Tests of Gulf oil superskimmer inconclusive: ship owner

Reuters ^ | July 5, 2010 | Mathew Bigg

[ArmstedFragg]

Tests on a supertanker adapted to skim large quantities of oily water from the surface of the Gulf of Mexico are inconclusive because of high seas, ship owner TMT Shipping Offshore said on Monday

[ArmstedFragg]

I’m trying to get an accurate schedule for the vessel. It left China late in April, finished conversion in Portugal in June, then sailed to Norfolk. If memory serves, it was tied up there for about a week.

Incidentally, this is the first test with actual oil. The tests in Portugal were done with fire foam.

[TigersEye]

I may be wrong about how soon it could have been here. I’m suffering a little fatigue with the number of things that have been blocked or delayed due to bureaucratic red tape and territoriality. Norfolk seems a little out of the way just to run it through the Coast Guard checks. How many days did that stop delay it if from entering the Gulf?

[ArmstedFragg]

In another one of those gullible media things: they’ve been reporting this thing passed its tests in Portugal with flying colors. Apparently, few of them asked the question that would occur to most of us, namely, who the hell would intentionally put oil into a clean section of ocean to test whether a never-before-tried process works? The answer is, “no one”. They used fire foam. A perfectly good solution, but as a consequence, one of the reasons for the much-decried testing is to find out if the thing works with actual petroleum.

[ArmstedFragg]

I’m thinking it was there for about a week. And, yeah, all those other missed opportunities tend to run together. The Dutch boom ships were a good example.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

A Whale Trials - Youtube of Coast Guard flyover of the Trial

Note the boom on one side.

Unclear as to the function...perhaps to concentrate oil?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From July 6...

Youtube of Deep Water Horizon site activity and also A-Whale trials

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From July 2:

HC-130 Overflight of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill -searching for oil

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

It looks small out there...see above Youtubes.

[Marine_Uncle]

Checked out the three Utube links you referred to.
So it appears as of today the whale is not quite scooping up as much oil as had been hoped for. I wonder if they had it run through a thick slick.
If I remember correctly. The EPA put a restraint on it based on it's ability to skim then return less then 15ppm parts of oil/water ratio back to the sea. As many suggest. It be far better to let it just get as much of the surface oil up as possible within it's swaths then allow for the much lower concerntration of water/oil to simply degrade by natural processes, eg. microbs.
Meanwhile the surface waves will increase in size. What a botched up operation this whole affair has been.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just found this :

Amazing Photos Of U.S. Coast Guard Helicopters In Action In The Gulf Of Mexico

I'll include the first of the series.....

Image: United States Coast GuardGULF OF MEXICO - A member of the Coast Guard flying a mission over the Gulf of Mexico July 4 overlooks the "A Whale," an enormous vessel that was recently deployed to assist with collecting product from the Mississippi Canyon oil spill site. This Taiwanese ship is 10 stories high and as longer than three football fields, and its manufacturer claims it is capable of skimming more than 21 million gallons of oil everyday. U.S. Army photo photo by Spc. Stephanie Cassinos.

[ArrogantBustard]

"Well, these people don't have backgrounds in real world problem-solving".

Barry Hussein's experienc in "problem solving" comes down to talking and protesting.

Real work is beyond his capacity.

Encouraging young folks to "get into government" as a career choice is doing them a huge disservice, and voting for folks (like Barry Hussein) who do it is astonishingly foolish.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Good photo of the A-Whale in action:

Image:

United States Coast Guard

GULF OF MEXICO - The vessel "A Whale" conducts a shakedown voyage to evaluate its oil skimming capabilities on open water as part of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill response July 4, 2010. The converted tank ship is being evaluated by its owner, TMT, to gauge the effectiveness of its oil recovery systems. The ship was recently converted in Lisbon, Portugal, in June with the hope that it could dramatically increase the amount of oil recovered from the BP oil spill. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

*******************************************

Looks to me like the boom is to help calm the water on the left side of the ship and the skimmed water is coming out on the right side......

Except this photo doesn't have the boom...on the left side...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Later photos show a boom on the left side.

[ArmstedFragg]

I think we’re seeing part of the evolutionary process. The MSM was claiming the slots on the starboard bow sucked up oil, which seems to be disproved by the photo which shows they’re outlets, not to mention the fact that they’re well above the waterline. I think they may be running into the same situation as the Costner machine, namely the incredibly low petroleum to sea water ratio that you’re dealing with if you just try to cruise through and injest everything in sight. The solution that’s working for his macine is for the skimmers to corral and concentrate oil, then for his machine to come into play. Could be they’re trying something similar here. The waves are supposed to calm down tonight, things may be better in the morning.

You kind of get the feeling from those other photos that it’s inhale port, exhale starboard, huh? There was also one where it looked like they’d ballasted it down to port.

[ArmstedFragg]

Same old error on the caption. If it was capable of skimming up 21 million gallons of oil a day, it could skim up every drop released since April by this time next week. It’s 21 million gallons of water. The MSM has been making that mistake consistently, and I don’t know whether it’s hype, an attempt to pad their story, wishful/magical thinking, or just sheer stupidity. It’s sure not giving the public an accurate picture.

[Marine_Uncle]

Almost everything I read has some damn catch, is proven to be false, or distorted or otherwise regarding this whole mess.
As I type I feel a real need to consider how should I say calming my thought train....hold on a minute.....
OK. I am back with a very cold twelve ounce can of Coors Extra Gold lager.
Click....glug.. ahhhhh. Click.... cig lit. OK. Now where where we. Why do I get the impression the whale is going to turn out to be less then useful in it's trial run(s).
At least in my case I was given to believe it would cut through swaths of thick oil and allow it to suck up all in it's path then turn around say a few miles and come back and do same over and over again, like pushing a vacuum cleaner across a carpet more less.
But one only has to view the many shots of the sea surface to see there is no huge thick slicks of oil, but patches that quickly move about due to local wind conditions moving waves a given way.
The whale would have to cover thousands of square miles worth of area and most probably miss 90% of the oil that continues to be dispersed into local patches.
Perhaps I have been mislead into understanding what level of oil slick was being formed. Plus the dispercents obviously lower the oil's vicosity further preventing an even layer of thick oil from forming on the sea's surface.
I sense this effort is one in futility. And BP will have to pick up the tab, probably knowing the whale taint going to do what it was claimed to be able to do in this particular scenario. I am open to corrections.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Well...the important question...

How did you develop such a liking of that

Colorado Kool Aid?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I've been seriously distracted ...we had a rocking and rolling earthquake out here a little before 5:00 PST!!

See :

Magnitude 5.9 - SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Near Salton Sea--Palm Springs

[Marine_Uncle]

My younger bro many years back introduced it to me. Currently, 15 bucks for thirty cans. I’m on the cheap of lately.

[ArmstedFragg]

You’re right about being mislead about the nature of the spill. The media has been agressively misreporting that since the beginning. If you recognize that their template for the story has been “biggest disaster ever, that would really be easy to fix if the mean, incompetent capitalists just wanted to”, then you’ll note that almost every piece of reporting they’re doing is in service of that mantra.

The Costner machine’s a good example. They never explained that they hadn’t been built yet, that the prototype was on the other side of the country, that just sticking a hose in the gulf and just flipping a switch isn’t the answer, etc. So they ignored all the details, pretended it was an instant solution, then complained because it wasn’t in use yet. Now that two of them are running and more being built, and the Gulf hasn’t instantly gotten better, they’ve moved onto the next “magic solution”. Meanwhile, the Costner machines are apparently proving to be a useful adjunct to the effort.

Some of the other examples were the dead sea turtles that turned out to have nothing to do with the spill, the stories about all the gulf’s bird life dying at the point where they had five oiled pelicans, the tar balls that turned out to be from some other source, etc. It’s all great theatre, it holds the attention of the audience, and it fits their template. It just doesn’t provide a true picture of the nature of the spill and the efforts.

Since this thing started, I’ve either watched or read most of the news conferences. When you see the source material, then see the reporting the next day, you wonder if the reporter watched the same thing you did.

Spill size estimates are another good example. Since the first day BP has said the figures were guestimates and shouldn’t be relied on, yet they’ve been reported as gospil. Then, when there was finally the opportunity to get some scientific estimate, the top of the range has been reported, but not the bottom. It’s just been horribly hyped, Katrina style, and the moment the next crisis comes along this’ll be dropped and you’ll see little reporting on what the actual truth turns out to be.

So, A-Whale fit their “simple solution” mantra, and when it doesn’t prove to be and doesn’t clean the Gulf in 7 days, they’ll move on to the next one. The CG, and BP, in the meantime will figure out what it does do well, whether it can be integrated into the effort, and if so, how. If they get it working, count on the first reports to include lots of sniffing about “how long it took”.