Why Is the Gulf Cleanup So Slow?There are obvious actions to speed things up, but the government oddly resists taking them.
By PAUL H. RUBIN
Destin, Fla.
As the oil spill continues and the cleanup lags, we must begin to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions. There does not seem to be much that anyone can do to stop the spill except dig a relief well, not due until August. But the cleanup is a different story. The press and Internet are full of straightforward suggestions for easy ways of improving the cleanup, but the federal government is resisting these remedies.
First, the Environmental Protection Agency can relax restrictions on the amount of oil in discharged water, currently limited to 15 parts per million. In normal times, this rule sensibly controls the amount of pollution that can be added to relatively clean ocean water. But this is not a normal time.
Various skimmers and tankers (some of them very large) are available that could eliminate most of the oil from seawater, discharging the mostly clean water while storing the oil onboard. While this would clean vast amounts of water efficiently, the EPA is unwilling to grant a temporary waiver of its regulations.
Next, the Obama administration can waive the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from operating in U.S. coastal waters. Many foreign countries (such as the Netherlands and Belgium) have ships and technologies that would greatly advance the cleanup. So far, the U.S. has refused to waive the restrictions of this law and allow these ships to participate in the effort.
The combination of these two regulations is delaying and may even prevent the world's largest skimmer, the Taiwanese owned "A Whale," from deploying. This 10-story high ship can remove almost as much oil in a day as has been removed in total—roughly 500,000 barrels of oily water per day. The tanker is steaming towards the Gulf, hoping it will receive Coast Guard and EPA approval before it arrives.
In addition, the federal government can free American-based skimmers. Of the 2,000 skimmers in the U.S. (not subject to the Jones Act or other restrictions), only 400 have been sent to the Gulf. Federal barriers have kept the others on stations elsewhere in case of other oil spills, despite the magnitude of the current crisis. The Coast Guard and the EPA issued a joint temporary rule suspending the regulation on June 29—more than 70 days after the spill.
The Obama administration can also permit more state and local initiatives. The media endlessly report stories of county and state officials applying federal permits to perform various actions, such as building sand berms around the Louisiana coast. In some cases, they were forbidden from acting. In others there have been extensive delays in obtaining permission.
As the government fails to implement such simple and straightforward remedies, one must ask why.
One possibility is sheer incompetence. Many critics of the president are fond of pointing out that he had no administrative or executive experience before taking office. But the government is full of competent people, and the military and Coast Guard can accomplish an assigned mission. In any case, several remedies require nothing more than getting out of the way.
Another possibility is that the administration places a higher priority on interests other than the fate of the Gulf, such as placating organized labor, which vigorously defends the Jones Act.
Finally there is the most pessimistic explanation—that the oil spill may be viewed as an opportunity, the way White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said back in February 2009, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Many administration supporters are opposed to offshore oil drilling and are already employing the spill as a tool for achieving other goals. The websites of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, for example, all feature the oil spill as an argument for forbidding any further offshore drilling or for any use of fossil fuels at all. None mention the Jones Act.
To these organizations and perhaps to some in the administration, the oil spill may be a strategic justification in a larger battle. President Obama has already tried to severely limit drilling in the Gulf, using his Oval Office address on June 16 to demand that we "embrace a clean energy future." In the meantime, how about a cleaner Gulf?
Mr. Rubin, a professor of economics at Emory University, held several senior positions in the federal government in the 1980s. Since 1991 he has spent his summers on the Gulf.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575339650877...
Destin, Fla.
As the oil spill continues and the cleanup lags, we must begin to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions. There does not seem to be much that anyone can do to stop the spill except dig a relief well, not due until August. But the cleanup is a different story. The press and Internet are full of straightforward suggestions for easy ways of improving the cleanup, but the federal government is resisting these remedies.
First, the Environmental Protection Agency can relax restrictions on the amount of oil in discharged water, currently limited to 15 parts per million. In normal times, this rule sensibly controls the amount of pollution that can be added to relatively clean ocean water. But this is not a normal time.
Various skimmers and tankers (some of them very large) are available that could eliminate most of the oil from seawater, discharging the mostly clean water while storing the oil onboard. While this would clean vast amounts of water efficiently, the EPA is unwilling to grant a temporary waiver of its regulations.
Next, the Obama administration can waive the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from operating in U.S. coastal waters. Many foreign countries (such as the Netherlands and Belgium) have ships and technologies that would greatly advance the cleanup. So far, the U.S. has refused to waive the restrictions of this law and allow these ships to participate in the effort.
The combination of these two regulations is delaying and may even prevent the world's largest skimmer, the Taiwanese owned "A Whale," from deploying. This 10-story high ship can remove almost as much oil in a day as has been removed in total—roughly 500,000 barrels of oily water per day. The tanker is steaming towards the Gulf, hoping it will receive Coast Guard and EPA approval before it arrives.
In addition, the federal government can free American-based skimmers. Of the 2,000 skimmers in the U.S. (not subject to the Jones Act or other restrictions), only 400 have been sent to the Gulf. Federal barriers have kept the others on stations elsewhere in case of other oil spills, despite the magnitude of the current crisis. The Coast Guard and the EPA issued a joint temporary rule suspending the regulation on June 29—more than 70 days after the spill.
The Obama administration can also permit more state and local initiatives. The media endlessly report stories of county and state officials applying federal permits to perform various actions, such as building sand berms around the Louisiana coast. In some cases, they were forbidden from acting. In others there have been extensive delays in obtaining permission.
As the government fails to implement such simple and straightforward remedies, one must ask why.
One possibility is sheer incompetence. Many critics of the president are fond of pointing out that he had no administrative or executive experience before taking office. But the government is full of competent people, and the military and Coast Guard can accomplish an assigned mission. In any case, several remedies require nothing more than getting out of the way.
Another possibility is that the administration places a higher priority on interests other than the fate of the Gulf, such as placating organized labor, which vigorously defends the Jones Act.
Finally there is the most pessimistic explanation—that the oil spill may be viewed as an opportunity, the way White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said back in February 2009, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Many administration supporters are opposed to offshore oil drilling and are already employing the spill as a tool for achieving other goals. The websites of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, for example, all feature the oil spill as an argument for forbidding any further offshore drilling or for any use of fossil fuels at all. None mention the Jones Act.
To these organizations and perhaps to some in the administration, the oil spill may be a strategic justification in a larger battle. President Obama has already tried to severely limit drilling in the Gulf, using his Oval Office address on June 16 to demand that we "embrace a clean energy future." In the meantime, how about a cleaner Gulf?
Mr. Rubin, a professor of economics at Emory University, held several senior positions in the federal government in the 1980s. Since 1991 he has spent his summers on the Gulf.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575339650877...
Views: 40
Replies are closed for this discussion.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by sesport on -
Pipeliner - I've also seen reports of BP hiring local fishermen to do some work, but they're letting them sit idle. The fishermen interviewed were of the opinion that BP simply wanted to hire & pay them to make them feel better.
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Permalink Reply by sesport on
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Jay - I only stated what was quoted in an article that I read.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Volunteers-ready-but-left-out-apf-358...
"Rocky Ditcharo, a shrimp dock owner in Buras, La., said many fishermen hired by BP have told him that they often park their boats on the shore while they wait for word on where to go.
"They just wait because there's no direction," Ditcharo said. He said he believes BP has hired many boat captains "to show numbers."
"But they're really not doing anything," he added. He also said he suspects the company is hiring out-of-work fishermen to placate them with paychecks."
Granted, this is not necessarily a substantiated matter of fact, any more than Pipeliner's is. It is just a comment about a feeling that this man has regarding the work being done.
You should know by now that I'm not prone to making things up, I may be inaccurate at times and I welcome correction, but I don't blatantly make things up.
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Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on
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My 19 year son wants to go down and work the cleanup for BP he says that he can make $1000 per week. My advice to him was to stay here and keep your fish frying job but he replied that the fish frying job was not cool for someone out of high school. At his age I would have been down there by the end of April. This thing could be a ticking time bomb. Would you want your youngest down there?
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Permalink Reply by Stevew on
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Two Dogs ... I'm just a stepdad but I would not want my youngest down there either. However, if he chose to go I'd have a huge amount of respect for him.
This is a (hopefully) once in a lifetime chance to be involved in something much bigger than any of us singly. He will learn lessons and have stories to tell for the rest of his life. Who knows, maybe he will "make a difference".
Perhaps he could go with a buddy? I hitchhiked to Canada in 1973 with a fellow who is now a well known landman. We left Shreveport in February, hitchhiking to Canada in blizzard season. I wouldn't want my youngest doing that either, but we had a blast :)
PS: I'm on the Left Coast and not close to South Louisiana, what do you think would make the "ticking time bomb" go off? What would things look like down there? -
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Permalink Reply by sesport on
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lol, Two Dogs, sounds like your youngest apple didn't fall far from the tree?
I'm sure more than a few people around here would be concerned about their children going down to do the "dirty work." We worry about them doing many things. Ultimately, we let them "fly" and learn how to use their wings. I'm sure somebody worried about you going to some land/mineral owners to get leases, especially those who were known to keep certain kinds of dogs (except during that time of year when those dogs shed their teeth, lol).
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Permalink Reply by sesport on
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On further checking about what Mr. Rubin opines, one would find that the "A Whale" has just recently been retrofitted to operate as a skimmer. Mr. Rubin leads one to believe that the tanker has been operating as such. Also, the effectiveness of this tanker is yet unproven and nobody really knows how well it's going to work on the widely dispersed oil.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2...
Then there are Mr. Rubin's statements that begin with "One possibility..." I'm thinking Mr. Rubin has come down with a severe case of that "arrogant omnipotence" virus.
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Permalink Reply by Pipeliner on
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JULY 3, 2010
Tests Start on Giant Oil Clean-Up Vessel
Officials Hope Cargo Ship Retrofitted as Skimmer Can Accelerate Removal of Crude From Gulf; Early Trials With Fire Foam
By ANN ZIMMERMAN And BRIAN BASKIN
NEW ORLEANS—Officials began testing Friday what they hope will become the world's largest oil skimming vessel, able to gulp up huge volumes of crude spewing in the Gulf of Mexico from the well owned by BP PLC.
If successful, the ship has the potential to take in as much oil-infused water in a day as smaller skimming boats have collected in two months.
The A Whale ship, owned by Taiwanese company TMT Group, is the length of 3½ football fields and 10 stories high. It is designed to work close to the source of the spill where the oil is more concentrated. The smaller skimmers work from nearer the shore to about three to five miles out, where the oil is fairly dispersed.
"The ship is the best hope to date for an effective clean-up," said Edward Overton, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University. He was asked by TMT to inspect the ship when it was docked in Norfolk, Va., last week.
Before the ship can be pressed into service full time, it must pass certain hurdles. The ship, a cargo vessel that was retrofitted at TMT's expense to help with the spill, hasn't been tested in real-world conditions, so it is unclear whether it can effectively ingest the thin crude that is flowing from the well, said BP spokesman Scott Dean. Chemicals called dispersants used to break down the oil also make it harder for the skimmers to pick up the oil.
Unlike smaller skimming boats—mostly converted fishing boats—that bring the oily water back to shore for disposal, the A Whale is designed to separate oil from the water and then discharge cleansed water back into the sea. The vessel could collect some 500,000 barrels of oily water a day.
EPA guidelines require that the discharged water contain no more than 15 parts per million of oil—a difficult standard to meet, said Prof. Overton. The federal on-scene coordinator can exempt the discharge from the Clean Water Act standard.
In the last two months, as estimates of how much oil is escaping into the Gulf increased from 1,000 barrels to as high as 60,000 barrels a day, some local and federal elected officials have criticized the federal response—particularly the number of skimmers marshaled to the scene—as inadequate.
The A Whale, anchored on the Mississippi River in Boothville, La., Wednesday, is designed to take in and filter roughly 500,000 barrels of oily water a day. Officials hope to be able to deploy it in the Gulf oil-spill clean-up.
One deterrent to getting more skimmers to the Gulf is a federal requirement under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 that both the U.S. Navy and state jurisdictions around the country had to have a certain number of skimmers on hand in the event of an oil spill.
Earlier this week, the Coast Guard and EPA issued a temporary rule relaxing the federal skimmer requirements through December, freeing up the number of skimmers available to be used in the Gulf. But some politicians still decried how long it took to get the change approved.
"The president and his administration need to be moving heaven and Earth to get those ships there tomorrow," Sen. George LeMieux (R., Fla.) said in an interview Friday. "In fact, they should have been there 50 days ago."
The administration defended the spill clean-up efforts in a statement Friday. "…In early June we aggressively increased our focus on skimmers to combat the oil leaking from BP's well," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who heads the federal spill response team. Adm. Allen said Friday there are 550 skimmers of various sizes working in the Gulf today, up from 100 large skimmers at the beginning of June.
If the A Whale performs well, BP or the federal government could contract with TMT to work in the Gulf. TMT, a privately owned shipping company, invested tens of millions of dollars to turn the ship into a skimmer in Portugal and then sail it to the U.S. with a 32-man crew, according to Bob Grantham, project manager of TMT Offshore.
The day the Deepwater Horizon exploded, TMT CEO Nobu Su ordered the A Whale, a brand-new $160 million cargo hauler, to start sailing west from China, while he commissioned Hyundai engineers to devise a plan to covert it into a skimmer. The plans were worked out by the time the ship made it to a Portugal shipyard, where it was modified.
After water is ingested through the ship's vents, it is pumped into a series of containers, where oil rises to the top of the water over several days. The oil is then siphoned into a separate container, before being transferred to a tanker. In Portugal, the ship tested its intake process on water sprayed with fire foam, since using oil was out of the question. It proved effective, the company said. TNT has two more ships, B Whale and C Whale, that are in the process of being turned into skimming vessels.
Write to Ann Zimmerman at ann.zimmerman@wsj.com and Brian Baskin at brian.baskin@dowjones.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704699604575343230185... -
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Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on
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Also, the effectiveness of this tanker is yet unproven and nobody really knows how well it's going to work on the widely dispersed oil.
Who cares? Put it to work and see what happens. What harm can it do unless it runs down other boats, or sinks and kills its own crew? As long as it comes back to port with more oil than it left with, hasn't it made a net gain? Are they afraid that somehow the discharge water is going to contain oil mixed in that is somehow mixed and worse than the oil floating on the surface to begin with?
I'm beginning to believe that Obama IS deliberately making things worse in order to help him shut down US O&G production permanently. -
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Permalink Reply by essay on
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personally i'm tired of always being required to give this administration the benefit of the doubt.
we need action, not speeches. -
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Permalink Reply by sesport on
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Mac - If you'll reread both Pipeliner's and my articles, you'll see that the ship was sent to cross the "big pond" immediately after the explosion. I'm sure that crossing took time. Then it had to be retrofitted. More delay. It just arrived in the gulf this past Wednesday.
Now, I can't tell you what to believe, but I do believe it looks like you might be coming down with that "omnipotence" malady, too, if you're going to try to figure out what anyone is thinking. Why in the world would they want to shut down US O&G when so much depends on it, from plastic milk cartons to auto parts? It's a major part of the economy, which they're all trying to salvage at this point.
This administration didn't ask for this anymore than the previous one asked for 9/11 to happen, and we're still rethinking & revising FAA rules to this day.
At any rate, the government issued "drivers' licenses" to these guys, and they've been disregarding some common sense "rules of the road," most especially BP. To me, it's like all the drag racing that's gone on down on Clyde Fant ... time to pay the piper. But I don't think the intent is to punish everyone, the by-standers didn't violate any rules.
This is what happens when things go downhill. It happened in my profession and we're just having to suck it up & deal with it. And, yes, it has driven many out of my profession, but we're not out of business by any means, although there are those that have expressed the opinion that maybe we should be.
It's time to quit pointing fingers and to plug the spewke and clean up as much as possible. Then work on doing what can be done to restore to whatever degree possible, even if it's a fraction of what it was before.
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Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on
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I was at the red light to go North onto I-49 from Bert Kouns when this 70s model Z28 Camaro convertable pulled up next to me. He revved the engine a couple of times and it sounded pretty bad ass. The light changed and I floor boarded the go cart. He didn't have a chance. When I hit I-49 I was doing 130.
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Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on
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Now, I can't tell you what to believe, but I do believe it looks like you might be coming down with that "omnipotence" malady, too, if you're going to try to figure out what anyone is thinking.
Please stop trying to put words in my mouth. It's not a very effective style of argument and suggests that you've run out of valid arguments.
Why in the world would they want to shut down US O&G when so much depends on it, from plastic milk cartons to auto parts?
There are a lot of people, including Obama, who will freely admit that they want to eventually stop all fossil fuel use.
Direct quote from Obama, "For decades, we've talked and talked about the need to end America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again, the path forward has been blocked -- not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor."
However, it does appear that they did decide to allow the superskimmer to make at least a test run. Let's all hope it does a good job and is allowed to operate. -
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