Oops there it is. Geoff Craft, a vice president for Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. has let slip the true version of the oil industry's response plan for spills.
He stated this in reference to the still on-going clean-up of the Yellowstone River oil spill. According to this company executive, the clean up "has proven more difficult than expected and could go on for several more months."
The entire article is here. Bill in Portland Maine comments on and links to a longer article in USA Today that quotes the same guy in this diary.
The truth is they don't know how to clean up these spills in any kind of timely manner. Their real strategy seems to rest on their hope that it doesn't happen. As we know from the BP blow-out in the Gulf last year, their oil spill response plan was cut and pasted from one that was for a completely different area and environment and included animals that are not even present in the Gulf.
With each of these spills we watch as the painstakingly slow, mistake-riddled clean up operation jerks and berks into place because "nobody would have guessed how hard it would be" to clean it up.
The Yellowstone, the Kalamazoo, the North Sea, the Gulf are all smudged up with oil. Where and when is the next oil spill going to be that drags on for months and months because "nobody would have guessed how hard it would be" to clean up?