The ship seen in the video above is called the A Whale, and it’s ready to suck up water and oil and separate them on board, as it was built to do. It’s no surprise to many that it’s sitting idle nearby in the water, while the government decides where to put it. It is massive, 3 football-fields long, and 10 stories high, and here’s what it can do. The ship was modified after the BP explosion to scoop up 21 million gallons of oily water per day. So why is it sitting around? Its sheer size. The place it would do the most good is where the oil is “fresh”, and that area is already over-crowded. So let’s move some boats around and get this thing operating. Is that rocket science?  Read more here.

Congress is not without ideas of its own. Rep. George Miller has come up with some interesting legislation.

Congressman George Miller will be introducing an amendment that would ban BP from offshore leases.  At this point, BP’s best bet would be to transition their money to researching how they can make those big profits from renewable energy.  Only then would they really deserve the title they have already been using, “Beyond Petroleum”.

BP Would Be Barred From Offshore Leases Under Bill

June 30 (Bloomberg) — BP Plc would be barred from new U.S. offshore oil and gas leases for as long as seven years under legislation being drafted by Representative George Miller, who cited the company’s safety and environmental violations.

BP “has a flagrant history of taking risks to boost profits that has resulted in deaths of workers, destruction of the environment and economic chaos in local communities,” Miller said today in an e-mailed statement. Miller plans to offer his bill as an amendment to legislation that would overhaul drilling rules.

President Barack Obama’s administration and lawmakers are considering penalties that would limit BP’s U.S. operations. In addition to BP’s Gulf spill, Miller cited a 2005 explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery that killed 15 workers and a 2006 pipeline leak that dumped 200,000 gallons of crude at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, as reasons for his legislation.

“Serial violators ought to face consequences, and one of those consequences should be denying” BP and oil-producing companies “with this kind of record the right to drill in America’s offshore waters,” Miller said in the statement.

The U.S. also may revoke BP’s status as operator of producing wells in the Gulf, such as Thunder Horse, or of leases at Prudhoe Bay, David Pursell, a managing director at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. LLC, a Houston investment bank, said this month. Congress also is weighing measures to bar BP from contracts with the Department of Defense and Environmental Protection Agency.

Administration [...]