Save the A-Whale

From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.  Note we’re waiting for the Coast Guard and the EPA to determine whether this massive super skimmer meets their exacting standards for foreign flagged super skimmers.  Do we need the Nobel Prize winner to sign off as well or just a union thug?

The A-Whale bills itself as the largest open-water oil skimmer in the world, and it’s at least very impressive.  Originally an oil and ore tanker, the ship’s owners recently refitted the ship to do exactly the kind of work that the US so desperately needs in the Gulf of Mexico, and to do it on a vastly larger scale than current operations can handle.  According to the ship’s project manager, the entire American effort in 66 days has skimmed off 600,000 barrels of oil.  The ship’s owners claim that A-Whale can skim 500,000 barrels a day.

So where is the A-Whale now?  In the Gulf?  Not yet.  It’s on its way there after being tied to a dock in Norfolk, Virginia, and won’t be allowed to join the cleanup effort until the Coast Guard and the EPA figure out whether it meets their standards (h/t Deb Singer on Twitter).

To be clear, the A-Whale has not yet been tested on the scale needed in this cleanup.  Limited testing, the ship’s owners say, have proven the concept of their new skimming technique.  They have already begun plans for a B-Whale to do the same work, but until someone gets the ship into the game, no one will know for certain whether it can operate at the full, advertised capacity.

To paraphrase Morrissey, so what if the A-Whale can’t live up to all of its hype?  What if it can only perform half as well as claimed?  So what?

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