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Name:
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lotowner
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Subject:
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Burning Technology
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Date:
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6/4/2010 8:02:46 AM
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Three weeks ago, BP officials arranged to have thousands of feet of fire boom shipped from Alaska's North Slope oil fields, then apparently withdrew the order 4 days later.
With 8,200 feet of fire boom staged in Anchorage pending approval for transport to the Gulf of Mexico, "BP determined that the need for fire boom was not as urgent as initially thought and retracted the request," according to an event log prepared by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
More than two weeks after the initial request, the event log indicated that BP again arranged to have fire boom shipped to the Gulf to burn oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Two shipments totaling 5,350 feet of fire boom left Alaska on May 25, according to the agency's website. An additional 4,200 feet of fire boom shipped on May 27 and represents "23 percent of the North Slope inventory."
BP CEO Hayward: "What is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your tool kit."
The 9,500 feet of fire boom on the way from Alaska would represent nearly a 10-fold increase in the amount of fire boom at use in the Gulf as of Wednesday, according to figures provided by BP.
BP officials responded to the Press-Register Wednesday via e-mail but did not address the newspaper's questions about the shipments.
A U.S. Coast Guard official said BP told that agency Wednesday that the order was never canceled.
"It wasn't that we canceled the order. It was that Alaska was required to have a certain amount of boom on hand. Then, it was 10 days later they were able to get approval for that boom," said Coast Guard Lt. Mike Patterson, stationed at the Joint Information Command in Houma, La.
"We said we had this much available, they said they didn't need it. Then they came back and said, 'Yeah, we need some now,'" said Alan Wien, who compiles the event log for the Alaska environmental agency.
Wien said he relies on the companies to tell him what's going on with such shipments.
He said the 8,200 feet was "the excess amount of boom (a supplier) had available. Pending approval was primarily waiting to get the state's approval to verify that wasn't part of the supply we needed to keep available in the state."
While burning has emerged as one of the most effective means of destroying oil pooled on the surface of the Gulf, a lack of the required equipment has hampered burning efforts since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20.
There is no federal law that requires the government or oil companies to have fire boom staged anywhere on the Gulf Coast. The Press-Register previously reported that federal officials had to purchase a fire boom from a company in Illinois to conduct the first test burn more than a week after the spill began.
The 125 burns conducted so far, many in the last week, have destroyed 2.8 million gallons of oil. BP indicated that 700,000 gallons of that total were burned Tuesday alone. By comparison, skimmers collected 1.4 million gallons over five weeks.
Federal officials said there are now eight boats equipped to burn oil at the Deepwater Horizon spill.
"They are working on trying to get that number up to 14," said Patterson, with the Coast Guard. For the first several weeks, there were just two boats, according to earlier statements from federal officials.
A week after the spill, a former federal official in charge of oil spill response told the Press-Register that 40 or more such crews should be working the Gulf spill every day that conditions were favorable. Waves must be below 3 feet for booms to work.
Conditions have been favorable in terms of wave height every day since May 17, according to a federal data buoy near the site of the spill.
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