisely this strategy that he wants to see deployed in the Gulf of Mexico.
Yesterday, I spoke to Pozzi and his business partner, longtime Houston lawyer Jon King, about their proposed solution, and the difficulties they've encountered trying to assist in the disaster, with both BP and the government. While BP is attempting its very difficult maneuvers to contain the gusher at the source, they say, nothing is being done to adequately address the slick itself. Dispersant is being used by the ton, some of the oil is being burned, and there have been other efforts, which taken together, Pozzi likens to "a flea on an elephant's ass." The two men have been trying to rally support since just after the rig blew up, without much success. This has been typical of their experience:
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/gulf-oil-spill-supertankers-051310?click=main_sr
"Daddy, did you remember to send out the supertankers?"
This is EXACTLY the type of thing that they should have done in the first place - 4 tankers on-standby within one day's sail to an oil well [stand-by costs to be shared by ALL oil companies drilling in US waters]. On-line costs to be borne by the offending oil company when there is a blow-out ...
Hey if Obama and his 20,000 didn’t think of it then it can’t work. Besides BO said he has been on this from day 1 and everything is going to be all right. Well that what he said today in his re-election speech.
The Narc in Chief will just point to this and say, see, the Saudis can fix their own environmental disasters, so we should stop drilling in the USA and just buy all of our oil from here on out from Saudi Arabia because it is good for the environment.
My solution would be a large bell housing with a large hose attached. The bell housing would be maneauvered using undersea tv cameras right over the excaping oil. Once that housing was lowered over the oil vent, a suction would be applied to the hose and this would create a seal on the rim of the housing with the sea floor. Excaping oil would then be collected by the tube and pumped up into an oil tanker.
Yeah, but it’s funny that the Saudi’s used American ‘suck and salvage’ technology. We can invent the solutions but don’t have the sense to elect leaders who trust their own people.
That might have worked except for the icing problem, and the fact that the main gusher is 5 miles from where they are plugging, as rumor has it.
I have a (Possibly stupid) question here.
For all of this is leaking, there’s going to be a void where it used to fill under the seabed.
If this void collapses, what might the result be?
Well, oil is lighter than water. Cold, deep water should naturally rush in to fill the naturally-abhored vaccum.
Maybe this is where the nuke people come in. Heat it so much that no hydrothermal replacement occurs.
I think a nuke is wrong, rather there are a dozen ways to freeze up the holes, so cold water isn’t forced by nature to
enter.
Hmmm. I was wondering if there was a danger of seabed collapse, causing damages to coastal areas.
If BP would level with us on what is really happening, someone could have come up with a solution by now.
Interesting article
It wouldn’t suprise me a bit if this is being allowed to escalate under threat of assault by, “You-Know-Who.”
Environmental disaster? He wins.
Disaster averted? He wins.
I hope everyone filled their tanks.
Couldn’t the icing problem be solved with electric heater elements inside the housing?
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