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The "A-Whale" is a S.Korean 6month old oil tanker. She has just been fitted with 12, 16-foot-long intake vents on the sides of its bow designed to skim oil off surface waters. The coversion took place in the wake of the oil spill.
After making a brief stop in Norfolk for refueling, U.S. Coast Guard inspections and an all-out publicity blitz intended to drum up public support...
Originally posted by Stormdancer777
reply to post by SKUNK2
The "A-Whale" is a S.Korean 6month old oil tanker. She has just been fitted with 12, 16-foot-long intake vents on the sides of its bow designed to skim oil off surface waters. The coversion took place in the wake of the oil spill.
That was incredible quick, yes?
Just weeks after the oil spill crisis began to unfold in the Gulf of Mexico, the French foreign minister volunteered a fleet of oil skimming boats from a French company, Ecoceane. A month later, in early June, Ecoceane Chief Executive Eric Vial met with BP and Coast Guard officials to present the idea.
skimmers-gulf-oil-spill.JPGTed Jackson, The Times-PicayuneSkimmers and prized because they are the primary means for attacking oil head-on and collecting it before it hits land.
But after that meeting, weeks went by with little contact as oil continued gushing into the Gulf. A frustrated Vial was able to get around the bureacracy last week only when his company sold nine of the oil collection boats to a private contractor in Florida, who could then put the boats to work.
Oil giant Shell was in negotiations to let BP use the Nanuq, a 300-foot oil recovery boat sitting idle in Seward, Alaska. But in recent weeks, BP declined to bring it to the Gulf.
"We are literally talking about more than a thousand skimmers that are available, but we only have 400 - if this number is correct -- at work," LeMieux said. "It is hard to believe that the response is this anemic; it is hard to believe that there is this lack of urgency or sense of purpose in getting this done."
"To respond to the crisis, whether it's BP or the U.S. government, they may have created too many administrative steps and barriers that are making the whole process much lengthier," he said.
Sens. LeMieux, Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and John Cornyn, R-Texas, have proposed legislation that would temporarily waive the Jones Act for oil spill response vessels. Although there is a Jones Act waiver process for foreign vessels during an oil spill, the law requires that the Coast Guard make a determination that "an adequate number" of U.S. oil spill response vessels "cannot be engaged to recover oil from an oil spill in or near those waters in a timely manner." And the foreign country offering the boats must agree to allow the United States similar privileges in their country.
As of last week, no Jones Act waivers had been granted. According to the joint information center for the response, six vessels involved in oil containment have applied for Jones Act waivers that are still pending.
It just shows us that the Koreans simply pulled their finger out of their arse to get some thing done....
The same cannot be said of the American government who simply just don't care.
As of last week, no Jones Act waivers had been granted. According to the joint information center for the response, six vessels involved in oil containment have applied for Jones Act waivers that are still pending.
Originally posted by CornerTech
More on topic, this vessel has arrived in the Gulf and is performing skimming operations. Its a great step ahead, and probably a model that will lead to the development of several such craft of similar capablities. That being said, it alone is too little to contain the larger amount of spill that is not reaching the surface.
The problem with this approach is ignoring the oil that is being captured by the currents and pushed away from the immediate containment area. The response of this whole disaster underlines how neutered our government has become. If its not certified by the Coast Guard, it cant go; if it doesnt meet the strict EPA guidelines, it cant do, even though oil in the water is far worse at this point; if it doesnt meet the standards of the Jones Act, it doesnt go.
We've regulated ourselves to our doom. The most powerful country on the planet, and we have to rely on the Koreans and Taiwanese to pull something out of their ass and present a solution.