BP, buy back your oil

To Mr. Tony Hayward, chief executive officer of BP:

The environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico is bad for BP, bad for Americans and, worse yet, for natural treasures on the U.S. coast. Here's a suggestion as to how you can minimize the damage and regain some respect among the American people.

Buy back your oil.

Engage the public. Trust private enterprise. Trust the judgment and ingenuity of American workers.

You cannot afford enough ships and crews to cleanse the whole sea.

You cannot win the hearts and minds of coastal residents by hiring them as laborers. American fishermen are fiercely independent. They resent working for anyone, especially the company that caused the problem. Every offer you make will be viewed as bribery or charity, both of which are bitter as gall to them.

They do, however, respect a trade. So, offer to buy back your oil at a price that will entice them to skim and deliver it to you. There's probably no other coast on Earth that has as much readily available capacity as the Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi stretch, including barges, tankers, fishing boats, recreational boats -- and an incredibly resourceful workforce. Fishermen and watermen (including women) are accustomed to handling about as much fuel as fish, and they can do wonders with anything that floats. They will astound you with clever inventions for harvesting, separating and transporting oil. Skimmers based, for instance, on standard sheets of marine plywood would have to move only about 200 feet to skim one barrel of oil where the oil is one millimeter thick. So skimming runs won't be impossibly long even when the oil is fairly thin or scattered.

Position numerous oil barges and/or small tankers in and around the oil plume. Equip them with hoists to load full drums in exchange for your empty ones plus hoses and pumps to draw from larger containers such as fishing-boat holds.

Announce a price above market rate, say $100 or more a barrel, discounted for seawater content -- which can be determined by specific gravity or other familiar means -- and adjust the price based on the number of takers and rates of collection.

Anticipate hundreds or possibly thousands of small boats. Ask the U.S. Coast Guard to direct traffic and enforce safety measures and hazmat regulations. Ask them to patrol for those few scoundrels who will try to sell you fresh oil from shore.

Anticipate health risks. Ask the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to advise on where harvesters can find thick oil with tolerable fumes.

Position numerous lighters to continually resupply small boats, providing fuel and provisions and on-site maintenance, especially for oil-gummed equipment.

Use your current fleet with booms to corral and concentrate the oil for skimming.

Continue to employ your own technological solutions, such as dispersants, wherever oil films are too thin to yield profitable harvests.

If recreational craft need additional insurance, make sure it is available on the spot. Insurance shouldn't be a problem for commercial craft, but check that out too.

Commit from the outset to provide a means of cleaning and otherwise reconditioning boats -- especially their holds -- so they can return to their regular business when the crisis is over. Help fishermen protect their holds with liners or other preventive measures.

If you do this, here are the benefits:

You will stanch the oil flow and limit damage to marine resources, especially coastal marshes.

You will gain time to plug the leaks below.

You will recoup much of the cost when you separate and refine the recovered oil.

The public relations benefit will be enormous. You will regain favor with the groups most offended by the spill and offset job losses in the very industries most impacted by the spill.

Name it "Operation Dunkirk" after the heroic World War II evacuation in which small boats ferried 330,000 troops back home to England, rescuing them from certain capture at Hitler's hands. That's the spirit you will find among the boaters who come to rescue their own beloved beaches, marshes and fishing grounds -- and save BP itself in so doing.

Jerome E. Dobson, a Jefferson science fellow in the U.S. State Department's Office of the Geographer, is president of the American Geographical Society and professor of geography at the University of Kansas. dobson@ku.edu<I>