Drill Baby Drill - An "Oil" Painting (done in acrylics!)

My collaborator Tatiana Iliina just put up a new abstract eco art painting from her "Industrial Waste" series.

This one is called "Drill Baby Drill".

It is 24" x 48" and painted in acrylics. So it is one of the first "oil paintings" ever not to be painted in "oils" LOL!

You can view it in more detail on Tatiana's site on eBay.

This whole BP disaster is the most depressing news there has been in quite a while. I even stopped blogging pretty much completely for about 2-3 weeks after this happened. Such a tragic disaster... after the oil companies have been raking in such huge profits. After all the suffering that the Gulf of Mexico states have gone through already in the last few years.

Alberta cuts royalties to oil companies

All while the Alberta government caves in to give the oil companies even more rollbacks on royalty rates. A gift of $1.5 billion more in uncollected royalties.    This gratuity seems to be a result of pressure applied by the fringe right Wildrose party.

Anyway,  I guess I just began to feel that the blogging has maybe less impact than a mosquito on the whole energy / environment situation. Now, BP is buying up  internet search terms to divert more people to its website and thereby get more control over the message.

BP sort of deluges you with information on its site. But you won't find out things you really want to know, like how is the clean-up really progressing in different places and exactly what systems, such as Kevin Costner's oil water separator they are or are not using? How is testing is going with these units? And what consideration is being given to such technologies as Canada's Genoil?

All you really find on BP's site are generalities and banalities, such as "oil and water really don't mix together well" - so they are using a variety of "skimmers."


Maybe there is a more effective strategy or way to make a difference than blogging. Anyway, haven't found it yet - so we keep on.

Canadian angle in Waterworld hero Costner's quest to save the water on our world

Way back in 2001, a little noticed news item on imbd proclaimed, "Costner Goes Green". The article stated that Kevin Costner had recently started his own company, Costner Industries Nevada Corp. (CINC Industries), which would be "looking into" 21st Century environmental planning. "I put my money into that. That's my personality, something I believe in," said Costner.

Now, $26 million and ten years later, Costner's CINC Industries liquid separators are being demoed and tested around the Gulf - to pretty substantial fanfare. Meanwhile, a Canadian company, Genoil, also has impressive water separation expertise, not to mention sand cleaning technology, however involvement in the Gulf at this time seems to be behind-the-scenes, if at all.

The claims appearing in various new stories over the last couple of days state that Costner's machine can clean 97-99% of the oil out of the water. The trouble, which no one has really mentioned, is that the U.S. Coast Guard has some regulations that say you can't put more than 2.5 parts per million back in the water, whereas 99% still leaves what, 10,000 parts per million in the water.

Regardless of what the regulations are, it would seem to be a no-brainer to get Costner's 10-30 units of various sizes in place, and at least start cleaning something, right? I dunno though. What if the intake is already pretty diluted? Well, they're supposed to be testing now.

The largest units, which have been nicknamed "Ocean Therapy Solutions" by Costner, but are more accurately called liquid separators, can clean about 200 gallons of water a minute, or 200,000 gallons a day.

Some have mentioned that that is about the same amount of oil spilling per day. But a couple of questions I would have are: what is the concentration of the water being taken up by these units? and - how practical is it to get the machine access to a continuous flow of dirty water?

Another question - there are other companies that have oil / water separators. One in particular is Alberta's Genoil Inc., a publicly traded Edmonton-based corporation whose main strengths are "in engineering and design of heavy oil upgrading facilities, petrochemical, oil sands, and refinery processes, oil and water separation, and chemical engineering."
 
These guys have kick-ass oil water separators that do clean the water to U.S. Coast Guard standards. One presumes they are not as yet involved in the Gulf clean-up, as there have been no press releases given on their website since March and nothing comes up on a web search. Now I have no clue whether Genoil could even get a machine up and running in the Gulf in a year, let alone in a few weeks. Nor do I know how Genoil's machines stack up against the 200,000 gallons a day that CINC's units can process.

However, one thing is clear: Genoil boasts it is "the most advanced oil technology company in the world." Seems like a pretty good reason to get involved in the Gulf. Soon!