TOPIC: The tail of A-whale, as it turned "White"

Hopes that a Taiwanese-owned "super skimmer" known as "A Whale" would help with the clean-up were dashed on Friday when the Coast Guard announced that the ship collected virtually no oil during a two-week trial and would not be deployed.

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A Taiwanese-owned "super skimmer" sent to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been a bust, the U.S. Coast Guard said after tests on the ship.

"While its stature is impressive, 'A Whale' is not ideally suited to the needs of this response," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Paul Zunkunft, a federal on-scene coordinator, said in a statement late on Friday.

The vessel will not be deployed as a part of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response.

The tanker collected virtually no oil in two weeks of tests, Zunkunft said at a news briefing earlier on Friday.

"All we found in the tanks was water, so it was very ineffective," he said at the briefing.

The 1,115-foot "A Whale," an ore and oil carrier refitted for skimming, was sent by TMT Shipping Offshore to help clean up oil spewing since April 20 from BP Plc's blown-out Macondo well.

The vessel arrived the first week of July in search of a contract with BP and began undergoing tests, which were hampered at first by bad weather. Conditions have since improved, and the tests have continued.

TMT billed the ship, which skims oil through horizontal slits on its sides, as a vessel that could collect up to 500,000 barrels of contaminated water per day.

The company defended the performance of its vessel and said the large quantity of dispersants poured into the water near the source of the spill made skimming difficult.

"The particular conditions present in the Macondo spill did not afford the vessel the opportunity to recover a significant amount of oil," said a statement by Bob Grantham, spokesman for TMT Offshore.

"This is due to the highly dispersed nature of the oil in the Gulf. When dispersants are used in high volume, virtually from the point that oil leaves the well, it presents real challenges for high-volume skimming," Grantham said.

The company would continue to work with the Coast Guard to improve its technology, he said.

Zunkunft said part of the challenge for the A Whale was maneuvering a large vessel to pick up scattered patches of oil, many no larger than a kitchen table. It also was not equipped with suction but let oily water in the slits as it sailed.

"It may need a different type of oil spill, where you have thick, heavy oil that is concentrated in order to be effective," Zunkunft said.

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So, there been two different ships built to deal with this, the A-Wale which looks like it just may turn a White A-Whale, which had a lot of money dump into a retro fit to make it A-whale.....

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And there is Costner's Centrifuge-er, where here is a what a guy does when the world snickers at him, he buys the patent rights to the design of a "centrifuge", then he turns around and buy the only company that builds industrial size centrifuge's...

he then took the best of the best from that company, and retooled a ship and put the Costner's system on it, which could be looked at as a mother ship that makes the recovery system better. where as before the boomers would need to haul back to a barge to be collected which would be need to be hauled back by tugs for refinement, or the boomers would separate and set fire to what they recovered.

with the Costner's Centrifuge-er the ship stays with in the boomers, where they only need to pull along side while underway keeping the goo in the booms while it is collected, which then is ran through the system, the goo goes into collection tanks, the water is then dumped over board, because...it is just water. After the collection tanks are full the ship only needs to turn off away from the boomers long enough to transfer the oil that was collected to a larger ship.

he, Keven Costner (the actor) is having several of these ship built, as he said in an interview, if you look at this like Normandy the battle is on the beaches right now, we need to move the battle away from the beaches and battle this off shore where there is less harm being done to the ecosystem and our wild life. being mobile and capable of Tracking the slick his containment system is able to cut it off before it it reaches shore.

way to go Kevin....way to go, looks like his ships are getting the thumbs up from the CG and BP across the board.

I have been getting an enormous amount of "Anti-BP" emails, most about boycotting BP by not buying gas at their pumps...

so I kind of been doing some research into all of this and then some, and to let everybody know as of a couple of minutes ago, Alaska now has a major oil spill all so...

so, what to do, what to do. got me thinking.

1. Boycott bottled water. The comedian Lewis Black: “Try to go through this logic with me. Our country had water coming to our homes, and even if we were locked out we could still get it, clean water, and we said, no, I don’t want it to be that convenient. I want to drive and drive and drive and look for water, like my ancestors did.” The Pacific Institute estimates the U.S. uses 50 million barrels of oil a year just manufacturing the plastic bottles for bottled water. Then there’s the fuel used transporting them to the store, and the fuel people use driving them home. Hate BP and the others?

Drink tap water. Filter it if you have a filter. If you don’t have a filter, you can find specific information on the quality of your municipality’s local drinking water from the EPA. It might be perfectly safe.

2. Avoid plastics and other petrochemical products, including chemical pesticides and fertilizers. BP is a major manufacturer of secondary refinery products like acetic acid, which is used in plastics, paints, adhesives, linings for containers and coatings for paper and textiles. Hate BP and the others?

Boycott petrochemicals wherever you find them.

3. Buy bulk foods and put them in reusable bags. I know you’ve heard this before, and by now you own a canvas bag for grocery shopping, but it doesn’t always make the trip to the grocery store, does it? According to Earth First, “America uses an astounding 100 billion plastic bags per year, and it takes 12 million barrels of oil to produce them. When you add in worldwide consumption, we could save 120 million barrels of oil annually by switching to reusable bags.” Jennifer Grayson of The Red, White, and Green advises avoiding packaged foods as well: “Do you really need your pears in a plastic clamshell? Buy produce loose, choose bulk items over individually wrapped ones, and cut down on processed food purchases.” Processed foods have a higher oil footprint, you can bet, because of the energy inherent in processing.

4. Be a locavore. Locally produced food didn’t travel very far to reach you, and if it’s also organic, it wasn’t grown with fertilizers or pesticides made by the oil companies. Need help finding local food? Look for a local chapter of Slow Food USA. Or follow the advice offered to me by True/Slant’s Todd Essig: “Ask a local!”

Take a Saturday for an hour at your local farmers market.

5. Boycott aluminum cans. Every time you buy a six pack, you’re buying two of the cans from BP. The BP subsidiary Arco Aluminum is responsible for about a third of aluminum can production in the United States, as well as for sheet aluminum used in the building and automobile industries. Of course, this means four cans of every six are made by someone else, and aluminum products are among the most recycled. But if you want to withhold your dollars from BP, you can’t ignore aluminum. Maybe other aluminum-can manufacturers will learn to label their cans “Dolphin Safe.”

6. Get out of your car, and ride a bike, like an AMERICAN made bike (it sells at Wal-Mart also), yes it is a bike, but it is an electric bike that has about the best motor and designed system (TTP) that was designed by the retired Boeing CEO who said he was going to spend his retirement doing what the Wright Brothers did just the other way around, because he already made airplanes, he was going to design and build Bikes….

The EZIP Bike

The eZip Trailz Electric Bicycle is a fun full-featured bicycle with an easy-to-use electric drive system. This Electric Bicycle can go at speeds up to 15-20 mph and has range of up to 10-15 miles per charge. adding a second Battery Pack will increase the range also and the TAG system will increase the range even more, where it helps the rider in pedaling. call it the sweat investment to longer mileage, where you still pedal but only for a curtain percentage of the resistance.

I have done the research into the Ezip design and found allot of the redundancy of the gearing has been simplified into a single 7 speed gearing, versus what my personal 21 speed has that just duplicates gears, the eZip has the same ratio as mine from the "top" to the "bottom" but they just made it simpler with less unnecessary shifting.

recharging, the battery packs can be removed easily, and plugged into a home or office 110 outlet for a recharge, so during your 10 hour work day you could still fully recharge the battery's for the eZip.

So with just six easy steps, each of us by just paying attention to our spending habits, each one of us can keep our own boot heal on the throat of the inter oil industry.