New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) — Tests of the effectiveness of the A Whale oil skimmer in the Gulf of Mexico are inconclusive, a spokesman for the company that owns the huge converted cargo ship said Monday.
Bob Grantham of TMT Shipping Offshore said rough seas over the initial 48-hour testing period made it difficult to determine the skimming results, but he expects more typical sea conditions over coming days will allow further testing.
TMT will work with the U.S. Coast Guard during the extended testing period “to make operational and technological adjustments aimed at improving skimming effectiveness given the actual conditions we are encountering in the Gulf,” Grantham said.
Billed as the world’s largest oil skimming vessel, the A Whale spent the weekend attempting to separate crude oil from seawater in a 25-square-mile area north of the ruptured BP oil well at the heart of the Gulf disaster.
If testing is successful, the massive vessel could play a key role in efforts to clean up the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
“We will continue to work very hard to make this big solution fit to the task of the big environmental problems created by the Macondo incident,” Grantham said. “The people of the Gulf deserve nothing less.”
The ship, which swallows water with oil, then separates it, can skim about 21 million gallons of oil a day. That’s at least 250 times the amount that modified fishing vessels currently conducting skimming operations have been able to contain, according to the Taiwanese company TMT.
Meanwhile, BP said Monday that the cost of its response to the Gulf oil disaster now totals about $3.12 billion. That figure includes containment, relief well drilling, grants to Gulf states, claims paid and federal costs, the oil giant said.
A total of about 550 skimming vessels were out in the Gulf on Sunday, according to a spokeswoman for the Unified Command Joint Information Center in Houma, Louisiana. But with oil still pouring into the sea at a rate of tens of thousands of barrels a day, federal authorities closed a new section of the Gulf off Louisiana to fishing on Sunday.
The latest order from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration adds nearly 1,100 square miles of federal waters off Louisiana’s Vermilion Bay to the off-limits zone. The new closure brings the portion of the Gulf closed to fishing due to the massive BP spill off Louisiana to 33.2 percent, NOAA reported.
Vermilion Parish President Wayne Touchet said Monday the new closures will hamper local fishermen, but he expects the restrictions will be lifted soon.
“We weren’t really affected by the oil spill until now. At the beginning of the oil spill, we had some closures in state waters, in fishing and oystering areas. Those areas reopened quickly,” Touchet said.
“Now, it’s the height of shrimping season and [we] have closure in federal waters. Most of our shrimping is in near-shore waters, but they closed at 6 a.m. this morning due to the season to prevent overfishing.”
Touchet added, “The moratorium has affected us more. This closure will be temporary. There was some oil spotted 14 miles to the south of us in last couple days — because of the weather systems that came through. It changed the direction of the normal wind flow. That’s why we have some oil headed our way. It will be a very temporary thing.” (FULL STORY)
