EPA verdict still out on Taiwan tanker, “A Whale”

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When the heck is the media going to wake up, and start putting pressure on the O’admin and his enviro Nazi EPA and Lisa Jackson? Just as the the Costner centrifuges, and their newly finished barge have faced delays, obstruction, and limitations with EPA regulations over bilge water discharge, the converted Taiwanese tanker, “A Whale”, faces the same dilemma.

The Taiwanese-flagged former tanker named the A Whale is the length of 3 ½ football fields and stands 10 stories high. It just emerged from an extensive retrofitting to prepare it specifically for the gulf, where officials hope it will be able to suck up as much as 21 million gallons of oil-fouled water per day.

The ship looks like a typical tanker, but it takes in contaminated water through 12 vents on each side of the bow. The oil is then supposed to be separated from the water and transferred to another vessel. The water is channeled back into the sea.

But the ship has never been tested, and many questions remain about how it will operate. For instance, the seawater retains trace amounts of oil, even after filtering, so the Environmental Protection Agency will have to approve allowing the treated water back into the gulf.

“This is a no-brainer,” said Louisiana State University environmental sciences professor Ed Overton. “You’re bringing in really dirty, oily water, and you’re putting back much cleaner water.”

Yes, definitely should be a “no brainer”. But then, “no brains” is what we have when you’re dealing with agencies, appointees and a POTUS who remains anal on environmental regulations… even in the face of catastrophic events.

The EPA as an obstacle continues to be a cleverly hidden secret from the nation’s eyes. But Ms. Jackson’s powerful agency is not alone in having reservations about “A Whale” and it’s operation. Former Coast Guard officer, Dennis Bryant, also expressed skeptism.

“I don’t think the concept is that bad, but I don’t see how in this situation it’s going to be a significant player,” said Dennis Bryant, a former Coast Guard officer who worked on implementing regulations required by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 before retiring and starting a maritime consulting business in Gainesville, Fla.

“In a case like the Exxon Valdez spill, where you had a lot of oil on the surface in a confined area, a vessel like this could have gone in and sucked up a whole lot,” he said. “But in the Gulf, where the oil is pretty well dispersed over a vast area, I don’t see how it’s going to make a large dent.”

Pardon me for interjecting a snifter of common sense here, but using this large tanker at the well head to grab a majority of heavy concentration is a good start. Using the Costner barges/deepwater ships as a central clearing station, servicing the VOO skimmers further off shore (so they don’t make continuous trips back and forth to shore to empty their skimmed loads) fills another need. The goal is to do the majority of clean up at sea… a task that has proven difficult without the EPA and Coast Guard’s sign off of approvals for sundry reasons. And ultimately, both those agencies will have to give the final nod before the Taiwan tanker can perform as designed in the Gulf waters…. regulations and bureaucracy that BP has no power to bypass.

The tanker’s owner, Taiwanese shipping firm TMT Group and CEO and founder Nobu Su, ordered the tanker to be retrofitted in Portugal as a skimmer after the GOM (Gulf of Mexico) oil spill. It then immediately sailed to the Gulf, and arrived June 30th, ready for action… never waiting for a contract commitment from BP, or contacting the US regulation agencies for compliance.

It’s now deployed during a testing phase to see if it can do what TMT claims. But Michelle Wiese Bockmann, the markets editor for Lloyd’s List, smells another motive. The vessel, completed earlier this year, has had trouble lining up business. Bockmann suggests that the marketing savvy CEO may be using this as an advertising ploy.

And Michelle Wiese Bockmann, markets editor for the seafaring chronicle Lloyd’s List, speculated that TMT CEO Su, who owns 51 percent of the privately held company, may be using the attention focused on the BP disaster to publicize his new vessel.

“He likes to have an air of mystery and be seen as very influential,” she said. “And when he wants publicity, he’s very good at getting it.”

Excuse me, but so what? If the tanker does the job, it strikes me as a marketing move made in heaven. An idle tanker, an owner who took the initiative to fill a need, and relatively rapid response on the scene to boot. (taking into consideration the retrofit time, and at sea travel time to arrive in the Gulf).

Since the smaller Vessels of Opportunity (VOOs) have been sidelined since June 27th to 29th for rough weather due to Hurricane Alex, only the larger vessels have been able to stay on site with any attempts at skimming. The storm also delayed preparations for the Helix Producer’s arrival at the well site. The Helix was to be third production vessel to be hooked up to the new vertical riser, increasing production of oil collected from the well. Even today, the Helix is still besieged by too much wave action to successfully hook up to the riser. The ship has been onsite at the well since June 27th, but until the waves are three feet swells or less, connection is in pause mode.

In light of all the weather caused delays – atop the bureaucratic ones – I’d say that any vessel that can continue it’s task, especially thru the Gulf tropical summer weather, should be welcomed with open arms.

And these slowpokes in the media – only now figuring out the obstruction of EPA – ought to slam le femme Jackson and Obama up against the talking head circuit wall, and force a blanket waiver of that bilge water dischange regulation for the Deepwater Horizon clean up efforts. This is simply beyond absurdity anymore.

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No, the EPA verdict has been out for about 70 days now…

It may be overturned by public pressure, but the EPA believes that Perfect is more important than workable… even when the technology for perfect does not exist.

Their entire worldview is built around the idea that if there is enough of a mess, someone will invent that “perfect” technology.

Just as they are trying to force energy research by making standard energy too expensive to produce…

The Paralysis of Analysis

Lets worry about getting more skimmers to the gulf period, dont put all your eggs in one basket and hope for a magic bullet its going to take lots of skimmers and lots of thinks to fix this problem not a magic boat.

MataHarley, sorry that you took offense i didnt want to direct it to you specifically, but just about every website keeps pointing to this A-Whale as some “savior” that will “fix all the problems”, unfortunately its not going to be that easy, what we need to keep out eyes on is what Jindal is starting to do and that is the “total Number of skimmers.. and response capability, when and where it is”(and continuing to add more when and where needed and at the moment they are needed everywhere) concentrating on one ship and thinking that all is well is dangerous and gives a false sense of security. sorry if i came across as “curt” or “crass” I didnt intend it to be that at all, just my opinion of the situation.

“And BTW, I have mentioned this before. We do not tolerate sock puppets here…”

thats a shame that anonymous posting is not permitted, i dont have a real nickname so i change it and i dont have an email account that i want spam going to.. i will remove your website from my favorites.

JR,

Can you understand from our point of view why sock puppets are disallowed? How the hell do you carry on a conversation and get to know anyone, have a history, and build relationships if everyone were to constantly change usernames or post under “anonymous”?!

thats a shame that anonymous posting is not permitted

Just because you’re asked to pick an identifiable, consistent name, doesn’t mean you aren’t “anonymous”. We’re not asking you for your real full name, street address, city, zip code, and bio. Frankly, no one cares.

As for spam, I’ve used 2 different email accounts, and neither seems to have produced any spam (your email isn’t published on the site). Why not open a joke email account if you’re that afraid of spam? Many sites require you to register an email address anyway, especially for purchases over the internet.

obama can’t afford to allow any more cleanup activities in the Gulf. He’s milking this disaster for all it’s worth and wants it to be an even bigger mess than it is.
He thinks the bigger the crisis gets, the better chance he’ll have to get his demented cap and trade bill passed.
He’s very transparent and predictable now.

I was reading another blog – can’t remember which one – some oil guy was saying that the real blown out hole was about ten miles from where the oil is currently gushing – he said the gusher we are seeing was from the riser – said we need to remember that when the rig went down the riser – thru which the oil was going to be pumped up was 5,000 feet long? & that is what we are seeing with all the underwater cameras ………………BP is not showing the hole where the really really really big gusher is coming from – & supposedly that blow out is where the relief well is being drilled to intercept the oil….

What really makes me angry about this whole mess is this: there are millions and millions of barrels of oil connected to this well from what the experts all say – if this is true doesn’t that make a mockery of not allowing drilling either deep well or shallow well in the Gulf – this amount, if true, could very well make us less dependent upon the Middle East & the other crooks…

Also – this makes me wonder why the First Amendment was suspended by the fraud late Friday afternoon…………………………………… Who is he to suspend any amendments to the Constitution? That is not a power of the Presidency……………….

This is one more example of perfection being the enemy of the good. The EPA lives in an artificial world in DC where they make up numbers without ever having to live with the consequences in any realistic way. Further this suits the purposes of the boss — Obama — to a tee. He wants to maximize the damage of this oil spill in order to put more people out of work and make them government dependents. Thus keeping this ship from working is a further way to increase damage and serve the advancement of communism. It is in the same category as life preserver and fire extinguisher checks by the coast guard.

The obvious way to test this boat would be to put it to work. There is no way it will make the sea water more dirty than it was before, so the real question, if anybody were interested, would be, “how much good does it do?” But nobody is interested in that question. They are only interested in making sure that nothing is done at all.

Ya got to love our bureaucrats. They never admit a mistake, they are unable to adapt to face a changing crisis and when they pass rules that at times are unattainable, they cannot change and make a decision based on common sense.

So far you have posted as JR (here), and prior as Hmm, vxcvxcv, fdgdgd, sdfsdf, Obama Voter No More, dfdf, sdfsdfsd, dsfsdfhk, gdfgdfg, sdfsfsdfg, dfgdfgfdg, and hgjghjd.

Jiminy Cricket; and I thought my brother had multiple personalities Mata!

The thing with sock-puppets is you can have your other 14 aliases agreeing with you and no one will know that you are the only one agreeing with you.

10 susiepuma

Also – this makes me wonder why the First Amendment was suspended by the fraud late Friday afternoon

I am not up to date on the news I guess. Do you have a link or could you explain?

@jlfintx

Three things happened.

The Press was ordered by the Government to stay at least 65 ft away from anything having to do with the spill… ie boom, boats, birds covered in oil….

The Gov took over the spill Website which had been primarily a BP thing. They did this right after some Mayors caught the Gov lying about the spill response (particularly the number of boats helping to skim…).

Third, the Pentagon directed no one to speak to Reporters UNLESS it was cleared by the Pentagon… which of course they said was NOT about McChrystal, but somthing they had been thinking about for a long time (and if you beleive that, I got a bridge to sell ya).

👿 BO is holding the reigns on this rig, and he won’t let her go. His EPA head, Lisa Brown actually visited Pensacola for the first time yesterday. When asked if the water was safe to swim in, she gave the following brilliant observation: “I can’t tell from what I see, I don’t think testing the water would prove whether its safe or not. But no, I wouldn’t go swimming today.” Say WHAT? Testing water doesn’t prove the exisistance of pathogens or toxicity? Lord help us. Affirmative action on the march. What you get when you vote demorat.

@ Mata — thanks for the photo! It looks like it is snorting water from the anchor chain ports!

I puzzle a bit over why there would be any point to diverting a tanker of this size to this service. I’m sure it will take many days to accumulate enough oil to fill the capacity of a ship of that size, and it would seem better to have such a ship serving as a carrier rather than a skimmer. Off course, the very large size gives lots of stability and perhaps the ability to operate in very bad weather. I would think, however, that in bad weather, when the sea is very churned up, skimming operations are not terribly effective because the oil is mixed down to some depth, as opposed to close to the surface.

Anyway, it is there, and I surely would like to see it working. Obviously, Obama wants to prevent it from working because it might accomplish something useful.

DR.D: yes very good points and the hurricane season could not tilt down that ship, unless it would be full of the heavy oil one one side and less weight on water on the other side. bye 🙄

MATA: IS KEVIN COSTNER on the job now, or did he loose the contract over the TAIWAN ship?

Is the EPA saying anything about the huge amount of methane that is being burnt off? Methane is a more efficient greenhouse gas than the CO2 from burning it, so you’d think, as they are idiots, that they would be complaining. However, this methane is potentially more of a problem than the oil. This well has a very high percentage of methane. Methane is deadly, it is deadly to items in the water because it steals O2–really bad for fish. A big burst around shore could also be suffocating. Another potential problem, in theory at least, a big sudden release of methane can cause so much displacement of water in an area that a boat can sink (because the boat can’t displace enough of this lighter mix to overcome its own weight). As if that weren’t bad enough, the pressure could be forcing the methane around through rock layers and splitting them, making conditions for something like a sinkhole over the whole drill area, so the hole could suddenly get much bigger… All these methane unknowns and potential for worse disaster makes the idea of nuking the hole extra crazy, imo. We could set fire to 30 billion barrels of oil and methane (est. content of this field) in a way that might be hard to put out. Oops. 😯

That said, I don’t think the media is being kept away for safety concerns.

@MataHarley: The water being pumped out of the A Whale would be almost pure ocean water. I am guessing they pump the sucked-up oil into one of the chambers until full, switch to another chamber until it is full, and keep doing this until the last one is being filled.

The oil in the fist chamber has had time to float to the top and they pump the water from the bottom of the chamber.

Throw any amount of oil into a container with a little water in it, let it set a few minutes, then look how clear the water is.

Dr.D
The bigger the ship, the more time for the oil to rise to the top. I am guessing other tankers will be loaded from the “A Whale” so it can keep skimming.

ilovebeeswarzone
The ship is a little longer than an aircraft carrier, but rough enough seas will still put the waves over the bow of a carrier and onto the deck.

Let’s check out the reasons our King-In-Chief doesn’t want to use the “A Whale” and other devices to clean up the oil:

(1) COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
If they are an ally of the USA, they are an enemy of King Obama. You don’t want to aid your enemies so refuse help from them.

(2) WILL IT WORK?
The more oil it cleans up the sooner the crisis will be over. Keeping with the newly formed “Department Of Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste” policy, the better the devices are known to work, the less likelihood of approval. When the crisis is no longer useful, aid will be accepted.

(3) HOW MUCH DID OWNER DONATE?
The more they give, the more they get. Give and ye shall receive. All country’s currencies accepted whether it is legal to or not, so give much, and give often. When the proper amount is reached, your device will be used.

(4) HOW MUCH WILL THE DELAYS COST?
The longer the delay, the more it will cost to clean up. The more it will cost to clean up, the more we will have to borrow. The more we borrow, the less likelihood of ever paying it back. The less likelihood of paying the money back, the more likely the USA will go broke. The sooner it goes broke, the sooner King Obama gets to declare a national emergency and declare martial law. The sooner he declares martial law, the sooner he can turn the USA into his kingdom.

Do you now know why he wants a civilian police force as strong and equally funded as our military? What did Hitler call his? Obama can’t activate the Nation Guard. The governors have to do that. If he gets his civilian police force, he will be able to activate it any time he declares a national emergency.

HAVE YOU ALL WOKEN UP YET!!!!!

Smorgasbord, you seem to be a bit of a know it all. Some of what you say is information, some of it is obvious, and some of it is just insulting (HAVE YOU ALL WOKEN UP YET !!!!). Perhaps you might reconsider your tone. We would much prefer a civil discussion here.

DR.D, I think you misunderstand SMORGASBORD comment, this quote is not insulting but just a quote meaning ” YOU HEAR WHAT I’M SAYING”. HE IS ONE OF OUR GOOD GROUP. bye 🙄

Mata, I wouldn’t dismiss the sinkhole idea out of hand, because the rock is sedimentary and, we can’t see what’s going on there. It would be prudent to contemplate all side effects. I expect the oil is in a big continuous pool of oil because…it is shooting out, it is under pressure and not bound in rocks.
The part about the bubbles making ships sink is not complete speculation, it’s been modelled as an explanation for missing boats in the Bermuda Triangle, and in fact if you had something like a compressor to make enough small dispersed bubbles in the bathtub, you could try it too.
And the part about being caught in a big outgassing and getting suffocated is also a real threat. It happens in certain lakes where CO2 builds up, one in Africa for instance which regularly burps and kills shore dwellers.
I don’t know if this Gulf area is rich in clathrate hydrates; those are frozen methane blobs, stable as long as the pressure is high and the temperature low. The continental shelves of the world are covered with this slushy methane, so much that if we could recover it safely we could give up on fuel oil and live on methane forever. It’s a potential for disaster that is seldom mentioned because it would take something like major sea warming or earthquakes to release. Or maybe setting off a nuke. Who knows if the story about the Russians nuking a blowout is true, but it could work in some areas (where the melted rock would plug the hole) and not in others. I’m afraid that the idiots in charge might decide it was a good idea.

You talk like these oil clean up devices are free. Wouldn’t you fiscal responsible people like to find out if they’ll work in this application before we start paying for them?

prescienceblog.com

tadcf: hi, yes, very expansive indeed, it is why the EPA has them waiting expansivly there for
their verdict, and that is why other ship left standing there before have quit, and like MATA was mentionning which is better 100per cent spitting oil, or minimal amount left on water, the logic of it is yours and mine. bye 🙄

MATA, how long would thoses papers take for them to begin their work?. delays for everything, dont they think of that before to save waitng time,or they dont care that thoses people lose money or precious time that the GULF cleaning loose with local employees who have some indirect work
work to do when it’s start moving, the government seems to have lots of time to waist but everyone else dont. bye 🙄

MATA: sory, I was refering to thoses SkiMmERS who left after waiting so long for regulation’s okay to start. bye
that was before

MATA: hi, thoses that left for BRAZIL?, I had read, they where on stand by waiting for approval and where saying how they lose a lot of money just doing the waiting, and I read, they have decide to move to BRAZIL for work, ,was it last month around that. bye.

maybe they where called a diffrent name?

I see thank’s for correcting my error. bye

PATTER: hi, do you think that methane could be the cause of under sea volcanic eruption?

@Dr.D: I would think that the only ones who would have a problem with my, “HAVE YOU WOKEN UP YET!!!!!” comment would be the ones who haven’t WOKEN UP YET to what Obama and his libs are doing to this country.

I am not a know-it-all. In fact, I tell people that I’m not stupid, but I do admit to being exceedingly ignorant in a whole lot of areas. I went through school just to get out. When I got out I went from job to job to job…. I never did figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

I have learned more about what is going on in my country from conservative radio, TV, and blogs than a lifetime of the propaganda media. I wish I had known about them when I was growing up.

@tadcf: Maybe we could pay them by the barrel. The more it cleans up, the more they are paid. Let them go out on their own. If they don’t work, they don’t get paid. They certainly can’t do any more damage.

SMORGASBOARD: hi, ON your 45, that could apply to GOVERNMENT, in some ways of fixing the problems. bye 🙄

Bees, by definition, a volcanic eruption (undersea or otherwise) is volcanic action, lava boiling up from deep within the earth, and thus has nothing to do with subsea methane.

@ilovebeeswarzone: Someone has suggested that the politicians be paid by our Gross National Product (GNP). The better the economy does, the more they are paid. The worse it does, to lower their pay. That way they have a financial interest in how we do. I am for it, but none of the incumbents will vote for it.

DR.D: THANK you for giving me the information, I was looking for. bye 🙄

SMORGASBOARD: IT’s even a better idea than what I had in mind; WHAT I’ll do is relay this
Good idea to the government. 😉 bye, SMART PEOPLE here.

FYI Costner’s Centrifuges aren’t Coast Guard compliant, as they separate to 10,000 parts per million (ppm) or more. Costner strong-armed his way into this, but there are existent separators which separate to almost zero, cost less, are scalable and more efficient. Genoil Corp. makes them (www.genoil.com). They’re used as bilge cleaners, and have been in use for over 10 years with no repairs needed (aside from filter changes). 100 of these mounted on a super tanker could process 154,000 BARRELS per day.

INFOFORYOU: IN the mean times, WHO’s DOING THAT WORK; WHILE THE OIL IS EXPANDING?
Continue to add to the disaster each day was so precious to have started the process of KEVIN COSTNER from the beginning: THIS STANDBY behavior is unacceptable from the beginning
THERE is money involved, that is making that standby, even thow the president received
billions of dollards for investing in that process: and they will be accountable for that unseen
DISASTER. bye

DR.D: AFTER a few days, I am coming with a second question on your 47:
is it not all connected to each others naming some related things like’ the LAVA in the debt, the oil in the higher but still debt, gazes, methane, and tidal moves, and seaquake current many more that my ingnorance miss: we know that chain reactions happen if you push a DOMINO; so with what we see from the wisdom of all things created , well the undersea level and DEBT must surely exist and react to each others. bye

Bees, I’m not entirely sure I understand what you are getting at here, but I’ll try to answer.

It sounds like you are making an analogy between the national debt and the lava under the earth, saying that as lava swells up causing an undersea eruption, this is similar to our run away national debt. You then go on to try to connect this (I think) specifically to the Gulf oil spill, although you do not say so in so many words.

If I have correctly understood you, I can only say that like all analogies, this one fails because it is not complete. It does not completely represent the truth of the situation, and therefore to look at one situation and say that it is like the other is simply to mislead yourself. In this case, it is to mislead yourself pretty badly.

If I have misunderstood what you were driving at, Bees, please try again.

DR.D thank you, I was trying unsucessfuly I guess to bring a possible relation to each matter on each level of the seafloor, bye

DR.D I said “Debt” INSTEAD of THE DEEP” sorry about that.
and I did not connect to NATIONAL DEBT at all.
bye