Oil skimming boat headed to Louisiana via eBay auction

Source: AP

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Florida company seeking a specialized boat for oil spill cleanup duty in the Gulf of Mexico found one at the eBay online auction site.

Midway Auto Inc. of Morganville, N.J., said it sold the 27-foot skimmer this week. Spokesman Dan Velba said the buyer will use it in Louisiana where oil is washing ashore from the BP spill.

Velba said Wednesday he'd received a deposit from the buyer, who he would not identify, and was waiting for the rest of the $89,000 price.

He said Midway acquired the boat several years ago at an auction. He wouldn't disclose the price. Midway's typical business line is trucks, heavy machinery and parts.

The boat's age — it was built for the Navy in 1989 — might account for the low price. New models can cost $1 million or more.

Read more: http://www.wreg.com/news/sns-ap-la--gulfoilspill-ebayboat,0,645316.story

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In other news

A LATimes article says:
More ships, equipment are headed to gulf spill
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gulf-oil-spill-20100610,0,6857229.story

<snip>

The move to swiftly bring in new equipment comes in response to concerns that the ship processing oil diverted from the well has far too little capacity to hold all the oil that could be diverted, leaving a huge amount of oil and gas pouring unchecked into the sea.

Two new vessels are now steaming toward the gulf: a shuttle tanker from the North Sea that should arrive between June 12 and 15, and a production ship that will help offload oil to the shuttle tanker, scheduled to arrive by June 19.

The new vessels also will allow oil and gas flows that are too large for the capacity of the onsite vessels to be burned off, theoretically allowing incident managers to safely capture the entire flow from the well, Allen said.


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BP's eyes remain on the well and all equipment they order pertain to the well and gathering oil from the well.

Wonder who the enterprising guy is that bought that '89 Navy skimmer.

Yep, there probably hasn;t been any improvements in design since then either...

*sigh*

I hope this guy can even get the damn thing in the water since average folks are being kept from helping...

However, it probably needs a month of chipping, grinding, welding, and a couple new coats of marine primer and paint to keep it from turning into an oily reef.

Haele

For cleaning up oil.