6.27.2010

The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

Most infuriating thing I've read today: Avertible Catastrophe

In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct
to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American
reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with "Thanks
but no thanks," remarked Visser, despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch
equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer --the Dutch
government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S.
refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would
come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had
also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with
superior expertise and equipment --unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of
Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S.
counterparts.

Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy
companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically,
the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The
voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of
oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of
nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S.
regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at
least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they
are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in
charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, "We
have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water--the oil has to be
decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on
that." In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf,
requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where
they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls "crazy."

The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP
spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only partly.
Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted
the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And
rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming
equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to
allow U.S. crews to be trained.

A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berns. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work. "Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands," he says,
perplexed that the U.S. government could be so focussed on side issues with the
entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance.


Unbelievable. And that's why the Obama administration is being faced with their very own Katrina, or perhaps more accurately, their very own Iranian hostage crisis.