Idea Re: Gulf of Mexico Oil Leak & Kevin Costner's Oil Water Separator Machines

[John]

I'm sure everyone already knows about the major oil leak going on the Gulf of Mexico. This idea is about how Kevin Costner might proceed in helping to clean up the mess with his oil / water separating machines.

Kevin Costner has mentioned that twenty of his V20 machines would have been able to clean up 90% of the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez within a week.

Quote below from the following Kevin Costner interview: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Broadcast/...ry?id=10916445

"If 20 of my V20s [machines] would have been at the Exxon Valdez, 90 percent of that oil would have been cleaned up within the week," he said, referring to one of the models of the oil separators.

The Exxon Valdez spilled 250,000 barrels, so that would be 225,000 barrels recovered & cleaned out of the ocean. This works out to 11,250 barrels per V20 per week or approx 1,600 barrels per V20 per day.

I've recently read that the GoM oil leak is something to the tune of 50,000 barrels daily. Nobody can know for absolute certain, but we'll use 50,000 barrels in this scenario.

At a rate of 50,000 barrels of oil being leaked into the Gulf of Mexico per day, that would take 32 of Kevin Costner's V20 oil separating machines to basically keep up with the amount that is leaking. (32, interestingly, just happens to be the exact number that BP is purchasing.) Just for good measure, let's add a few additional to make it a total of 35 to keep up with oil leaking into the Gulf.

That pretty much keeps us at par with the oil leaking out. But what about all the oil since the spill started? That's 57 days worth of oil at 50,000 barrels per day = 2,850,000 barrels.

Doubling the number of oil water separating machines to 70 would take how ever many days since the spill started to clean-up the excess IF all that oil stayed in one place, which it isn't.

This is another problem. The ocean currents move all this oil around. All the dispersant which has been used makes this even more likely.

So we have 35 V20 oil separators being used at the source of the leaks to clean as much of the leaking oil out of the water as possible.

For the other 2,850,000 barrels that have already leaked into the Gulf of Mexico, I say BP plunks down enough coin to buy another 200 or so of the units.

200 units would remove 320,000 barrels of oil per day and clean up the excess oil in 9 days, if used at peak capacity and if all the oil was basically in one place. We know they will not run at peak capacity 24/7, but even if at 25% capacity would clean up another 80,000 barrels per day and take just over 35 days to clean up the excess oil.

Add to that, maybe every town requesting assistance from BP should receive one or several of these V20 oil cleanup units as well. The concept with that is they can try to block the oil forever, but this won't be over until the oil is either cleaned out of the water or it spreads / dilutes around enough that it's no longer as much of a direct threat.

So, to recap:
35 units at the source to keep par with the current spill flow
200 units to clean up the already existing mess

The total cost for the units, $117.5 million ($500,000 each).

117.5 million dollars is chump change for BP. They need to be doing this ASAP!


To make this even more interesting....

BP and/or the U.S. government ought to make Kevin Costner the following offer: $100 for every barrel of oil that Costner's company can remove / clean out of the Gulf of Mexico.

That would be $285 million for cleaning up the 2,850,000 barrels of oil in the Gulf + another $5 million per day cleaning out the oil from the active leak.

$100 per barrel or even a few hundred per barrel would be a great way for BP to limit their cleanup expense. And they only pay for oil that is removed/recovered.

And if BP drags their feet on this... the U.S. government should step in, take care of business and send BP the bill. Even if the U.S. gov has to pay, what is a few hundred million to the government? They hand out billions to nearly any other country that asks for it like it was candy. Surely the U.S. can muster up even a fraction of what we give to other countries in order to cleanup this oil mess.

Kevin Costner's "Costner Industries" website, as far as I know, is http://www.cincmfg.com/ On that site you can see photos and read a bit about this oil/water separating technology that his company has developed.

[MrToad]

Hey John,
As of now (fingers crossed) the well is temporarily plugged, and hopefully it will soon be permanently plugged. But there is still a HUGE mess to clean up.
A while ago, I read that BP did some preliminary testing of Costner's machines and were impressed enough to order 20 or 30 of them... but I haven't read anything about them since. Maybe all the press has been on the leak and not the clean up, but now can change to focusing on the clean up. I hope they are working...
I also read that the massive "A Whale" skimmer/tanker was a flop.