If you spill millions of litres of oil all over, say, the Gulf of Mexico, no amount of OxiClean is going to help. You need something industrial strength, and researchers are looking at magnetic soap as a potential solution. More »
Iran has successfully tested two long-range missiles over the Strait of Hormuz, a key strategic point for oil commerce, in response to Obama’s December 31 sanctions against Iran’s central bank. What’s worse: Iran claims they have created their first nuclear fuel rod. More »
Current industry-standard oil recovery equipment pulls roughly 3785 litres a minute, but as the Deep Water Horizon incident showed, that simply isn’t good enough. So Wendy Schmidt — as in wife of ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt — put up a $US1.4 million purse for any team that could extract 9400 litres a minute. Here’s the winning design. More »
Recovering from an oil disaster isn’t just horrific to endure — it’s massively difficult and massively expensive to soak it all up. But what if we didn’t need an army of oil-wiping humans? What about cleaning boats that sail themselves? More »
Seriously? BP admitted today that a pipeline leak on Saturday resulted in “2100 to 4200 gallons” of oil being spilled onto the Alaskan tundra. After last year’s five million barrels spilt, can they really afford even small screw-ups? [Yahoo News]
Canadian company JBI is setting the recycling industry on fire with its new Plastic2Oil plants that promise to convert non-recyclable plastics into fuel. More »
