[StBernard] How the Government Slowed Down the Gulf Cleanup

Westley Annis westley at da-parish.com
Wed Jun 23 23:45:43 EDT 2010


How the Government Slowed Down the Gulf Cleanup
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 03:31 PM
By: Ernest Istook

Our own government has quietly admitted that America needs foreign help to
handle the oil spill — almost two months after pushing that help away.

Far more oil could have been intercepted before it fouled the Gulf Coast. So
why hasn’t our government apologized?

By refusing foreign assistance, we banned both the latest technology and
cleanup vessels that far exceed the capacity of America’s oil spill response
vessels (OSRVs). We rejected ships with 10 times the capability of the
vessels we used instead.

In a quiet announcement on June 18, the Federal On-Scene Coordinator (FOSC)
finally agreed that we need help, describing a conclusion reached two days
before:

“. . . the FOSC, in coordination with other federal agencies, determined on
June 16, 2010, pursuant to 46 U.S.C. §55113, that there are an insufficient
number of specialized oil skimming vessels in the U.S. to keep pace with the
unprecedented levels of oil discharges in the Gulf of Mexico. Based upon
this determination, foreign specialized skimming vessels may be deployed to
response operations.”

Technically, the Jones Act remains unwaived and continues to restrict use of
foreign vessels other than OSRV’s. Officials invoked only a limited
exemption that was put into law after Hurricane Katrina.

By their delay, our bureaucracy and government regulation have made a
horrible situation even worse. There were two weeks between the April 20
explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and the time when the first oil made
landfall. And it was almost six additional weeks before specialized
equipment from overseas was approved by our government for limited use.

The Dutch formally offered help on April 25. Not until June 14 did the U.S.
State Department announce that some foreign help would be welcomed from the
17 nations who had been trying to assist.

We violated a basic rule of oil spills: “The key to avoiding catastrophic
damage and extreme liability is a fast response.”

So what’s different about the foreign equipment that at long last is being
deployed? Capacity, for one. They can do far more and do it more quickly.

To protect the North Sea — a major petroleum-producing area — Europe created
cooperatives such as Norway’s Norwegian Clean Seas Association for Operating
Companies (NOFO), assembling resources that far surpass America’s.

The largest American OSRV I’ve found has only a 4,000-barrel capacity.
Compare that to Norway’s new cleanup standards, which state, “An active
effort must always be made to achieve the largest possible tank capacity.
Under no circumstances must the tank capacity for storage of recovered oil
be less than 1,500 m³.” 1,500 cubic meters is 9,400 barrels. None of our
U.S. oil recovery vessels appear to come even close to this standard.

The European Union maintains a multi-faceted inventory of OSRVs. The
Netherlands alone lists 11 ships that exceed this 9,400-barrel capacity,
including vessels like the Geopotes 14 that reportedly can pick up and
contain 47,000 barrels at a time. That’s 10 times larger than any U.S. ship
we’ve been using.

Collecting more oil in each run enables more time spent collecting oil and
less time carrying oil back to a storage facility.

There’s another problem with how U.S. regulations are slowing down the
cleanup. The Dutch are now providing skimmers that can be attached to
American vessels. But because most of what’s skimmed is unavoidably water,
not oil, they complain that America’s EPA standards won’t let them put back
the water. Thus their tanks fill up with a mixture that is mostly water.

That mix is a serious problem. The Incident Commander, Coast Guard Admiral
Thad Allen, told the media 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 percent or 15 percent on that.”

That means 85 percent to 90 percent of what is collected is water, not oil.
If complaints are correct, then unless vessels can separate these at sea and
discharge the water, most of what they haul back to a storage facility is
water. That means six or seven trips to carry one full load of skimmed oil.
Complaints are that our EPA says discharged water from the skimming cannot
exceed 15 ppm (parts per million) of oil.

Radio Netherlands reported:

“The Americans don’t have spill response vessels with skimmers because their
environment regulations do not allow it. With the Dutch method, seawater is
sucked up with the oil by the skimmer. The oil is stored in the tanker and
the superfluous water is pumped overboard. But the water does contain some
oil residue, and that is too much according to U.S. environment regulations.

“Wierd Koops [head of the Dutch consortium, Spill Response Group Holland]
thinks the U.S. approach is nonsense, because otherwise you would have to
store the surplus seawater in the tanks as well.

“[Says Koops], “We say no, you have to get as much oil as possible into the
storage tanks and as little water as possible. So we pump the water, which
contains drops of oil, back overboard.”

“U.S. regulations are contradictory, Mr. Koops stresses. Pumping water back
into the sea with oil residue is not allowed.”

He is not alone in criticizing America’s restrictions on the cleanup
efforts. Several Democrats in Congress have joined the calls to get our
bureaucracy out of the way.

Rep. Corinne Brown, D-Fla., said at a hearing, "We are in emergency mode; we
need skimmers . . . There are small boats, I guess, but we need the big
ones. I understand they are available in other countries."

We indeed need the big cleanup ships that America must get from overseas.
Who knows how many livelihoods — and how much of the environment — would
have been spared if our government had not drug its bureaucratic feet and
invited them two months ago?

BP has apologized. And still must be held accountable. But where’s the
apology from our government — and the accountability?

Ernest Istook served 14 years as a U.S. congressman and is now a
distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation.




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