Do you really think that there will not be a tropical storm in the gulf this season - predicted to be one of the worst on record???? I think they do have a plan, and that's to clean up as much of the oil BEFORE it gets to the shore. Perhaps it's more efficient and productive to just use boats to collect the stuff rather than try to build a wall that probably won't stand and has it's only environmental impact. I think it's a massive effort, and sometimes simply throwing more workers at that effort isn't going to help.
I was thinking hurricane, and there is no guarantee that one will be anywhere near Louisianna. Florida is a different case.
I think that there might be a shortage of specific EQUIPMENT, not manpower, that may be offered from other countries.
If they go down, they go down. I think the problem for some is where the dredging was being done to take the material. So what are they worried about, changing the tidal flow? Oysters losing a home that would otherwise get an oil-based paint make-over?
how many scientists have siad that doing this would help? Bobby Jindhal isn't a an expert, and in fact, there's an article showing he goes against the advice of the local experts as well. He's not even listening to his own people.
Dutch skimmers, and the supposed reasons are laughable; EPA water discharge rules. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/25/obama-bureaucracy-soils-the-gulf/ ...and an intersting blog discussing the Jones Act, and the EPA's water discharge rules... http://patterico.com/2010/06/26/oil-skimmers-and-the-jones-act/
Scientists? Engineers? Environmentalists? Who has the authority, and which article are you referring to?
The local experts are probably as clueless as everyone else. They are trying to do something which has never been done before. They're guess is probably better then the average person, but I doubt they know how to fix it. The problem appears to be they screwed up initially and didn't do it slowly etc. Now they are in trouble.
more on the Dutch skimmers and the Jones Act: [rquoter]Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality. The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. "Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour," Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill. To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn't capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana's marshlands with sand barriers. One Dutch research institute specializing in deltas, coastal areas and rivers, in fact, developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks. The Dutch know how to handle maritime emergencies. In the event of an oil spill, The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company's expense. "If there's a country that's experienced with building dikes and managing water, it's the Netherlands," says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston. In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with "Thanks but no thanks," remarked Visser, despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer --the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment --unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S. counterparts. Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico. When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, "We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water--the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that." In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls "crazy." The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only partly. Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained. A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berns. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work. "Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands," he says, perplexed that the U.S. government could be so focussed on side issues with the entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance. Then again, perhaps he should not be all that perplexed at the American tolerance for turning an accident into a catastrophe. When the Exxon Valdez oil tanker accident occurred off the coast of Alaska in 1989, a Dutch team with clean-up equipment flew in to Anchorage airport to offer their help. To their amazement, they were rebuffed and told to go home with their equipment. The Exxon Valdez became the biggest oil spill disaster in U.S. history--until the BP Gulf spill. - Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers. Read more: http://www.financialpost.com/Avertible+catastrophe/3203808/story.html#ixzz0sAiGni3O[/rquoter]
I mentioned the Dutch somewhere around here not long after this happened. Why we didn't grad hold of their offer to help with both hands is a mystery. From a week and a half ago: Steffy: U.S. and BP slow to accept Dutch expertise By LOREN STEFFY Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle June 8, 2010, 10:13PM Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help. It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands. The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,'” said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston. Now, almost seven weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the Gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered. U.S. ships are being outfitted this week with four pairs of the skimming booms airlifted from the Netherlands and should be deployed within days. Each pair can process 5 million gallons of water a day, removing 20,000 tons of oil and sludge. At that rate, how much more oil could have been removed from the Gulf during the past month? The uncoordinated response to an offer of assistance has become characteristic of this disaster's response. Too often, BP and the government don't seem to know what the other is doing, and the response has seemed too slow and too confused. Federal law has also hampered the assistance. The Jones Act, the maritime law that requires all goods be carried in U.S. waters by U.S.-flagged ships, has prevented Dutch ships with spill-fighting equipment from entering U.S. coastal areas. “What's wrong with accepting outside help?” Visser asked. “If there's a country that's experienced with building dikes and managing water, it's the Netherlands.” Even if, three days after the rig exploded, it seemed as if the Dutch equipment and expertise wasn't needed, wouldn't it have been better to accept it, to err on the side of having too many resources available rather than not enough? BP has been inundated with well-intentioned cleanup suggestions, but the Dutch offer was different. It came through official channels, from a government offering to share its demonstrated expertise. Many in the U.S., including the president, have expressed frustration with the handling of the cleanup. In the Netherlands, the response would have been different, Visser said. There, the government owns the cleanup equipment, including the skimmers now being deployed in the Gulf. “If there's a spill in the Netherlands, we give the oil companies 12 hours to react,” he said. If the response is inadequate or the companies are unprepared, the government takes over and sends the companies the bill. While the skimmers should soon be in use, the plan for building sand barriers remains more uncertain. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal supports the idea, and the Coast Guard has tentatively approved the pro-ject. One of the proposals being considered was developed by the Dutch marine contractor Van Oord and Deltares, a Dutch research institute that specializes in environmental issues in deltas, coastal areas and rivers. They have a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks. That proposal, like the offer for skimmers, was rebuffed but later accepted by the government. BP has begun paying about $360 million to cover the costs. Once again, though, the Jones Act may be getting in the way. American dredging companies, which lack the dike-building expertise of the Dutch, want to do the work themselves, Visser said. “We don't want to take over, but we have the equipment,” he said. While he battles the bureaucracy, the people of Louisiana suffer, their livelihoods in jeopardy from the onslaught of oil. “Let's forget about politics; let's get it done,” Visser said. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/7043272.html
quick question, what makes the dutch experts in this. I understand they say have these ships, have they ever been used?
it's not a mystery. it's politics, plain and simple, and an ideologue w/ no crisis management experience at the helm.
While I could have looked up a lot of things on Google, here's a quick idea of what they can do and why they can do it from a guy at the San Francisco Chronicle. I'll add that my significant other has many Dutch relatives (her mother came here as a teenager in the 1930's), I've been to the country many times (before and after I met her), and have been to museums, viewed dikes, huge moveable flood barriers, something we could have used at New Orleans before Katrina (they are gigantic and an engineering wonder), taken tours. The Dutch are obsessed with this stuff, since most of their country is below sea level. Handling water is a national passion. You name it... if related to water, the Dutch know all about it. UPDATE: The U.S. Government has reconsidered a Dutch offer to supply 4 oil skimmers. These are large arms that are attached to oil tankers that pump oil and water from the surface of the ocean into the tanker. Water pumped into the tanker will settle to the bottom of the tanker and is then pumped back into the ocean to make room for more oil. Each system will collect 5,000 tons of oil each day. One ton of oil is about 7.3 barrels. 5,000 tons per day is 36,500 barrels per day. 4 skimmers have a capacity of 146,000 barrels per day. Had the US bureaucracy accepted the Dutch offer on Day 3 when it came, it is clear that a lot more oil would have been surface skimmed. The Netherlands is home to Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world's largest oil companies. The Dutch have offshore oil development and import oil in tankers. Unlike the US, the Dutch have developed rapid response systems. The Dutch system has been used successfully in smaller European spills. The Dutch offered to fly their skimmer arm systems to the Gulf 3 days after the oil spill started. The offer was apparently turned down because EPA regulations do not allow water with oil to be pumped back into the ocean. If all the oily water was retained in the tanker, the system would be as good as useless. We need to fire the inept and clueless at the Mineral Management Service but it looks like there are more than a few lurking at the EPA. The EPA approved Corexit, a dispersant banned in the UK yet they denied proven Dutch technologies. Fire whoever denied the Dutch skimmers! My FOIA request continues. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ybenjamin/detail?blogid=150&entry_id=65647
Denial of skimming equipment due to EPA water discharge rules is absurd. If ever there was a case for executive privilege, this would be one. Somebody should have taken the initiative, the authority, the common sense, or whatever the hell needs to be done, to get this crap delt with.
Shell is a Dutch company and the Dutch have been running oil wells in the North Sea. I don't know if these ships have ever been used but they have a very very long maritime tradition and lots of expertise. I haven't followed this issue in depth about the Dutch skimmers but it sounds like red tape held these up needlessly. There might have been other issues though than just politics and regulations and 3 days right after the spill started there was still a lot of questions about just how bad the spill was. My guess is that it was a combination of red tape and an impression that the spill wasn't as bad as it was that kept Dutch offer from being taken up.
