BP Plans To Use Oil-Water Separators Made By Actor Costner's Co.

19th Jun 2010 09:47

PORT FOURCHON (AFP)--Hollywood star Kevin Costner and BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles announced plans to begin using an invention that the actor says will accelerate clean-up of oily water from the gushing Gulf leak. "I didn't come here to save the day," an emotional Costner told reporters here Friday, adding: "I have come to participate." Suttles said BP (BP, BP.LN) had purchased 32 centrifugal oil-water separator machines from Costner's company, Ocean Therapy Solutions. "This is real technology with real science behind it," said Suttles, a mechanical engineer. Used in conjunction with other oil spill collection operations, Costner's "V-20" technology will eventually help BP process up to 128,000 barrels of oily water daily from Gulf waters and polluted shorelines, Suttles said. The broken wellhead is leaking oil at a rate of up to 60,000 barrels daily, according to the latest government figures. Three of the 4,500-pound machines were displayed aboard a barge at a Port Fourchon shipyard before their deployment to the heart of the spill--the site of the sunken Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. More of the filters will be deployed along 120 miles of the oil-scarred Louisiana shoreline over the next 60 days, according to Ocean officials. Costner and Ocean Therapy officials say the machines can separate oil and water at a rate of 200 gallons per minute--achieving 99% purity levels for both liquids--without the use of chemical or biologic agents. By comparison, traditional oil skimming operations can collect only 20% of the crude and 80% of the water, Costner said on June 9 in testimony before a U.S. House Science and Technology Committee hearing on oil spill clean-up technology. Currently, BP and Coast Guard officials are using more than 200 oil skimming vessels and miles of absorbent boom, with limited effect. BP and U.S. authorities also continue to use a highly controversial chemical oil dispersant. Friday's planned deployment fell on the one-month anniversary of the unique alliance between the screen actor and BP, a powerful oil giant that has become widely vilified in the U.S. since the April 20 rig explosion killed 11 crewmen and triggered the disastrous oil spill, now passed in its 60th day. Suttles said he first discussed the "V-20" with Costner and Ocean Therapy officials on May 18. "Within hours of that first conversation, we signed a letter of intent (an agreement in principle)," Suttles said. "We tested [the machine] in some of the tested environments we could find--it's passed all of those tests." Suttles said the machine's oil and water separations have succeeded despite chemical dispersants and variations of oil thicknesses in the Gulf. (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 19, 2010 04:47 ET (08:47 GMT)