Executive Summary
Global Response Group Corporation
There were three great tragedies in the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 2010.
The first, of course, was the loss of eleven lives when British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon offshore oil platform exploded and sank.
The second great tragedy was the devastation caused to the environment and the economy of the Gulf by the spill of more than 680,000 tonnes(1) of oil from the Deepwater Horizon’s ruptured well head. Birds, sea life and vegetation were killed. Businesses collapsed. Real estate and company values plummeted. Fines and compensation rose into the billions of dollars. Lives were ruined.
The third great tragedy was just as obvious, but presented as more of a comedy than a tragedy. The third great tragedy was the realization that, more than twenty years after the Exxon Valdez, neither government nor the oil industry had yet developed an effective response to large marine oil spills.
Hairdressers offered the shorn locks from their shop floors to help soak up the oil. Farmers offered bales of hay. A hundred thousand Rube Goldberg ideas flooded BP and the government. None worked.
Instead, more than 800,000(2) gallons of toxic dispersants were dumped onto the oil. Booms were deployed and oil was burned in situ. Legions of paid laborers and volunteers worked to clean up fouled beaches and marsh lands. Ultimately, time and nature were left to take their course. The clean up, and the impact, might last for a generation.
Shortly after the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound in March, 1989 dumping 750,000(3) barrels of Alaskan crude oil onto the Northern Gulf of Alaska, Myron Sullivan II, a former Canadian government diplomat and professional engineer began to develop a solution to the challenge of large marine oil spills.
The design process began with the following precepts:
- The best response is a fast response – contain the oil spill before it spreads, before it reaches shore, before it destroys the environment and the livelihoods of those who depend on the environment.
- The best response doesn’t just contain the oil – it recovers it for future refining. Conventional oil spill remediation efforts recover less than 5% of the spilled oil.
- The best response avoids the human risks of marine oil spills, including exposure to crude oil, its toxic vapors and the risks of marine operations.
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Sullivan’s solution is AEROS, the world’s first and only non-dispersant “Airborne Emergency Response to Oil Spills”.
The AEROS system is dispatched to the scene of an oil spill by heavy drop-load cargo aircraft, parachuting onto the scene within hours of a spill report. This rapid response overcomes the slow reaction times required by conventional ship-borne techniques such as booms, skimmers, etc. Containment of the oil begins before it can spread beyond human capacity to respond effectively.
Once on scene, two Autonomous Underwater Vehicles position containment booms using satellite-based GPS guidance. The booms direct contaminated water to a third vehicle, the AEROS Hydrahead AUV, featuring the patented hydrocyclone oil/water separator. The hydrocyclone processes up to 2,000 gallons of water per minute; 120,000 gallons per hour. Salvaged oil is pumped into a floating vessel for future recovery and refining. Processed water that meets US Environmental Protection Agency standards is returned to the environment. Depending on the size of the spill, a phalanx of AEROS systems may be deployed to contain and recover the spilled oil.
Conventional oil spill remediation typically recovers less than five percent of the oil that was spilled. The environment is left to absorb the rest. The AEROS system is designed to recover up to 90% of the spilled oil, depending on sea state.
Because AEROS is unmanned, it avoids risks to human crews caused by both toxic hydrocarbon vapors and operations at sea.
Can it work? An independent feasibility study conducted by two leading oil industry engineering companies concluded: “AEROS is the most effective technology available for combating oil spills. It has tremendous potential and offers advanced oil spill recovery technology unlike any other system.” (4)
To date, AEROS is the only known system that combines rapid airborne response and high-efficiency recovery of large marine oil spills.
1. Source: Flow Rate Technical Group: USCG, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
2. Source: Marine toxicologist Dr. Susan Shaw, director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute
3. Anchorage Daily News, retrieved June 29, 2010.
4. Source: Mark Schubert, P.Eng., President & CEO, Trident Engineering Ltd., Houston, TX |
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