BP's Gulf Oil Spill: One Ship Captain's Invention to Battle Tar Balls

One side show in the ongoing Gulf oil spill has been the outpouring of ideas on how to plug BP's Macondo well or improve clean-up efforts -- and the frustration of getting someone to listen to them. Even actor Kevin Costner, who has spent more than $24 million and 15 years to develop oil spill cleanup technology, had some initial trouble getting BP's attention. In spite of all of the red tape, some ideas, including Capt. Gerry Matherne's tar ball fighter, are finally being implemented.

It's a sign that either the resistance to ideas from (gasp!) the general public has waned or the feds and BP have finally gotten their collective acts together and have more people vetting the thousands of suggestions that are already in the pipeline. It also highlights the sad fact about this ongoing leak: At day 76, the feds and BP are still looking for solutions.

The latest inventive success is Matherne's Heavy Oil Recovery Device (or HORD). The ship captain turned-BP contractor came up with his cage-like trash bag filtration system after he watched skimmers struggle to capture heavy oil just below the surface. The HORD is so successful at efficiently collecting oil that as many as 1,000 units are expected to be manufactured and put into service in the next several weeks, the Deepwater Horizon Joint Command Response -- that's the feds, including the Coast Guard, and BP -- said in a statement Monday.

The good news is that the clean up effort has one more effective gun in its holster. The bad news? This device didn't exist prior to the Gulf oil spill. And there are probably at least a few more of these inventions we could have used, say, back when BP was submitting its oil spill response plan. To date, BP has received some 110,000 ideas to improve oil collection and clean up as well as engineering, said Bob Dudley, BP's new man in charge of the oil spill, in a recent PBS interview. Of those, about 1,000 have made it through and are seriously being considered, Dudley said.

Here's how it Matherne's device works and why it's been so useful. The HORD is a single unit that acts as a filter, containment and disposal system. A mesh bag, lining a three-foot-by three-foot aluminum frame, is dragged through water by shrimp boats now being used as skimmers. The device scoops up surface oil. But its ability to pick up thick oil beneath surface water is where the device has proven the most useful.

A lot of the oil we're dealing with in the Gulf has degraded, changing from a liquid state to a peanut butter-like consistency that floats on the surface and 12 to 18 inches below the surface, said Matherne.

Photo from Deepwater Horizon Joint Command Response
For complete coverage, see: All Things BNET on BP's Gulf of Mexico Spill
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