A former Shell Oil executive told FastCompany.com that a solution to cleaning up the Gulf Coast Oil spill is right under BP’s noses. John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell Oil, and Nick Pozzi, a former pipeline engineering and operations project manager say that BP could use their very own supertankers to suck up the spilled oil in the gulf and possibly salvage it for sale down the line. The tactic was proven effective during a Saudi spill in the 90’s — it sucked up 85% of the renegade oil. BP has tankers already sitting in the Gulf of Mexico, so we’re thinking, with their tactics failing left and right, why don’t they get on this already?
NPR reported today that the spill is most likely gushing 10 times — possibly even 14 times — as much oil as previously thought, which would already put the spill in first place over the Exxon Valdez disaster. Hofmeister and Pozzi have been trying to get in touch with BP executives and persons in the Obama administration to present their genius idea to those in charge of the cleanup. They’ve been repeatedly turned away, and, once, a lawsuit was even threatened. Hofmeister thinks BP is turning a blind eye to their solution because they don’t want to tie up their supertankers in the cleanup efforts.
more:
http://inhabitat.com/2010/05/14/gulf-spill-solution-could-be-supertankers-bp-wont-listen/The Secret, 700-Million-Gallon Oil Fix That Worked — and Might Save the GulfThere's a potential solution to the Gulf oil spill that neither BP, nor the federal government, nor anyone — save a couple intuitive engineers — seems willing to try. As The Politics Blog reported on Tuesday in an interview with former Shell Oil president John Hofmeister, the untapped solution involves using empty supertankers to suck the spill off the surface, treat and discharge the contaminated water, and either salvage or destroy the slick.
Hofmeister had been briefed on the strategy by a Houston-based environmental disaster expert named Nick Pozzi, who has used the same solution on several large spills during almost two decades of experience in the Middle East — who says that it could be deployed easily and should be, immediately, to protect the Gulf Coast. That it hasn't even been considered yet is, Pozzi thinks, owing to cost considerations, or because there's no clear chain of authority by which to get valuable ideas in the right hands. But with BP's latest four-pronged plan remaining unproven, and estimates of company liability already reaching the tens of billions of dollars (and counting), supertankers start to look like a bargain.
The suck-and-salvage technique was developed in desperation across the Arabian Gulf following a spill of mammoth proportions — 700 million gallons — that has until now gone unreported, as Saudi Arabia is a closed society, and its oil company, Saudi Aramco, remains owned by the House of Saud. But in 1993 and into '94, with four leaking tankers and two gushing wells, the royal family had an environmental disaster nearly sixty-five times the size of Exxon Valdez on its hands, and it desperately needed a solution.
Read more:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/gulf-oil-spill-supertankers-051310#ixzz0nv1GL8zY
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
