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Kevin Costner House Energy and Environment Subcommittee

Kevin Costner to testify. Below is that testimony by way of Mr. Costner's Witness Statement TEXT

June 9, 2010 House Science and Technology Committee Energy and Environment Subcommittee – Hearing Deluge of Oil Highlights Research and Technology Needs for Effective Cleanup of Oil Spills Kevin Costner Founder, CINC Co-Founder / Partner, Ocean Therapy Solutions/

video demonstration of CINC technology Ocean Therapy 3_QT 480p (4x3).mov 14.7 MB.

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Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to speak here today and for raising this important discussion. I come before you as a discouraged U.S. citizen, and an entrepreneur with a partial solution to the tragedy unfolding in the Gulf. Seventeen years ago I purchased a licensed patent for a centrifugal force oil-water separator from the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory. Today that technology, CINC, is the most effective and efficient tool for cleaning up oil spills that you’ve probably never heard of. Despite
CINC’s proven demonstrations in front of oil industry and government leaders, the technology sat passively on shelves for more than ten years, powerless to make right the oil spills that continued and will continue to occur. It is incumbent on us to do everything possible to clean up the massive spill in the Gulf. CINC has an important role to play in that legacy, as I will explain.

Introduction: The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a devastating and humbling moment for our country. The entire world community watched in awe as the U.S., the most powerful country in the world, thrashed and capitulated, helpless to save itself from the worst environmental disaster in history. We engineered nuclear power and put a man on the moon, but could not save ourselves from oil, the most basic resource involved in almost every aspect of our daily lives. US citizens stood heroically on the beach, prepared to clean up a mess that they had no part in creating. Such epic failure was hard for me to fathom, and yet the images of rubber boots, straw and soup ladles against an endless black tide confirmed this utterly demoralizing display of incompetence that would continue to repeat itself.

While it’s not wrong to focus so much attention on large spills, we cannot diminish the smaller spills that happen around the world every day. Estimates are between 5,000 and 13,000 gallons in a typical year. For every 1 million gallons pumped from wells, it is estimated that 20 gallons will end up in the oceans. At our current rate of oil production that means the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every 7 months. Partly in response to the Exxon Valdez, I resolved to commit personal resources to engineer a product that would be effective in cleaning up oil spills. Like fire
extinguishers, oil-water separators could be stationed on every boat, harbor and port where oil was present. I envisioned the machine as a safety device, compact and portable enough that it could be a deployed on a small craft, and rugged enough to operate reliably in rough seas. The CINC oil-water separator can do all this.

I. Early development and patent history

Taxpayers paid for the early development of a liquid-liquid separator technology, licensed and patented from the Department of Energy (DOE) and Idaho National Laboratories (INL), a government owned, private contractor operated facility, in 1993. Originally developed to assist in nuclear fuel reprocessing, the machine was then made available to the private sector to improve upon the licensed patent. Today the technology represents one of the laboratory’s highly successful transfers of technology, which makes the patent unique and of particular interest for the government and U.S. citizens.

The foundation of our CINC technology was created over 30 years ago and has been used by the Department of Energy (DOE) to recover valuable metal resources through a process of solvent extraction. In 1993 I was awarded a Technology Transfer from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a liquidliquid solvent extraction technology, which we believed had the potential to be
scaled up and commercialized in the fight against oil spills. Dave Meikrantz, a scientist working for DOE, and the original inventor of the technology, came on board as the Director of Technology at Costner Industries (CINC), my newly formed private company.

Kevin Costner House Energy and Environment Subcommittee FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT IN PFD FORMAT