Massive oil-skimming ship makes stop in Norfolk

NORFOLK

Ten stories tall and nearly four football fields long, the world's largest oil skimmer dropped anchor Friday in Norfolk, on its way to the Gulf of Mexico and a possible bout with the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

Before the floating behemoth can wage war, though, its billionaire owner has a few hurdles to jump, including one key question: Will it even work?

Nobu Su, the CEO and founder of TMT Group, a Taiwanese shipping company, described the engineering behind his latest creation as "totally not common sense and totally against the rules."

Speaking in shirt sleeves and a blue baseball cap on the docks of Norfolk International Terminals, Su was referring to the special holes he had cut into the sides of his massive vessel, named A Whale.

As designed, the giant skimmer would roll across the Gulf "like a lawn mower cutting the grass," Su said, ingesting millions of gallons of oily water through the small slits.

The tainted water would then fall into huge storage tanks in the belly of the ship. There, oil would separate from sea water. The toxic stuff would be collected and disposed of, the water returned to the Gulf.

"A large-scale disaster needs a large-scale solution," Su told a crowd of reporters, shipping executives and regulators.

A Whale could handle 500,000 barrels of oily water a day, or slightly less than what all the skimmers now in the Gulf have gathered in more than 60 days on the job, Su said.

A no-brainer? Not quite.

Because the vessel is Taiwanese and was built in South Korea, it needs an exemption from the Jones Act, a federal law requiring commercial ships doing business in U.S. coastal waters to be American-flagged.

Then there are environmental concerns. Because the ship would discharge water back into the Gulf, albeit after much of the oil had been skimmed away, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must go along with the deal.

Compounding the problem is that A Whale has never actually processed oily water before - though it did pass a recent test in Portugal, where a foaming agent was sucked into the ship's bowels at sea and "did quite nicely," said Bob Grantham, an executive with TMT Group.

Gov. Bob McDonnell's administration supports the experiment and hopes A Whale is granted all necessary approvals "to see if it works," said Matt Strader, state assistant secretary of transportation.

TMT Group has hired a Washington lobbying firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, to help negotiate a work plan with federal regulators and to create public pressure in favor of A Whale.

One reason the ship came to Norfolk was so the Coast Guard could get a good look at it. TMT held a briefing for Coast Guard officials on Thursday, and a few Coast Guard officers attended the media event Friday.

Also attending the event was Ed Overton, a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University. TMT flew Overton to Norfolk to get a personal look at the mega-skimmer.

"Bureaucracy shouldn't stand in the way of cleaning up our coastline," Overton said. "We need help. So I encourage them to just go down there and not take no for an answer. I mean, seriously, how can it hurt?"

Ironically, the ship was originally built as a supertanker for oil. But soon afterward, the BP oil spill began off the Louisiana coast, and Su saw an opportunity.

He sailed the ship to Portugal for modifications, turning A Whale into an oil skimmer that "drinks seawater," Su said.

Su has spent "many millions" on the project, said Frank Maisano, a spokesman, and would "pretty much like to recover his costs."

The shipping magnate has not talked to BP yet and is not sure who would pay his expenses, assuming A Whale is approved for the work.

Still, the ship was expected to leave Norfolk Friday night, arriving at ground zero in the Gulf within three days.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com