Avertible catastrophe,environmental rules blocked Dutch spill-cleanup technology

How U.S. labour and ­environmental rules blocked Dutch spill-cleanup technology

Read more: opinion.financialpost.com...

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 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.

If this doesn't make you anxious nothing will.

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.

Read more: opinion.financialpost.com...


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.

Unbelievable,

Another example of the bureaucracy at work,
www.wdsu.com...

Get the pencil pushers out of the way and let people get to work.

There are organs of the federal government, run from the swamps in the District of Columbia, that are not interested in the environment. Notable among them are the Legislative Branch, the Judicial Branch, and finally the Executive Branch.

There many concerned INDIVIDUALS who can and will make a difference. The clean up will be done by individuals. The profits will be taken by BP and the feds.

The feds are there to ensure profits for BP. BP is there to enrich the Board of Directors of BP.

American citizens, "the small people" as we have been described by the Chairman of the Board of BP, we will be responsible for the clean up. American citizens will clean the poop from the rear end of the Chairman of the Board of BP and we will thank him for it.

Originally posted by DucTape
Another example of the bureaucracy at work,
www.wdsu.com...

Get the pencil pushers out of the way and let people get to work.

That is the kind of person I am, in my small little world, I always grab the bull by the horns and take charge.

It is so frustrating to sit back and watch this.

yep total agree with you...perhaps the in the american vieuw secrety about the spill is moore important than the cleanup...
wat a waist of time...

whole world knows that all the US tech. is stolen from the world...no need to invest self in development...

reply to post by Stormdancer777


it wasnt necessarily the "government" that said thanks but no thanks..........It was Obama directly.......ive posted about this many many many times and i think people just read over it.


he could have pulled the Jones Act, immediately following the disaster, but he decided to turn down the offers, and not just THIS offer, many many many others......

None of this oil had to reach shores ANYWHERE, we could have saved a lot of lost shoreline and sea life.......

I say if Mr.Obama wants to go after BP in suit.............then the American People need to file civil suit against Obama for Criminal Negligence, since he had the direct power to make sure every cleanup and control effort was implemented.

reply to post by ManBehindTheMask


Would pulling the jones act have been sufficient to do everything you are suggesting?

Is that truly the only thing stopping the Government from 'doing' anything?

reply to post by ManBehindTheMask

It was Obama directly.......ive posted about this many many many times and i think people just read over it.


he could have pulled the Jones Act, immediately following the disaster, but he decided to turn down the offers, and not just THIS offer, many many many others....

Directly from Obama, I didn't know that, thank you.

Originally posted by Stormdancer777


That is the kind of person I am, in my small little world, I always grab the bull by the horns and take charge.

It is so frustrating to sit back and watch this.

There are people like you all over the country and world who take charge and get it done, But that wont work within the government/corporate paradigm.
Here's an example from my own back yard pajamasmedia.com...
This guy took a risk to try and help and is being ignored. I bet if he was a large campaign contributor he wouldn't have the problems hes having.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Any specific links and quotes to support this?

Or just opinion?

And is the Jones act the only thing in the way?

Originally posted by DucTape

Originally posted by Stormdancer777


That is the kind of person I am, in my small little world, I always grab the bull by the horns and take charge.

It is so frustrating to sit back and watch this.

There are people like you all over the country and world who take charge and get it done, But that wont work within the government/corporate paradigm.
Here's an example from my own back yard pajamasmedia.com...
This guy took a risk to try and help and is being ignored. I bet if he was a large campaign contributor he wouldn't have the problems hes having.

I agree, thanks for the link.

reply to post by DucTape


The Rainbow Rapid Response team (who did work feeding people after Katrina) are establishing a response to this for those interested in DOING...

www.facebook.com...

www.americanrainbowrapidresponse.org...

[edit on 27-6-2010 by justadood]

"We're here from the government and we're here to help you."

The Deepwater Horizon incident was an accident, either brought about by "crap happens" or by human error and corporate policies, it was still an accident. What the Obama administration has done is not an accident, but a *calculated* course of action - inaction. As such, everyone involved in the decision process should be brought up on charges. The fact that this is nary a peep in the "sea of noise" is nothing short of astounding. And the Obama administration can maintain the camouflage by keeping the public focused on BP's evil corporate greed.

Corporate greed I can understand, governmental malfeasance I cannot.

Obama’s Drilling Moratorium a Sop to Unions?

June 26, 2010 |

-By Warner Todd Huston

The president of the Seafarers International Union’s Gulf Coast District, Dean Corgey, recently penned an op ed in which he noted an interesting fact: deepwater oil drilling rigs are “100 percent non-union.” With this in mind one of union bought president Barack Obama’s major decisions — in fact, one of his few actual decisions — in the BP Oil mess was to shut down the very oil rigs that unions have been trying to organize for decades with a six-month moratorium.

Naturally, as is evident by Corgey’s op ed, unions are claiming the whole BP incident is a result of non-union workers and with Obama trying to shut down these platforms he lends credence to the union claims. Unions are sure to try and use the moratorium as a reason to convince skeptics against organizing workers of deepwater rigs.

But unions or no, Obama’s moratorium will potentially cause 120,000 jobs to be lost in the Gulf area just when the economy of the Gulf states is at its worst.

Because of the economic hit, several Texas congressmen immediately introduced a bill to lift the offshore oil drilling moratorium as a jobs savings measure. Representative Pete Olson (R, TX) and other area congressmen joined together to prevent the job loss.

In introducing the bill, Olson and Vitter both pointed to the fact that offshore drilling provides 30 percent of all U.S. oil production; is the second largest source of revenue to the federal government at $6 billion annually and has a direct employment of 150,000 individuals.

Olson made a salient point in his remarks to the press. “We don’t shut down the entire airline industry while NTSB investigates a plane crash and we shouldn’t do the equivalent to the energy industry,” he said.

In the meantime, federal judge Martin L.C. Feldman issued an injunction to block Obama’s moratorium on offshore drilling. Judge Feldman held that Obama’s administration failed to prove that the offshore drilling poses an imminent danger. “…the federal government has been pressed by what happened on the Deepwater Horizon,” Feldman said, “into an otherwise sweeping confirmation that all Gulf deepwater drilling activities put us all in a universal threat of irreparable harm.”

www.publiusforum.com...

[edit on 063030p://bSunday2010 by Stormdancer777]

Analysis: Doing nothing might have been best for oil spill
Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent
LONDON
Mon Jun 28, 2010 5:21pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - It might have been better for the environment to have done nothing about the enormous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico except to keep the oil out at sea, British scientists said on Monday.

Marine biology and environmental experts said they feared the aggressive cleanup operation, during which oil has been set alight and oil-dispersing chemicals have been dumped into the sea, might be more damaging than the oil itself.
www.reuters.com...
Previous experience suggests that containing the oil out at sea but otherwise leaving it alone to disperse and evaporate naturally is better in the long run but is regarded as politically unacceptable, they said.

"One of the problems with this spill is that it has gone from the environmental arena into the economic and political arena, so if you ask how bad it is, that depends on which perspective you're coming from," said Martin Preston, an expert in marine pollution, earth and ocean sciences from Britain's Liverpool University.

"The chemically cleaned up areas have taken the longest to recover and they are still damaged," Boxall said. "The areas that were left alone actually recovered much quicker."