[Talisker]

A shallow water oil spill is a heck of a lot different than a deepwater blowout, and has virtually nothing in common with the Saudi spill. Add to it the massive areas involved, drifting underwater pools of oil, and the truth is, you can maybe clean up some of the spots with this idea, but on the whole, you're bailing out the ocean with a bucket. Just doing stuff to make it seem like you're doing stuff.

The Saudi spill was bigger than this one, and supertankers can go anywhere. Functionally, regarding sucking up oil, the two spills are extremely similiar. You think there weren't massive spill areas or drifting underwater pools of oil in Suadi? Why not? On the whole, Saudi proves this method works.

I guarantee all their ideas have been considered, and dismissed not because of cost, but due to their being ineffective ideas. Because if it did work, you've got tens of millions of gallons of oil just sitting there for the taking - why not just go collect that free money yourself if BP’s too cheap to do it.

I guarantee you, you shouldn't be guaranteeing anything. Why not just go collect the oil? Because the Feds won't let you. Why won't the Feds let you? Because this gives them an ideal political crisis to 1) attack drilling; 2) attack burning oil at all; 3) push cap and tax; 4) give a rallying cry to environmentalists to get out and vote Democrat.

So am I saying the Democrats would actually blow up an oil well and potentially destroy the entire Gulf of Mexico and all of the Gulf shoreline ecosystems just for... votes?

Of course they would - and they wouldn't lose any sleep over it, either.

[kingu]

The Saudi spill was bigger than this one, and supertankers can go anywhere.

The Saudi spill, at 800,000 gallons, was 19,000 barrels, which is the top end of the high estimates for the daily spill from the Deepwater accident. If you go by the lower official estimates of 5,000 barrels a day, that's 4 days of a nearly 50 day disaster. The Saudi spill was a drop in the bucket compared to this.

Functionally, regarding sucking up oil, the two spills are extremely similiar.

The Saudi spill was a near surface breach, in 100 feet of water. The Deepwater accident is in 5000 feet of water. By the time the oil reaches the suface, it has already broken down into component products. Simply by virtue of the depth, taking nothing else into account, it occupies 500 times the amount of volume as the Saudi spill.

These are apples and oranges you're comparing, every supertanker in the world would be required to simply clean 1/10th of the water just counting the depth to well head. The supertanker idea is appealing, but not going to work in this case. Though if you've a thousand miles of syphoning bouy line, I'm sure BP's in the market.