Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE)

Ohmsett

Yesterday’s Platt’s Oilgram News included an excellent Gary Gentile piece about Ohmsett and the recent visit by BOEMRE Director Bromwich and Admiral Zukunft of the Coast Guard. Both had high praise for this outstanding oil spill response test facility which has contributed greatly to improved understanding of boom and skimmer performance, in situ burning, and chemical treating agents. This quote from the Platt’s article gives you a sense of the facility’s importance:

AbTech Industries spent two days at OHMSETT testing a new polymer it hopes will be able to sop up hydrocarbons from produced water or water used in hydraulic fracturing. The company pumped saltwater contaminated with Louisiana crude at rates of up to 250 gallons per minute through its filtering system. “The facility is tremendously unique,” AbTech Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Thatcher said in an interview. “I don’t know where else we would go where we could pump up to 250 gallons per minute for days on end and contaminate it. It allows you to go and make any mistakes you need to make.”

As we have said before, those who claim that there has been no progress in spill preparedness either have no real interest in spill response or have not been paying attention. Much has been accomplished.

Kudos to spill response visionaries like Ed Tennyson and John Gregory, MMS employees who had been pushing for the re-opening of Ohmsett since EPA closed the facility in the mid-1980’s.  After the Valdez spill in 1989 they received the necessary support, and the facility has been going strong since its re-opening in 1992.