Taiwanese Can-Do Attitude

This is the sort of initiative one would have expected from Americans in the past. On the day of the Deepwater Horizon disaster a Taiwanese company sends a new cargo ship to Portugal to be refitted as a huge oil skimmer. No guarantees from BP or the US Government that it will be approved or even needed. The engineers draft the plans while the boat is in transit, and the work is done in a month or so. The ship is now waiting in Louisiana to be tried out. It could suck up 500,000 bbl of oily water a day, making a huge dent in the floating oil.