'A Whale' Too Big To Clean Gulf Oil Spill

NEW ORLEANS — A giant oil skimmer brought in from Portugal is too big to be used in the Gulf cleanup effort.

The Taiwanese vessel "A Whale" was deployed last week along the oil-slicked Gulf Coast. But it's been determined the skimmer didn't collect enough oil.

The U.S. Coast Guard says it was too big to maneuver around the smaller patches and ribbons of oil on the water.

Smaller, more agile vessels have been more useful in getting at the oil.

Nearly 33 million gallons of an oil-water mix have been recovered.

Comments

[Jeff Burns]

09:13 PM on 07/22/2010

Despite these findings, I still believe completely that bigger is better. It segues nicely into my support for building a giant FEMA-bot.

[Greg Robertson Osh]

12:23 PM on 07/20/2010

Did anyone ever question whether or not the dispersant used by BP might have an effect on the ability of the vessels being able to do the job they were supposed to do?

[rbenjamin]

09:11 AM on 07/20/2010

The A Whale saga clearly illustrates two things. First, there are very few reporters with any significant scientific or engineering training and/or or experience. They are incapable of critical evaluation so they parrot what they are told. Second, the American Public is highly credulous and another sucker is born every few seconds. Sad, and we ought to be worried.

[Telemachus]

05:29 PM on 07/19/2010

Here's an aerial view of the scene. Will someone please explain how precise maneuvering would be required here?

http://history.the-environmentalist.org/2010/06/shocking-aerial-footage-reveals-scope.html

[whitebeach]

12:46 AM on 07/20/2010

Don't worry, "precise maneuvering" will never be a concern with this ship. The thing takes more than a mile just to stop. This, among other things, means that smaller but much more efficient vessels must stay well out of its way while it slogs along slurping up a few gallons of oil and water. (You may have noticed quite a number of these vessels in the footage at your link.)

Were you perhaps one of those big fans of the Whale who thought it would be a magic bullet? Sorry. The ship doesn't work in the prevailing conditions. End of story.

[rbenjamin]

09:03 AM on 07/20/2010

Here is some aerial footage of A Whale underway and collecting oil. The resolution isn't all that good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiLX_GAG41M&feature=player_embedded

You can see it's passing through a lot more water than oil. It's moving very slowly, very little bow wave or wake. Quite a bit of swell too, which didn't help. A net tender on the port bow is deploying what looks like collection boom to act as a kind of "scoop." It's not very effective, you can see most of the surface oil is passing over or under the net.

[Telemachus]

11:36 AM on 07/20/2010

Thanks for the clarification. A magic bullet would be nice, but at this point I'd settle for pretty much anything that could get even remotely close to the target.

[rbenjamin]

08:47 AM on 07/20/2010

Precise maneuvering is largely a red herring. There were always three issues working against the Whale.First, oil on the surface is floating in ribbons, not as a uniform film. Second, the oil blob is huge, thousands of square miles. Third, the Whale is a decanting system, not a skimmer. It can only work efficiently if gobbles mostly oil mixed with a bit of water. It would work best in a very thick and continuous film of oil - nothing like what is happening in the Gulf. Under real world conditions the Whale was collecting small amounts of oil in a very large volume of sea water. The result was terrible efficiency, end of story.

[PlayTOE]

11:53 AM on 07/19/2010

Hmmm ... was this big skimmer deployed on the outer edges of the leak where it would be at a disadvantage, or in the central patch where maneuvering would not be an issue? Curious.

[whitebeach]

12:11 PM on 07/19/2010

Since there are dozens and dozens of boats around the immediate rig site, and thousands of vessels working the spill overall, not to mention hundreds of other rigs in the general area, maneuverability would always be an issue for a behemoth like this one, no matter where it was deployed.

[Telemachus]

05:25 PM on 07/19/2010

The slick is the size of West Virginia, for crying out loud!

[MelFamy]

10:33 AM on 07/19/2010

Isn't this the largest oil spill since 1979? If 'A Whale' is unsuited for this job, what would be the magnitude of a spill where it WAS useful? Hamlet, there is nothing rotten in Denmark, the wind is blowing from a different direction.

[whitebeach]

12:29 PM on 07/19/2010

It might work with heavy (rather than light) crude in a fairly confined area of very calm water. None of this applies to the Gulf. Several posters here who are knowledgeable about ships and oil pointed out from the beginning that this vessel was unlikely to accomplish much in the prevailing circumstances. They were proved right. That's really all there is to it.

[holyghostie]

09:57 AM on 07/19/2010

The dispersants made this an impractical solution.

[dfranz]

09:48 AM on 07/19/2010

Everything about the cleanup is a failure. Perhaps they now wish they had spent a little on improving techniques. Between the dispersants which simply turns the oil to the consistancy of a milkshake and impossible to remove to the booms that haven't been improved since 1979 and don't work if there are waves of any kind, it's been like watching someone try to empty a swimming pool with an eyedropper.

[jcwtts1]

10:06 AM on 07/19/2010

The right was killing Obama for not trying this. He told them, thad allen told them, everyone told them it wouldn't work. It didn't cost us anything but time to give it a shot. We had to try it and everything.

[whitebeach]

12:19 PM on 07/19/2010

Actually a very good argument could be made that the containment/cleanup effort has been pretty successful, given the magnitude of the oil flow, and that the use of dispersants has contributed a great deal to this relative success. Beach closings have been very few, and beach pollution limited. The Louisiana marshes have taken a hit, but at the outset of this disaster almost anyone would have predicted (and many people did) a much more massive effect on these areas. Time will tell, but it seems to me awfuly early to write the cleanup off as a failure.

[Telemachus]

05:26 PM on 07/19/2010

Watch this, then get back to us with the good news ...

http://history.the-environmentalist.org/2010/06/shocking-aerial-footage-reveals-scope.html

[Sundialsvc4]

09:38 AM on 07/19/2010

There are, ahem, just a few wee small problems here. In no particular order...

(1) "33 million gallons of an oil/water mix?" Cool. How much of that "mix" is actually oil, and how much of it is just water?

(1a) "Oil and water do not 'mix.'" If they are "mixed," I detect the influence of highly toxic "dispersants," which just might have made the problem much worse by distributing the stuff throughout the ocean instead of letting it float to the top.

(2) This oil is escaping about a mile underwater. It's icy cold down there; so cold that methane turns into crystals. (Yeah, we're talkin' THAT cold.) And guess what happens to oil? It DOESN'T float to the surface! Not most of it, anyway. It's cold and thick, read "dense," and it stays underwater for a long time. But it DOES wander toward the Gulf Stream. What will that farm-boy oil think "when it sees Paree?"

[jcwtts1]

10:08 AM on 07/19/2010

Way more water than oil is my guess

by the time people realized the dispersant was simply a way of keeping it off the surface so the media didn't take a collect panic attack it was too late.

right about where this is headed. I'm more worried about what will it say when it sees, NC and SC and VA and DE and NJ and NY.

[Brutus76]

09:34 AM on 07/19/2010

Too big to fail???

[Doing the right thing]

09:30 AM on 07/19/2010

Just the existence of this vessel is scary; are oil spills so rampant and common that this ship is necessary?

[lib4life19]

09:53 AM on 07/19/2010

They modified an existing tanker at the beginning of this spill for this. The owner of the ship did it on his own. He was hoping to help.

[american-dolt]

09:20 AM on 07/19/2010

Well it won't work if you use Corexit, using Corexit to hide the problem will haunt the Gulf for decades. Thanks BP you damn Pigs.

[OldsRokkit]

08:38 AM on 07/19/2010

Now, we're playing politics on whether or not to reopen the well. BP doesn't want to open the well for fear they will be blamed for the resulting avalanche of oil into the Gulf. Obama's people are afraid if it's not open, THEY will be blamed for the oil seepage on and possible damage to the sea floor. Typical. http://www.gulfoilcam.info

[Ravyn]

09:13 AM on 07/19/2010

What's truly amazing is watching how BP keeps out-manipulating the government, disobeying orders, running circles around them as they try to minimize their liability and the government appears to be powerless to stop them. BP buries oil on beaches under sand instead of cleaning it up; BP tries to censor the news and the government not only lets them but sometimes helps them with law officials confronting reporters and threatening them with arrest as if this were China, not the U.S.

Don't think government has to worry about seepage because if this thing is as bad as some scientists and BP-workers report, it be doing more than seeping from the sea bed or the sea bed will erupt from the build-up up of the methane gas. BP will get full blame for this one if it happens but that might be of little consolation.

[suzc]

09:42 AM on 07/19/2010

This is no different than Exxon Mobil running rings around the "govt" (Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers mostly) in Valdez, while making things much much much much worse and not caring that thousands have died from their toxins and the herring have still not rebounded over 20 years later. BP was of course a killer back then too; they owned a chunk of Aleyska which also lied and lied and lied to the people of that area, and then poisoned them, illegally, for years.

The consequences? Exxon is the richest corp in the world and BP is #5 or so. Lying, killing, cheating, defrauding, polluting, destroying, all pays so well!

[DK in MS]

04:19 PM on 07/19/2010

I don't see how wanting the well fixed correctly without damaging the floor bed at the same time is an attempt to diffuse blame.

When I change a tire, I don't put all 4 lugs on because I am trying to avoid blame if my tire falls off. I am trying to keep my tire from falling off in the first place.

[macracan]

08:11 AM on 07/19/2010

So now the spill isn't big enough?

[StephenJK]

08:07 AM on 07/19/2010

The bigger they are, the harder they fail. Just like our financial industries.

That one is for you JWB....

LOL