Dutch skimmers

A report in the Hartford Courant says that the US government is reconsidering the use of the Dutch skimmers to remove the oil from the Gulf. These skimmers vacuum up sea water and oil mixed together in the ocean and dump the mix into a tanker at the scene of the spill. After the mixture separates so that the oil floats to the surface, the water is pumped back into the ocean with about 99% of the oil removed. the process is repeated with the result that the skimmers can remove 20 thousand tons of sludge per day per unit. The skimmers offered by the Dutch at the start of the leak would have been sufficient to handle all the flow out of the well, even at the current estimate of 60,000 barrels per day.

According to the article in the Courant, the feds rejected the skimmers because they pump water mixed with some oil back into the ocean. I would like to meet the idiot who made that decision. These skimmers could remove 99% of all of the oil and leave us with only 1% to clean up. The environmental purist who made the determination that they were not adequate for use left things instead where 100% of the oil stayed in the water to foul beaches and kill wildlife instead of removing 99% so that only 1% was left to hit beaches and wildlife. this is another example of the government not being able to do anything correctly. Only a total fool would have made the decision which was the government's choice at the start of the spill.

Just think, once the government reverses itself, we will be in a situation where due to the incompetence of the Obama administration some 6 million tons of petroleum that could have been removed had someone had the sense to accept the skimmers at the start of this mess will instead have washed up on the shores, killed the fish, destroyed the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people and ... well you get the picture.