"While its stature is impressive," said Federal On-Scene Coordinator Admiral Paul Zukunft, "A Whale is not ideally suited to the needs of this response."

The supertanker sailed to the United States from Portugal last month after the joint cleanup effort decided to expand its fleet of oil skimmers to include mega-sized ships such as the Helix Producer, as the underwater oil leak continued to spew uncontrolled.

The A Whale has cuts in its sides to ingest oily water and then separate the two liquids, storing the oil and expelling the ocean water. It was rated to suck up as many as 21 million gallons of oily water a day.

However, after an extended trial period began July 2 during which the supertanker was put through its paces in open Gulf water, Zukunft announced it would not be used in the cleanup operation.

A report by a multiagency team under the supervision of the US Coast Guard said "the amount of oil recovered was negligible, andlimited oil beyond a sheenwas found in the cargo tanks" of the A Whale.

Therefore, the 340-meter (1,115-foot) A Whale "will not be deployed as a part of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill response," the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center said in a statement.

In a 24 hour testing period, it added, the 590 smaller and more agile skimmers removed more than 25,551 barrels of oil and recovered 12,800 barrels of oil at the source.

The team said that because the BP oil spill "consists of relatively smaller patches and numerous ribbons spread very thinly across a great distance, the mission has required the deployment of smaller skimmers with the agility needed to maneuverand pursue oil in both crowded and open waters."

The joint information center said that as of Friday there were 593 skimmers in operation in the Gulf, five times as many as in early June.

Overall, more than 6,800 vessels were assisting in the containment and cleanup efforts, including skimmers, tugs, barges, and recovery vessels

"Nearly33million gallons of an oil-water mix have been recovered and387controlled burns have been conducted, efficiently removingan additional 11million gallons of oil from the open water in an effort to protect shoreline and wildlife," the report said.

The worst oil spill in US history and possibly of all time began with the April 22 sinking of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig, two days after it exploded killing 11 workers.

earlier related report
BP burns more Gulf oil than Exxon Valdez spill: official
New Orleans, Louisiana (AFP) July 16, 2010 - BP recovery operations in the Gulf of Mexico have now burned off more oil than all the crude which spilled from the Exxon Valdez in 1989, a senior US response official said Friday.

Since operations started in April after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank off the Louisiana coast, more than 270,000 barrels (11.3 million gallons) of oil have been burned in hundreds of controlled operations, US Coast Guard Rear Admiral Paul Zunkunft told reporters.

By comparison, about 10.8 million gallons spilled into Alaska's Prince William Sound 21 years ago when the Exxon Valdez tanker struck a reef, triggering what was then the worst oil spill in US waters.

"The in situ burns have exceeded 270,000 barrels, far in excess of the entire Exxon Valdez spill," said Zunkunft, the federal on-scene coordinator.

Another 800,000 barrels of oil-water mixture has been skimmed from the surface by a flotilla of thousands of boats involved in clean-up and containment operations.

Zunkunft said oil recovery rates from skimming have ranged between 15 percent and 60 percent of the skimmed oil-water mixture.

He pointed to the past week of favorable weather conditions that have allowed authorities to ramp up operations and reach a teams reached a symbolic milestone shortly before the well was temporarily capped.

"On Wednesday of this week, even while the well was still releasing -- we did not have full containment -- it was the first day during this spill, with all the hard work, that we actually took more oil out of the Gulf of Mexico than went into it," Zunkunft said.

But he also pointed to significant setbacks, including official reports Friday that the highly anticipated A Whale super-skimmer, a Taiwanese tanker assisting in the clean-up, has been a failure.

The 1,100-foot (333-meter) vessel, with six vents on either side of its bow designed to suck in water and oil and then separate the two, has been "very ineffective," Zunkunft said.

The ship arrived in the Gulf on June 30 with claims it could separate up to half a million gallons of oil per day.

But after several test runs followed by tinkering with the ship, "the amount of oil recovered by A Whale is nil," the admiral said.

"We really wanted to see this work," he said, adding that the ship will need further modifications if it is to have any effectiveness in scooping up the patches of light sweet crude floating on the surface.

"We still have a lot of oil out in the Gulf of Mexico," he said.

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