The one oil spill story that has caught my attention and frustrated me more than any is the tale of the retired CEO of Shell Oil who says we should have couple dozen oil tankers out in the gulf sucking up oil. Nothing sounds more simple, and I cannot figure out why Obama hasn't just ordered it done. Now some news. Esquire reported last week that former Shell Chief John Hoffmeister met with the Coast Guard recently to move this thing along. It also reports that there are 47 supertankers located in the Gulf doing nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. Apparently the tankers are being used to store Iranian crude oil, which no one wants because it is not as good as the stuff that is gushing into the gulf. Esquire reports that it would cost BP about $100 million per tanker for six months to lease these big boats for the clean-up effort. Are they gonna do that? No sign yet. Added complications? Maybe. The tankers are fully loaded, and it is obvious that if they are to be used for another purpose, they will have to be emptied. Where to put the oil? The USA keeps a strategic petroleum reserve of 727 million barrels, located conveniently along the gulf coast. Unfortunately, 727 million barrels is all it can handle, according to the Department of Energy, so we can't off load any more. Anyway it is apparent that we could use tankers to suck up the crude if we could just find a place to put the stuff. Notice that gas is cheap these days and the predictions are that summer will not make it much more expensive. That means there is probably plenty of oil being pumped and refineries are at capacity. That may also mean there is no place to put the stuff. There is an irony.
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