Posted on 06/26/2010 4:42:54 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
ON BARATARIA BAY, La. – While oil companies have spent billions of dollars to drill deeper and farther out to sea, relatively little money and research have gone into finding new, improved ways to respond to oil spills in deepsea conditions like those in the Gulf of Mexico.
Experts say the massive Gulf spill has exposed a failure by the industry and the federal government to commit adequate resources to oil cleanup and response technology.
"Why they didn't start working on it after the (Ixtoc 1) Mexican spill in 1979 is beyond me," said Gerald Graham, president of Worldocean Consulting, an oil spill prevention and response planning firm in British Columbia. "Now they're trying to catch up."
Only a fraction of the estimated 69 million to 131.5 million gallons of oil that have spewed into the Gulf have been recovered. About 10 million gallons of oil have been burned off, and 25 million gallons of oil-water mix have been mopped up.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
It's not like there aren't pretty good ideas and suckers and skimmers already to go, just waiting for the word to descend.. Heck, Even Costner and crew have a workable offering.
A guy could really mop up if he knows how to run a slick machine.
That is just pure BS. There were warehouses full of booms that neither BP nor the FedGov got into the water until their arms were twisted. There were numerous offers from 17 nations and private parties to come and contain and remove the oil from the water and they have been denied permission for weeks on end. Gov. Jindal tried to use LA state resources to protect their marshes and shores and were stopped by FedGov bureaucrats.
It can always be said that more resources would be useful or newer technology could have been developed but what good would any of it do when the resources and technology we have is kept from being deployed? It's a sick joke to even suggest this.
This is a situation where utopian perfectionism defeats common sense.
The Dutch “super skimmers” swallow up lots of oily ocean. Th oil floats to the top of the tanker hull, and the seawater on the bottom is pumped back out to the ocean, until the tanker is full of oil and it heads for port.
Brilliant you say! But we can’t use it here! Why? Because when that seawater is pumped back into the ocean, it contains a little residual oil. Can’t have a drop of oil put into the ocean! All stop! No-can-do!
Even if the tanker would be taking 50,000 barrels of oil from the ocean every few days, we can’t do it hear, because it’s not PERFECT! So the 50,000 barrels must be left in the ocean, to wash up on shore.
C3
I wonder what econuts would have thought of the Gulf after a large space chunk hit there 65 million years ago.. folks need a little perspective ..
Chicxulub, talk about a mess.
Drilling deeper and further, as directed by the same idiots who gave us Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac while promoting it's success....
..it’s a typical Obama operation, people get ****ed and the press fawns over the ahole.......Chrissy over at CNN has been blue balled since he heard of possible hurricane action.....
And the government, instead of spending money on clean-up technology, just hires more lawyers.
Hold fast!
Obama's response absolutely sucks...
I think the big concern is that huge amounts of money would go into R&D, and then there may not be a need for it for 25yrs or so. No one wants to invest in that...govt or private.
Oops! I completely misunderstood your post #4. I’m going to have to brush up on your codes. lol
The point was to encourage boaters to not just toss a bucket of slops over the bow, or to vent their on-board toilets in the water near a beach.
Through time and practice this law has been adjusted by EPA regulations to nearly require boaters to "dump" close to shore. This law has also been stretched to apply to "oil skimmer" technology. It's simply prohibited.
Coast Guard enforces the EPA regulations irrespective of how mindless and damaging they seem, and does so out of the barrel of a gun.
I doubt a single Congressman who voted for this particular "no dumping" law intended to prohibit BP or any other party from cleaning up the oil leak close to the source. At the same time I doubt any currently sitting Democrat actually understands the current state of the law and would instantly accuse any critic as being "against science" and a danger to the children of the world.
But, hey!, mankind only has 4k or 5k years of experience with bureaucracies. Maybe we need to give them more time to work the kinks out. lol
I guess I can afford to spell out “see 4.”!
I was afraid someday you would post “C-4” to me and I’d drop to the floor and cover my head. LOL
Not me. What’s c4?
Uh, I think it boosts the immune system and helps prevent colds.
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