Confidence turns to frustration for Maine boom company

[Robbien]

A company in Maine says it has built a better oil boom to protect the Gulf coast shoreline.

John Lapointe has bet big on booms. As President of Packgen in Auburn, Maine his company has manufactured hazardous material packaging for 30 years.


When the oil started spilling into the Gulf his engineers came to him and said they're going to need a lot of oil boom down there.

John Lapointe: "When you pull a whole team together and work in a unified way amazing what you can get accomplished"

They added two shifts, thirty employees, and by day four of production had 40 thousand feet of boom coming off the line....

Far more they believe than anyone else currently making boom.

It was a huge financial risk--Packgen knew the only way to recover costs was to get BP to buy the boom.

Two weeks ago BP sent a quality control person to Maine, looked at the factory and was impressed by what he saw. Packgen was feeling confident.

That confidence has now turned to frustration. Packgen says BP controls who the boom suppliers are going to be--and they have yet to approve Packgen's design.

John: "We're going to allow BP who caused the problem to monitor and determine who gets
the money and how that money is spent and how the land is going to be protected?"

John Lapointe says the government stepped in to take over the car industry,
and the banks, and he believes it should be taking over this situation too.

Two Packgen engineers went to the gulf recently to see for themselves what was happening--they say they saw booms that were sinking and contractors begging for boom--but they won't buy anything that isn't BP approved.

Meanwhile, they have slowed production---started storing boom in a warehouse, and now wait for BP to say yay or nay.

As a businessman John Lapointe says he saw this as a way to make money, and help the gulf coast.....now he's not sure he'll be able to do either one.

http://www.necn.com/06/03/10/Confidence-turns-to-frustration-for-Main/landing.html?blockID=246621&feedID=4215


BP is solely focused on that hole in the ground at the bottom of the gulf. Don't bother them with silly environmental clean up measures. Walking and chewing gum at the same time is above their pay grade.

[Scuba]

1. Can't be any worse...

...than those fake water-wings that BP put out there as a PR ploy. But I'll guess Tony Hayward and his cronies don't own the company in Maine.

[MadMaddie]

2. The governement should purchase them and then bill BP

the cost. BP is not even giving contracts to American companies like this one.

[Robbien]

3. There's this other little company which quickly

put together a solution for skimming oil

their press release:

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/small-portable-oil-skimmer-system,1330210.shtml

A North Carolina company that specializes in industrial oil skimmers has created a small, portable oil skimmer system specifically designed to clean up the BP oil spill on the shoreline in the Gulf of Mexico.

SkimOil, Inc., has incorporated their well-proven industrial skimmer into a portable, easy-to-use surface skimming system that can be used on small vessels to remove large volumes of oil without compacting or destroying sensitive marshland vegetation in the Gulf of Mexico.

This floating weir skimmer, called the GulfSTOP system, is designed to work from the deck of smaller boats or barges that can get in close to shore and in the shallows where the oil is doing the most serious damage. The skimmer can skim from the top 2” of the water surface and can remove over 50 gallons of oil or liquid per minute.

Videos and illustrations of how the system works are available at www.gulfSTOP.com.

According to SkimOil president Roscoe McWilliams, “Think of this skimmer as a floating hole in the water--where everything on the surface near it--flows into the skimmer to be pumped off for removal. One man working on a small boat with an extension pole can guide the skimmer directly into the shallows and remove the oil fast.”

McWilliams added, “We can and will put together training videos and can conduct on the ground training sessions that would enable local workboats to get in close to shore and make HUGE oil recovery possible NOW.”

The GulfSTOP skimming system can include the unique floating weir skimmer and a diesel powered small diaphragm pump that can handle the solids and trash that is always at shoreline--feeding a specially configured oil water separator designed specifically for spilled oil recovery.

SkimOil is ramping up production of these systems and working with its strategic partners that specialize in oil water separators. Skimmers are currently in stock and can work with almost any pump. The company says it can produce a few hundred units within 10 days of ordering.

Within days of introducing this system, several units were deployed by various contractors and put immediately to work on the Gulf coastline.

Small Louisiana fishermen are standing around with their boats doing nothing.

What are the odds BP would even think to get something like this going.

[imurhuckleberry]

4. "The boom manufactured by Packgen did not pass an initial quality control test."

The Fox-industrial complex

June 11, 2010 10:46 pm ET by Jeremy Schulman

John Lapoint, the president of a Maine company called Packgen, has been making the rounds in the media this week, complaining that BP and the federal government haven't purchased thousands of feet of oil boom that his company began manufacturing in the wake of the Gulf disaster.

Tonight, Lapoint appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show. Hannity -- who declared the situation "frustrating" and said that "the blame goes to BP, and the blame goes to our government" -- demanded to know "why" BP and the Obama administration hadn't bought the boom.

Why?

Packgen, as we've noted, has reportedly never commercially manufactured booms before. They are also reportedly using a different design than the standard oil boom. Which is probably why BP reportedly "ordered a trial run of the product" rather than immediately buying up Packgen's entire inventory.

And tonight -- about an hour before Lapoint appeared on Hannity's infomercial -- ABC's Jake Tapper reported that the Coast Guard told him: "The boom manufactured by Packgen did not pass an initial quality control test."

Oh, maybe that's why.

See video & more @ http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006110056