Posted on 06/29/2010 7:35:59 AM PDT by jazminerose
The A-Whale bills itself as the largest open-water oil skimmer in the world, and it’s at least very impressive. Originally an oil and ore tanker, the ship’s owners recently refitted the ship to do exactly the kind of work that the US so desperately needs in the Gulf of Mexico, and to do it on a vastly larger scale than current operations can handle. According to the ship’s project manager, the entire American effort in 66 days has skimmed off 600,000 barrels of oil. The ship’s owners claim that A-Whale can skim 500,000 barrels a day.
So where is the A-Whale now? In the Gulf? Not yet. It’s on its way there after being tied to a dock in Norfolk, Virginia, and won’t be allowed to join the cleanup effort until the Coast Guard and the EPA figure out whether it meets their standards (h/t Deb Singer on Twitter):
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Thank you for the post. I sent a link to the story to my Congressman.
Obama wants this,got to have those drilling bans and cap and trade
The Feds will fumble about until the entire gulf is coverd in oil.
Thank you for taking action.
The A-Whale won’t sail until the A-Hole stops playing golf and starts taking his responsibilities seriously.
Saw this on Fox yesterday.
It’s a damn shame that our gov’t is preventing cleanup progress, and this isn’t the first time they got in the way.
They sent workers packing that were already in the process of cleaning up because of beaurocratic nonsense.
Meanwhile a hurricane is on the way, probably not a direct hit, but close enough to postpone cleanup efforts for a while.
This is a foreign flagged ship and the union protectionism of the Jones Act prevails and is still in force. Foreign flagged ships are excluded from operating US-port to US_port or in inter-waterway to port operations.
The Obama machine weights all decisions based upon how it impacts the chosen winners. Winners are thus planned by those that know best. Gulf of Mexico residents and workers are not yet in the winner column — Unions are.
Ding, ding, ding, ding. I think we have a winner.
Novel Idea here-maybe:
FL or AL or MS or LA (ot all of them together?) should BUY the thing, flag it US and proceed to operate-damn the torpedoes(federales), full speed ahead...
Then, sell the oil, use the proceeds to pay the bills. Kinda like a business would do.....
I wonder what one of those things costs . . .
From the Oil Drum...
The "skimmer" 'A Whale' has cleared Key West- what a beast.
http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/default.aspx?oldmmsi=636014465&zoom=10&...
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