A giant Taiwanese tanker ship was anchored in Lousiana and awaiting the go-ahead to join the oil clean-up efforts in the Gulf of Mexico, dpa cited officials as saying today. The ship, the A Whale, owned by TMT Shipping, had to be tested and evaluated by military and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials to determine whether it could be used for skimming operations, said Bryan Ferguson of the joint information centre operated by the US government and BP plc. BP must pay for all the costs involved in cleaning up the massive 10-week-old gusher off the Louisiana coast that is causing massive ecological degradation in the ocean and along the coastline of four Gulf states. "The US Navy and NOAA are overseeing the testing. They'll be looking at the amount of oil to water collected, its ability to skim oil and how it holds up under environmental conditions," Ferguson told The German Press Agency dpa. A Whale was modified into a skimmer in Portugal on June 15 to allow it to be considered for the clean-up operations, Ferguson said. The ship can hold 2 million barrels of oil and water, and is longer than three football fields. "The government is eager to get on board the super skimmer A Whale in the region and see if (it) is effective in skimming oil," the Coast Guard said in a statement quoted by CNN. The tanker has 12 openings on either side to suck up oil and water and is equipped to spit out the water and store the oil. TMT founder Nobu Su said in a statement that large catastrophes demand large solutions. A Whale is 10 storeys high. The rough waves stirred up by tropical storm Alex, which has been downgraded as the season's first Atlantic hurricane as it powers across the western Gulf, have caused a suspension of skimming and burning at the oil disaster site. More than 500 ships deployed in the cleanup had to retreat to shore. "We've been held hostage here for the last two days by the prevailing weather," said Coast Guard Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft on Wednesday.
