The parallel universe we live in gets more bizarre everyday. But from the looks of things, the Horizon oil spill clean up efforts could proceed faster, and more efficiently, if the fed wouldn’t help. Ain’t it always the way? And there’s nothing like a crisis to not only highlight the inefficiency of big government, but also bring some strange bedfellow competitors out of the woodwork.
While Obama lets Biden do the shaking down of BP, aborting BP’s due process rights, at the WH/BP long overdue meeting, BP has decided to move forward with new technologies for the clean up. Technology that the feds, themselves, have hindered heretofore.
Yes, folks… the good news is that BP finished testing Costner’s “Ocean Therapy Solutions” centrifuges, revamped for the hardened and weathered crude, and has issued a letter of intent to purchase 32 centrifugal oil-and-water separators. According to the newly ramped up Ocean Therapy Solutions site’s news updates, BP started testing the centrifuges onshore May 18th. By May 29th, OTS was given the go ahead to test the centrifuge on the open Gulf waters and the oil slick itself. According to a Newsmeat blurb today: BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles called Costner direct.
“He was excited,” Costner said. “He told me that the machine worked. He told me that it was working against the dispersants, that it was handling the variations of oil mixtures and thickness present in the Gulf.”
According to the LA Times blog, linked above, rigorous testing had to be done not only by BP, but by the federal agencies, prior to their decision to acquire the centrifuges for the spill.
Deployment of the 2½-ton machines had been delayed by rigorous testing requirements of BP and federal regulatory agencies, as well as engineering challenges posed by leaked oil that had degraded over time into gooey masses with the consistency of peanut butter, Costner said.
“Our machines were originally developed to operate as first responders” to oil slicks, Costner said. He said the problems were resolved by adjusting the machines to accommodate oil that has been weathered and hardened by evaporation and dispersants.
“The machines don’t have to be tested anymore,” Costner said in a brief telephone conversation. “We’re ramping up our operations. Where they will go is not up to me. That will be decided by BP and local parishes.”~~~The machines essentially operate like big, floating vacuum cleaners, which suck up oily water and spin it around at high speed. On one side, it spits out pure oil, which can be recovered. The other side spits out 99% pure water.
The company’s largest machine is 112 inches high, weighs 2-1/2 tons and cleans 210,000 gallons a day of oily water.
As I noted in my June 11th post on the Costner brother centrifuges, the bureaucratic red tape and EPA regulations were as counter-productive to their efforts as the lack of interest by an oil industry who hadn’t seen the need for such equipment until now. Despite BP’s order, there’s not even a whisper in the reports that the EPA has waived it’s regulations, limiting oil in the waste water to more than the 15ppm. The centrifuges separate the oil, but the waste water discharge has about 1% oil in the discharge. This is the equivalent of 1.28 oz of oil residue for every gallon processed…. a vast improvement, IMHO.
Nor has OTS acknowledged whether their partnership with a UCLA engineer last year had yielded successful results in lowering the discharge levels. All of which begs the question, will the EPA turn a blind eye to the CWA violation with the discharged water?
Costner certainly gave the House committee a piece of his mind with his June 11th testimony, blasting the almost impossible battle to get past a behemoth bureaucracy.
“The whole world is watching as America fumbles its way through the greatest environmental disaster in history,” Costner told the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship at a hearing Thursday in Washington. “I believe there are other small companies out there in the private sector just like us. You should know that negotiating your way through the bureaucratic maze that currently exists is like trying to play a video game that nobody can master.”
As BP CEO Tony Heyward testified today, BP has been overwhelmed with suggestions and pitches for clean up cures and engineering ideas to cap the well. BP turned over thousands of those proposals to the Coast Guard for screening… where it’s met with another bureaucratic road block.
Rear Admiral Ronald Rabago of the U.S. Coast Guard testified that BP recently turned over the suggestions it has been collecting. The Coast Guard is now going through those thousands of proposals.
The EPA and the Coast Guard are also screening proposals coming in through their own, independent channels. But the process isn’t working so well: Of the 1,900 submissions the Coast Guard has received, only one proposal has made it to the final level of screening. None have actually been deployed.
The EPA doesn’t know if any of the ideas that came through its channel are actually in use, according to Paul Anastas, the agency’s assistant administrator of research and development. After screening the proposals, the EPA forwards the ideas to other agencies that could implement them — then never tracks what happens next.
As the big government machine chases it’s proverbial tail, we then come to the idiocy of the US Coast Guard, halting the work of 16 barges vacuuming off the shoreline of Louisiana after Jindal ordered them to work eight days ago. Why? The Coast Guard wanted to make sure the barges were equipped with life jackets and fire extinguishers…. and then had trouble contacting those who had built the barges. WTF?
Jindal, with no power to override the USCG authority, had to raise a ruckus before finally getting the USCG to relent. Over 24 hours lost work.
Alabama’s Gov. Bob Riley has his beefs as well with the chaos of the fed’s “help”….
Riley, R-Ala., asked the Coast Guard to find ocean boom tall enough to handle strong waves and protect his shoreline.
The Coast Guard went all the way to Bahrain to find it, but when it came time to deploy it?
“It was picked up and moved to Louisiana,” Riley said today.
The governor said the problem is there’s still no single person giving a “yes” or “no.” While the Gulf Coast governors have developed plans with the Coast Guard’s command center in the Gulf, things begin to shift when other agencies start weighing in, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“It’s like this huge committee down there,” Riley said, “and every decision that we try to implement, any one person on that committee has absolute veto power.”
The Governors aren’t the only local officials fed up with federal response that is hindering instead of aiding the clean up… Florida’s Okaloosa County has simply told the feds, forget you and the horse you aren’t riding in on.
Florida’s Okaloosa county is telling the federal government it will no longer take orders in responding to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a decision made in response to the county’s deep frustration with the Obama administration’s response to the spill.
The county appears to be the first local government to openly flaunt the official response to the spill. Others, such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, have complained bitterly of inaction and red tape regarding their response to the spill, but have thus far refrained from taking measures not approved by the federal or state authorities. Even Jindal, though, has become more assertive in the last day, ordering the National Guard to start building barrier islands off Lousiana’s coast.
~~~County commissioner Wayne Harris said leaders of Okaloosa County are prepared to face any consequences for their renegade response. It’s that important, he said, to protect the county’s Choctawhatchee Bay, which is “too wonderful to destroy ecologically.”
“Our frustration is we have to wait for allowance from the federal government … we decided to be our own unified command. We have to stop it before it gets here,” Harris told The Daily Caller.
It seems they have decided to erect an “air curtain” to push oil up from the depths. But with every plan they propose, the EPA is there in opposition.
Harris said federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have repeatedly opposed Okaloosa’s plans for responding to the spill.
“Some of the plans we put together, every time we turn around one of the other agencies says, ‘No, you can’t do that,’” Harris said.
Further, the government’s response is clumsy. “The Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard, the EPA all these different agencies aren’t talking to each other,” Harris said.
At one point, the Coast Guard “ran over” booms the county had put up to stop the oncoming oil, Harris said.
But just as crises make for great political agenda advances, they also make for strange bedfellows in the entrepreneurial world. Another star studded entrepreneurial crew beats the federal bushes for approval… Good luck with that, pals…
NFL’s Troy Aiken has teamed up with Jacques Cousteau’s son, and Drew Bledsoe, to peddle their oil/water filtration system, the Ecosphere Ozonix system. The pitch? It’s already in use (as is Costner’s), proven to work, and emits 100% pure water.
According to an article in the Missoulian:
The system, which takes up an entire 53-foot truck trailer, employs a combination of ozone, ultrasound and high-voltage electricity to separate oil, gas and other contaminants from water through a process known as sonoluminescence.
“The water that comes out at the end of the process is cleaner than bottled drinking water,” said Wold. “And the oil is pure enough that they can truck it up and sell it.”
The Ozonix system has already been deployed to help out in past ecological disasters. In the days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf coast in 2005, Ecosphere sent one of its Ozonix systems to Waveland, Miss. Operators stuck an intake hose into the city’s sewer system, and produced 70,000 gallons of fresh drinking water every day for area residents.
Wold said the company already has enough of the machines to completely handle the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.
“If this machine was out there right now, there would not be any continuous leakage” said Wold, noting that one Ozonix system can process more than a million gallons of contaminated water a day.
For your viewing pleasure, here’s Aiken’s interview with Shepard Smith:
Aiken’s information obviously is behind the times, as he states the “other” systems, likely referring to Costner’s high profile efforts with his oil/water separators, were not capable of handling anything but refined crude. Apparently he was unaware they had retooled, and field tested the modifications successfully. But as far as I’m concerned, the more the merrier…. how about BP gets them both? There’s lots of oil to go around, at this point. Of course, considering the speed of fed approval and testing, Costner’s centrifuges may have already done the trick by the time the Ecosphere even gets some federal agency face time.
There’s another notable difference between the Costner centrifuge and Aiken’s Ecosphere endeavors…. cash and some old fashioned horse trading. According to Chad Wold, general counsel and managing member for Ecosphere Energy Services, the Aiken technology is far from cheap. And they aren’t willing to cut any slack.
“The next step is for BP to take a serious look at what we have to offer,” said Wold. “It’s not one of these things that’s free to operate. We need BP to step up to the plate and start paying for technology to put these machines out there.”
But their bid for technology and service is at a disadvantage with Costner, who’s already intercepted the pass in the first plays of the quarter, and headed for his own goal posts. The Costner factory is tooled up and ready to ship a couple of dozen… as soon as BP cuts loose with some cash. (uh….mmmmm Maybe that $20 bil slush fund could be redirected, ya think?) Not only are Aiken and Ecosphere johnny come lately on the scene with what they tout as their superior technology, OTS and Costner appear to have worked a more appealing deal with BP…. the machines at a lower price, and the oil they recover is part of their payment.
The plans are to sell the recovered oil from their centrifuges, and donate 80% of those proceeds to the parishes, struggling to cope with fouled marshlands and devastated fisheries. Savvy business dealing all around. Get that puppy field tested for official government approval, goodwill in the market, and a machine for every tanker and rig as on site clean up emergency plans.
…… that is unless the EPA comes along and decides to shut down their operation for water discharge that exceeds EPA regs.
@Missy:
Point taken. Until I say, “Yes, I’m guilty of not being able to handle a gun when I said I could.” We then get to save the taxpayers a trial. I think my point is made well enough.
Cary, why would you believe the taxpayers pay for a trial between BP’s insurance carrier (for business interruption and damage) and claimants? Has nothing to do with the taxpayers. But it does now, considering we’ll be paying the compensation fund’s administrative costs. i.e. who do you think pays Feinberg and ilk?
@MataHarley: I don’t know what I’m not saying here. My point is that BP has agreed to take responsibility for the victims in immediate need, as is the right thing to do. No need for proof when they admit it. come on, I know you get it.
BP has always said they would take responsibility and pay out claims, Cary. No one is disputing they, or their insurance companies (depending on the types of claim and the insurance) would not be doing so. That is normally done outside of government incentive programs and either in claims processing, mitigation, or courts if there is a dispute. That’s how the process works.
What you don’t seem to get is that the O’admin decided they would step in and become the judge, jury and executioner in those claims. Perhaps you should do a bit of reading on Mr. Feinberg and his handling of Katrina and 911 claims… and his stated “vengeful philanthropy” approach. His decisions as to amounts often had to do with how he viewed the personal wealth of the claimant. This is his way of doling out social/civil justice. This is not unbiased, and is a travesty of our rule of law.
BP had no choice but to agree. This POTUS was tanking the stocks with his assault of the willing. It was put up the money and yield your due process, let his pay Czar dole out BP cash to the favored, or else the media assault of the corporation would continue relentlessly.
Beats the tar ball out of me why you can’t see this.
Let me put this to you this way, Cary. You are a victim in a 100 car pile up, driving your Government Motors car. Instead of you being able to deal with the claim with the insurance company and the party who admits they caused the pile up, Obama steps in and says that the party who caused the pile up has to open an escrow account, and now your claim is going to be handled by a government appointee who was never sanctioned by the Senate.
What if you aren’t as inviting a victim as that car in front of you, and you don’t get the bucks you feel you deserve? And by what legal authority does the government have to abscond with the guilty party’s cash, and play judge/claims adjuster? As the Rand report said in their 2005 report on the 911 Victim Compensation Fund, the only way this type of compensation fund that usurps the standard process can be viewed as legal is if it had to do with National Security. Because the government (i.e. again Feinberg) administering that 911 fund could somewhat be tied to thwarting the terrorists goal of economic chaos, it had some legitimacy.
This is not the case here. There is a private sector process for this, and this admin has no authority to do this save by threatening that corporation with the bully pulpit.
@MataHarley: BP isn’t getting a gold star from the press or the court of public opinion either way, “bullying” or none. Still, they agreed to do what was right- to take care of those in need WHO CANNOT WAIT to pay their bills and feed their families, like they said they would from the start. Perhaps there are better things to rail against Obama for.
If they agree to do this “from the start”, why was the slush fund and bullying necessary, Cary?
Short answer… it wasn’t. But it was to make the Zero look like he was doing something.
Again I will suggest you start reading about how “fast” the VCF worked in paying out 911 victims. As a matter of fact, the response workers are only now, almost 9 years later, getting to a settlement. Boy… ain’t that efficient. Remember Katrina and how they were vocal about the slow cash relief? Gee… who was in charge of that one? uh… don’t help…. oh yeah. Government and FEMA.
If you want fast recourse, the last thing you do is insert government in the middle. Get serious.
@MataHarley:
I don’t need to read anything about how people were affected by 9/11 – I was there. I worked directly across the street, at a restaurant, from the towers. Luckily, I was preparing to go on tour and wasn’t working there when it happened, and had income from the show, but many of my co-workers who were out work for many weeks received immediate assistance from the fund set up to help them. It was the only way some of the people I worked with were able to pay their rent. These were obviously government run, as the terrorists and mother nature were certainly not going to step up and help. When the show was over, I did go back to work there and had a number of co-workers who spoke of how grateful they were that the government set up the fund to help them during the time the restaurant was closed and lost business. That’s what’s real, I witnessed it with my own eyes and ears.
CARY: you should have mention, of this was PRESIDENT BUSH initiative. bye
@ilovebeeswarzone:
You’re correct Bees, as well as Congress and Mayor Guliani… all of the government.
Much of this was done with private, as well as public dollars. And government funded grants to help those in immediate need were available without delay. And this was, of course, without the responsible party taking part.
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Your mentioning how the government could help “…if the fed wouldn’t help” made me think that if I were a BP executive I would suggest that our lawyers look into suing the government for delaying the cleanup and costing BP more to clean up and compensate for. I just sent the suggestion to them over their web sight.