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U.S. hesitant to accept Dutch oil clean-up tech
Bert Groothuisen of the dredging company Van Oord. He stands in front of a point showing his company's plan for a sand dune or berm to protect the Louisiana coast from oil.
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Kai Ryssdal: While BP ponders its dwindling fortunes, the cleanup in the Gulf continues. There are still plenty of questions about the U.S. response to the leak -- down along the Gulf Coast, in Washington and in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands. Nobody manages water as well as the Dutch do. Hardly surprising when more than 40 percent of the country's below sea level. They've been building dykes and pumping out flood plains for centuries now. In Rotterdam, an enormous oil shipping port, the Dutch would have developed one of the most sophisticated oil spill recovery programs on the planet. Expertise the U.S. has yet to tap into.
From Rotterdam, Stephen Beard reports.
Stephen Beard: Some companies do very well in wake of a disaster, like the Kampers marine construction firm. It makes the so-called "sweeping arm oil skimmer."
Gerbert Kampers: Thanks to the world's largest oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we are now at top production levels.
Gerbert Kampers says he is building three pairs of sweeping arms a week to send to the Gulf. That's how many he usually makes in a year. They cost half a million each, so Gerbert is glad to get the extra business. But he says the U.S. would have been better off if his skimmers had been deployed at the outset.
Kampers: If they had sweeping arm systems around from day one, these sweeping arms would have been able to sweep up close to 100 percent of the oil that came out. It's a matter of scale.
Within days of the Deepwater Horizon blowing up, the Dutch government offered to send some of its sweeping arms to the Gulf. Initially, the offer was rebuffed. One reason -- because of the way the skimmer works.
Sound of motor
The arm sucks up huge quantities of oily water fast, separates it, stores the oil on the ship and then drains the remaining water into the sea. But that breaks U.S. pollution rules.
Wierd Koops represents the Dutch oil spill recovery industry.
Wierd Koops: We say, we should recover as much oil as possible in as short time as possible. The Americans say, we should recover pure oil and not drain water, which has been polluted by a small quantity of oil. And we say, that is incredible, that is crazy. That is so stupid.
Because, he says, the U.S. allowed tons of chemical dispersant to be pumped into the Gulf instead. Koops claims the whole fiasco demonstrates a fundamental flaw in the American approach.
Koops: In the U.S., the company who is polluting is responsible for the oil spill response and I think that is, as well, crazy.
He says BP opted at first to disperse and burn the slick, the cheapest and least effective method. In Europe, that would not happen, because governments immediately take charge when there's a spill.
Koops: This is absolutely crucial, because government has the equipment, government can take action immediately and not worry about getting the money back. They send help immediately, because they know the polluter will always pay at the end.
BP has already set up a $20 billion fund to pay for the Gulf of Mexico spill. Some Dutch companies say the U.S. is determined to ensure that only American firms profit from that fund.
Ad for Van Oord: Van Oord, specialists in marine and civil projects.
Van Oord based in Rotterdam is one of the world's biggest dredging companies. It offered to build a massive sand dune or berm to protect Louisiana's marshlands from the oil. The company was rebuffed. American contractors are now working on the berm.
Bert Groothuisen of Van Oord is not impressed with their work.
Bert Groothuisen: The top width is 20 foot. Only.
Beard: And that's too little in your view?
Groothuisen: We had 300 foot. That's the sort of difference.
Beard: You think their dune, their berm, is not going to stand up to the tide?
Groothuisen: Definitely not. One little storm and the berm is gone.
Groothuisen believes that his company's plan was rejected out of pure protectionism. And that other offers of Dutch help were rejected out of misplaced American pride.
Groothuisen: What are you doing? Do you have a problem, don't you have a problem? We believe they have a problem with millions of liters of oil floating around. So clean the bloody mess! Yeah? Get all the help all the help you can get!
Although miffed, the Dutch say they're not entirely surprised by the U.S. rejection. It's happened before following the Exxon Valdez oil tanker accident in 1989. A Dutch team flew in to Alaska to offer their help. They were told they weren't needed and should go home.
In Rotterdam, this is Stephen Beard for Marketplace.
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The piece about the Dutch approach to oil cleanup was terrific. It brought a fresh perspective to the oil spill. I felt that this was a refreshing departure from most of the news we hear about the oil spill, which is a re-hash of the same perspective. I found it particularly revealing that the US rejected the Dutch system because it returns a small amount of slightly polluted water to the environment, which is in violation of our laws.
I'd like to see discussions of:
* What can we do as citizens to prevent future oil spills?
* If we all drove 40 mpg passenger cars would we need deep water drilling?
* If we were to boycott BP would that improve the situation?
* At one point it was reported that fishermen and others were not getting reimbursed for their losses because they didn't file taxes in prior years, so they have no way to prove their normal income. What is the status of this dilemma?
* Did BP's blowout prevention system differ from the industry norm, or did they just get very unlucky? In other words, should we expect well blowouts from other wells and other companies?
Ben G, My main point was that all of the articles I read about foreign countries offering assistance are written as if they are volunteering their services. I have no idea whether or not this company has any expertise in the field or not, perhaps you are familiar with this company? One last thing: I keep hearing how the Dutch are such experts in oil spill clean up. Perhaps they, and we, should concentrate their efforts on not spilling the stuff in the first place. Just a thought.
I was bemused to hear a completely unchallanged claim from the Dutch company Van Oort that a giant sand dune would save the Gulf of Mexico. When I lived in Holland, also known as the Low Lands, the country had almost no wetlands left. It did have canals. But instead of wetlands, it has performed a feat of amazing engineering and will, and buffered all its ocean coasts with huge sand dunes. It's true, these dunes have worked for Holland. But Louisiana is not a land of tulips and canals. Instead, the wetlands in Louisiana are critical to that state's ecology and economy. As NPR stories have frequently pointed out, it's reasonable to assume that creating a new barrier off the Louisiana shore would increase the power and destruction of powerful winds and tides, and destroy even more of Louisiana's wetlands. You do need to provide some context to the company's claims.
This was an oil-company problem, and the Republicans I know wanted the government to stay out of it in the beginning (as they want in everything else, too). I'm sure if they'd thought we were actually paying another government's contractors to help us out, that would have raised a big stink, too. What surprises me most in media coverage is the lack of coverage of government regulation of drilling in other parts of the world. For example, a petroleum engineer who just returned from Denmark said this spill would never have happened there because of the regulations in place. Here, we have been very loose on our regulations (no doubt due to loose campaign-finance laws, too) for at least the past decade.
Candidate Obama: "...There have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive (toward Europe)." Yep. And nothing's changed. South Louisiana is my home and the EPA's culpability in polluting our Gulf with toxic dispersants is criminal. We will have no idea for years to come what they have wrought out of arrogance and sheer incompetence.
Tom Walker,
Whether or not this is a case of corporate "sour grapes", as you put it, is beside the point. Yes, these are Dutch companies trying to make money by offering their services and expertise to help mitigate an environmental catastrophe on our shores. But as the story points out, they were rejected for quite unsound reasons. Their "sour grapes" are entirely justified, and we will suffer as a result of their rejection.
It struck me how ridiculous it was to allow BP to dump toxic (arsenic-containing) dispersant at depths where it never had been used before, never mind in the quantities BP used, and to set fire to the oil on the surface, pumping tons of carbon and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Now we hear that the Dutch equipment, which removed nearly 100% of the oil from the water it cleaned, couldn't be used because it released a small percentage back? Great idea! Leave 100% of the oil on the surface of the water instead of some fraction of a percent, and then set fire to that oil. What wonderful environmental stewardship!
Yup, Costner with a C, of course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4eSqSu2hWk
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