Will the US Government and the EPA Allow the "A Whale" to Help in the Cleanup Effort?

The "A Whale", a massive oil skimming ship owned by the Taiwan Maritime Transportation Company (TMT), is traveling to the Gulf of Mexico hoping to aid in cleanup efforts there. The ship is the world's largest oil skimming vessel at 1,115 feet long, 10 stories high, and 196 feet wide and can hold 1 million barrels of recovered oil. The vessel was originally constructed six months ago in South Korea for transporting oil and iron ore. Recent structural and equipment modifications at a Portuguese shipyard such as the addition of twelve 16-foot long intake ports on each side of the bow will allow the ship to skim up to 500,000 barrels (21 million gallons) of oil-contaminated water daily.

Once the "A Whale" arrives in the Gulf, however, there are legal questions that may prevent the ship from being utilized. The "A Whale" does not yet have government approval to assist in the cleanup or a contract with BP to perform the work. It is unclear whether BP will allow the ship to begin skimming and the Jones Act, a 1920 law that limits the activities of foreign-flagged vessels in US coastal waters, may restrict the operations of the Liberian-flagged vessel.

The Jones Act regulations may not pose a significant hurdle as the restrictions apply only to foreign-flagged vessels in State Territorial Waters (up to three miles offshore). The "A Whale" would likely be most effective well offshore closer to the BP Horizon site. A more daunting barrier is the EPA's refusal to allow the ship to discharge oily water back into the Gulf after the bulk of the spilled oil has been recovered and transfered to storage tanks inside the vessel. While a vast majority of the oil will be separated from the oil/water mixture that is skimmed from the surface, some oily residue will remain in the water that is to be discharged overboard after processing. The EPA's stance is that this discharge will pollute the Gulf...