I make Sea Brat. The thing that has been tricky to explain is that all of our products were made for bioremediation. We mix a liquid blend of enzymes and oil eating microbes. These microbes are formulated just for these hydrocarbons. They are basically typical, natural microbes or psudomonas. They are aerobic meaning they use oxygen. These are basically fed only hydrocarbon chains until they develop the enzymes necessary to metabolize the hydrocarbon. But this has been tricky…

First the EPA has a system set up where after testing (expensive for small companies like us) a product can only be classified within 1 of the product catagories. There are 4 catagories. (Dispersant, Surface Cleaning Agent, Bioremediation, Miscellaneous which is typicaly booms, absorbants or silly trick products). However, EPA will only allow a product to be within 1 catagory at a time. So if I have a qualified bioremediation product it would be in that catagory. Which means I can not be in the "dispersant" catagory. Therefore I can not be used in this event.

This in my opinion is more about competition. Anyway, Sea Brat and my other major product Petro Clean are not in the biormediation catagory.

I needed a "dispersant" in order to provide for an oceanic oil spill. So they ignore or disallow me to advertise the microbial aspect. Same with Petro Clean. Petro Clean was designed to render flammable spills non flammable. Firemen are my main customers with PC. However, PC was designed specifically to bioremediate the contamination. You have a gasoline or diesel spill and PC prevents fire and explosion AND treats the washed off contamination. But EPA does not allow me to directly advertise this.

So if I added these in the EPA "bioremediation" catagory I would not be able to use them on anything but soil cleanup. ???

We wanted to offer a "solution to pollution" but needed to list my products within the catagories most useful. So Sea Brat dispersant is not only an environmentally friendly alternative BUT it has lots of real oil eating bugs within that will actually eat the slight toxic out of my own product. It basically mixes with the oil and self distructs into harmless natural biproducts like carbon dioxide, salts, fatty acids, etc.

I was never a petrochemical company trying to make a product for the environment. I am a environmental company trying to make a product for the petrochemical pollution. I admit that in a super mega volume anything is an issue. But my product will act more like fertilizer for a garden than anything.

The test shown on EPA do not account for the bugs. We added bugs to Sea Brat during recent BP testing and it was the best product! First Sea Brat with microbes (I had to avoid mentioning this) is a better dispersant than show. Because the natural enzymes from the microbes act like a safe surfactant. No toxic to that aspect. Second the microbes reduce the toxicity even furthuer because the bugs eat out the small amount of chemical within that is of concern and do so within 7 to 15 days.

Recently a toxicologist/ chemist tested my Petro Clean product for the Gulf Spill. He took a slop tank full of water, added minnows and then the crude oil. The fish were killing off… then he hit it with Petro Clean with microbes, enzymes and the kill stopped and the fish began to recover. Testing will be public soon! EPA is doing more test currently to verify these findings (this week) in order to counter BP’s assessment.

BP relaize my product rocked. Beyond anything Nalco could come up with without stealing my formula. So they tried to cover it up. Because BP MUST buy Corexit only. Not just is there some connections between BP and Nalco (Corexit) but also Exxon. This is the "wizard behind the screen." Exxon invented Coexit in various forms. Exxon (so I understand ;) still supplies the main raw materials to make the toxic dispersant.

I understand from chemical insiders that Exxon froze all sales of a product line called Norpar. A petrochemical solvant. They even called back prepaid accounts and ramped up production of this. I also understand that either Nalco or Exxon reserved up to 30 trucks a day here in Houston alone. This indicates to me the volume of product they indented to sell.

Exxon acts like a sticking distributor for the dispersant Corexit. It should be no suprise they have deals worked with other oil companies. They will all describe themselves as "partners." Take the North Slope. There are only a few companies there who really have all the control. If BP drills, Exxon piplines and transports, refines, etc. Upstream, downstream, etc. They think we (you and I) are funny for not seeing this. We scream that we suspect a conflict of interest! They know we do not instantly see that if BP stops using Corexit (Nalco) and it’s main ingredients (Exxon) that they can just charge more to BP for transport of some other product that could amount to more than the estimated oil spill clean up!

Of course that is within the context of the game they play. They make money off oil and clean up without really cleaning anything. But they didn’t expect me. I have been a monster they fed in the back yard for 20 years. BP has purchased between 30 to 80 thousand gallons of Petro Clean per year alone, at one refinery, for 15 years, here in Texas, from me, for bioremediation, tank cleaning, degassing, reducing flammable stuff, etc.

I have a few letters of recommendation and financials for this.

They (Nalco, Exxon, BP) are in a fight to the wall against my bioremediation technologies. Because if the world sees it work they not only loose sales on clean up. They have some explaining to do. They need to explain how they knew about this all along and did nothing over the decades. They need to actually clean things up.

They have been trying to steal the formulas for years. Nalco has approced us, Exxon had clean ups for us to do, etc. They typically say they need to test my products to make sure thay are safe… then ask for exact formula, CAS numbers (which identify chemicals) and the exact percentage by weight.

So they can steal formula.

This is going on now. While they were dumping Corexit my product was tied up in testing. The formulas were to be sent to… exxonmobile email addresses. The specifics were all about Nalco specification! Once they discovered my product rocked! They ordered 100,000 plus gallons then the shit hit the fan! Total regulatory freeze up for me. Nothing but testing and a shipping delay. They held up payments (which for a small family biz can be crushing) and stalled. They attempted to prevent us from telling the world we could produce anymore than 15000 gallons per day when in truth 100000 per day or more or possible for anyone under the appropriate business circumstances.

They were discovered by CNN and now mad at us. They had a confidentiality clause within the purchase order. But thier own COO anounce it to the press when drilled about toxic dispersants. Then CNN showed the month old hidden pile of Sea Brat! Now they want to hide it in a warehouse. They told us this. They said it would be put in storage, asked if we knew anyone who would buy it, then said they would pour it down the drain before they used it.

Now they are still using Corexit, the EPA is retesting my product, and BP is trying to close an oil volcano by shooting spitwads at it. All the while the press, government, public thinks throwing diapers at the spill and pouring trash into the oil gushers is an option.

Meanwhile every 5th grader out there know about bioremediation and wonders why the grownups can get it together.

John

PS you can contact me anytime at my website email.

http://trueslant.com/allisonkilkenny/2010/05/25/bp-using-toxic-dispersants-despite-availability-of-safer-alternatives/