BP Approves Use Of Kevin Costner's Oil Separation Machine

As terrible at Kevin Costner's Waterworld was, something great has actually come out of it. Costner has spent the last 15 years and $24M of his own money to develop a Waterworld-ish machine that removes oil from water. And it's going to be put to use in the Gulf.

“Kevin saw the Exxon Valdez spill, and as a fisherman and an environmentalist, it just stuck in his craw, the fact that we didn’t have separation technology,” said John Houghtaling, Mr. Costner’s lawyer and business partner as chief executive with Ocean Therapy Solutions, which developed the technology. Mr. Costner’s brother, Dan, is a scientist who worked on the project and was also in New Orleans this week. On Wednesday, BP’s chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, said that the company had approved six of Ocean Therapy’s 32 machines for testing. All boast centrifuge processing technology — giant vacuum-like machines that suck oil from water, separate the oil, store it in a tanker and send the water, 99.9 percent purified, back into the gulf. “I’m very happy the light of day has come to this,” Mr. Costner said at a news conference in New Orleans. He said he was “very sad” about the spill, “but this is why it’s developed.”