BP Gulf Disaster -- Avertible Catastrophe from the Financial Post

This is the most detail we have seen about the offer from the Dutch. You can add 'Why didn't we take them up on their offer?' to the questions we have been asking. Why does the US Government not want the help of the Dutch? They have the expertise we don't have but yet are turned away because according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) they don't meet their standards.

We have a massive amount of oil about to hit our coasts and the nitwits at the EPA don't want minute particles of oil pumped back into the Gulf with the water as the oil is skimmed into ships. The EPA is allowing the oil to harm our beaches and marshes so what kind of Environmental Protection group of people are they? Looks like they are in bed with the Cap and Trade and global warming crowd so heavily they will not acknowledge an environmental disaster that is happening in the Gulf due to THEIR stringent regulations.

President George W. Bush was one of the best conservation Presidents we have ever had with his initiatives on clean skies and clean water but yet the media and the environmentalists routinely attacked him. He did more for the environment than the EPA will ever do as they are narrow minded in their enforcement of regulations that make no sense.

Give me a conservationist any day of the week over an environmentalist. You will have a better environment without all the garbage out of the environmentalist who are willing to burn tires to prove a point which pollutes the air. They have zero common sense. Look what happened in Montreal -- a lot of these people also declare themselves part of the Global Warming movement but yet set fires.

Republicans for years have cared about conservation of our natural resources and when they can, they use green products that in a lot instances clean better without damage the environment in which we live and much better for allergies. Democrat Progressives on the other hand want to micro manage everything to obtain more and more power. The Progressives see the environment as a candidate for complete takeover to further their socialist agenda.

We fail to see how this Progressive mentality of the EPA is helping the environment of the Gulf as we are facing an ecological disaster thanks their inept, stubborn attitude about what constitutes a hazard in the Gulf. We believe the amount of oil this Administration has allowed to spill in the Gulf unchecked as they dilly dally around with their 'pristine' regulations will cause much more harm than releasing minute particles of oil back in the Gulf.

If Obama expects his charade of caring about the Gulf to make a difference, he is mistaken. Not allowing the Dutch and other countries to help skim off the oil shows the real truth about how Obama will lie, cheat, and steal to get Cap and Trade passed. He is already allowing an explosion on an oil rig to harm the Gulf to get his way. He is not going to get his way and while he is stonewalling fixes in the Gulf, more and more Americans are getting fed up with Obama, his entire Administration and the Democrat controlled congress.

Avertible Catastrophe

Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post · Saturday, Jun. 26, 2010

Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality.

The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. "Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour," Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.

To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn't capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana's marshlands with sand barriers. One Dutch research institute specializing in deltas, coastal areas and rivers, in fact, developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks.

The Dutch know how to handle maritime emergencies. In the event of an oil spill, The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company's expense. "If there's a country that's experienced with building dikes and managing water, it's the Netherlands," says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston.

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.

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- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers.

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