Ponce
4th June 2010, 04:25 PM
Remember that the Coast Guard is working for BP so that who ever represents BP will be given the order as to how much they really want to do.
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Coast Guard Forms Panel for Ideas to Mop Up Oil Spill. (Update2)
By Pat Wechsler
June 4 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Coast Guard is creating a panel to look into proposed technologies and products to clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, concerned that BP Plc’s multistage suggestion box system isn’t working.
The new group will evaluate ideas that deal with detecting oil in the ocean, cleaning it up and restoring the environment, said Commander Howard Wright, a Coast Guard spokesman. The panel will be independent of BP’s online efforts to assess ideas. The spill is leaking an estimated 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf each day, a government panel said.
The decision follows a report by Bloomberg News that London-based BP has so far tested only four of almost 35,000 ideas submitted and implemented none. The panel will bring proposals that may have the fastest impact on the spill to the immediate attention of the government response team headed by Admiral Thad Allen that is handling the disaster, Wright said.
“There has been a lot of concern that there are significant ideas not getting full voice,†Wright said today in a telephone interview. “The government wanted to make sure that all the best technology is being applied and there was good oversight of that process.â€
The new group will include representatives from the Coast Guard, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Interior, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture, Wright said.
April 20 Explosion
The spill was caused by an April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, which London-based BP leases from Switzerland’s Transocean Ltd. The blast killed 11.
The Interagency Alternative Technology Assessment Program, as the new group is being called, today will put out a request for proposals from companies, scientists and engineers. The ideas must be summarized in six pages. Wright said the government will be looking for “significant rigor and a significant amount of validation with these proposals.â€
BP’s effort asked for a 200-word description of a proposed solution. BP didn’t have an immediate comment on the government’s panel, said company spokesman Mark Proegler.
The new panel will be aided by scientists and engineers at the Coast Guard’s Research Development, Testing and Evaluation Program. A representative from the Coast Guard’s research development center will be on site when the panel meets to take ideas of “immediate benefit,†particularly involving cleaning up the spill, directly to the incident command, Wright said.
Latest Ideas
“We wanted to keep the interagency group plugged in to the command to make sure we are using the latest ideas,†he said.
While BP is responsible for stopping the flow, its failure to do so after seven weeks has prompted the government to make more demands and seek its own solutions. Allen in recent days ordered BP to pay for the construction of six barrier islands as buffers to keep as much oil as possible away from fragile coastal marshes and wetlands.
The EPA also met with 20 scientists and movie director James Cameron on June 1 in search of potential methods to cap off the oil gushing from the damaged well. Cameron was invited because of his work with underwater remote vehicles for the filming of the 1997 movie “Titanic.â€
“This is something that has to be dealt with immediately, not sometime later,†President Barack Obama said May 28.
Ideas to BP
The ideas that have been submitted to BP range from soaking up the oil with human hair to oil-eating microbes to blasting the well closed with nuclear weapons, and while many of them are duplicative, unworkable or even dangerous, about 800 have been categorized as feasible and may be tested.
Impact Services Inc. submitted a proposal not long after the spill to BP to use a clay-based, nontoxic product it manufactures that binds crude into soft pancakes that can be skimmed off the water’s surface, said Greg Broda, executive vice president of the Oak Ridge, Tennessee-based company. A pound of the product, called Pristine Sea, can soak up about a gallon of oil and costs $5.
The company received a form letter from the oil company on May 29 saying the product was deemed feasible and moved forward in the review process, though it wasn’t approved for testing. Pristine Sea was developed by Lockheed Martin and Louisiana State University almost two decades ago.
“We’ll pursue this governmental group,†Broda said of the panel. “It can’t hurt.â€
Four Stages
BP set up a four-stage evaluation system that involves dozens of engineers from within the company and some hired on a contract basis. Proposals are reviewed to see if they are feasible and then whether they are proven to work.
One of the four technologies to move forward is centrifuge equipment, an example of which was developed by actor-director Kevin Costner. The machines built by Ocean Therapy Solutions Inc., a company owned by the “Waterworld†and “Dances with Wolves†star and his scientist brother Dan, use barge-based turbines to spin as much as 200 gallons of water a minute in such a way that oil is separated out.
Costner introduced the centrifuges at an offshore technology conference 10 years ago, where several of the BP executives working on the spill now were in attendance. After some preliminary testing on land, the centrifuges were given the go-ahead to test in open water this week.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aNMo4Z.q7uCI
=================================================
Coast Guard Forms Panel for Ideas to Mop Up Oil Spill. (Update2)
By Pat Wechsler
June 4 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Coast Guard is creating a panel to look into proposed technologies and products to clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, concerned that BP Plc’s multistage suggestion box system isn’t working.
The new group will evaluate ideas that deal with detecting oil in the ocean, cleaning it up and restoring the environment, said Commander Howard Wright, a Coast Guard spokesman. The panel will be independent of BP’s online efforts to assess ideas. The spill is leaking an estimated 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf each day, a government panel said.
The decision follows a report by Bloomberg News that London-based BP has so far tested only four of almost 35,000 ideas submitted and implemented none. The panel will bring proposals that may have the fastest impact on the spill to the immediate attention of the government response team headed by Admiral Thad Allen that is handling the disaster, Wright said.
“There has been a lot of concern that there are significant ideas not getting full voice,†Wright said today in a telephone interview. “The government wanted to make sure that all the best technology is being applied and there was good oversight of that process.â€
The new group will include representatives from the Coast Guard, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Interior, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture, Wright said.
April 20 Explosion
The spill was caused by an April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, which London-based BP leases from Switzerland’s Transocean Ltd. The blast killed 11.
The Interagency Alternative Technology Assessment Program, as the new group is being called, today will put out a request for proposals from companies, scientists and engineers. The ideas must be summarized in six pages. Wright said the government will be looking for “significant rigor and a significant amount of validation with these proposals.â€
BP’s effort asked for a 200-word description of a proposed solution. BP didn’t have an immediate comment on the government’s panel, said company spokesman Mark Proegler.
The new panel will be aided by scientists and engineers at the Coast Guard’s Research Development, Testing and Evaluation Program. A representative from the Coast Guard’s research development center will be on site when the panel meets to take ideas of “immediate benefit,†particularly involving cleaning up the spill, directly to the incident command, Wright said.
Latest Ideas
“We wanted to keep the interagency group plugged in to the command to make sure we are using the latest ideas,†he said.
While BP is responsible for stopping the flow, its failure to do so after seven weeks has prompted the government to make more demands and seek its own solutions. Allen in recent days ordered BP to pay for the construction of six barrier islands as buffers to keep as much oil as possible away from fragile coastal marshes and wetlands.
The EPA also met with 20 scientists and movie director James Cameron on June 1 in search of potential methods to cap off the oil gushing from the damaged well. Cameron was invited because of his work with underwater remote vehicles for the filming of the 1997 movie “Titanic.â€
“This is something that has to be dealt with immediately, not sometime later,†President Barack Obama said May 28.
Ideas to BP
The ideas that have been submitted to BP range from soaking up the oil with human hair to oil-eating microbes to blasting the well closed with nuclear weapons, and while many of them are duplicative, unworkable or even dangerous, about 800 have been categorized as feasible and may be tested.
Impact Services Inc. submitted a proposal not long after the spill to BP to use a clay-based, nontoxic product it manufactures that binds crude into soft pancakes that can be skimmed off the water’s surface, said Greg Broda, executive vice president of the Oak Ridge, Tennessee-based company. A pound of the product, called Pristine Sea, can soak up about a gallon of oil and costs $5.
The company received a form letter from the oil company on May 29 saying the product was deemed feasible and moved forward in the review process, though it wasn’t approved for testing. Pristine Sea was developed by Lockheed Martin and Louisiana State University almost two decades ago.
“We’ll pursue this governmental group,†Broda said of the panel. “It can’t hurt.â€
Four Stages
BP set up a four-stage evaluation system that involves dozens of engineers from within the company and some hired on a contract basis. Proposals are reviewed to see if they are feasible and then whether they are proven to work.
One of the four technologies to move forward is centrifuge equipment, an example of which was developed by actor-director Kevin Costner. The machines built by Ocean Therapy Solutions Inc., a company owned by the “Waterworld†and “Dances with Wolves†star and his scientist brother Dan, use barge-based turbines to spin as much as 200 gallons of water a minute in such a way that oil is separated out.
Costner introduced the centrifuges at an offshore technology conference 10 years ago, where several of the BP executives working on the spill now were in attendance. After some preliminary testing on land, the centrifuges were given the go-ahead to test in open water this week.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aNMo4Z.q7uCI