BP vetted 123,000 gulf response ideas

HOUSTON, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- Less than 1 percent of the 123,000 ideas submitted to BP to help cleanup the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had any value, a manager said.

Millions of barrels of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico following the April sinking of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig. BP was able to temporarily cap the well in July with a large containment system, eventually sealing the well for good in September.

Around 123,000 ideas were submitted to the company to help address the disaster. Roughly 80,000 suggestions involved methods to seal the well and 43,000 were cleanup ideas, USA Today reports.

The Congressional Research Service found that federal funding for oil spill response was cut in half in the years following the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill off the coast of Alaska, one of the worst spills prior to the Deepwater Horizon incident.

Industry analysts said responders were using 1989 methods to tackle the Gulf of Mexico spill. Hunter Rowe, a senior manager at BP examining the proposals, said about 100 of the proposals offered modest improvements in remediation technology, however.

"If there's anything good to come out of this spill, that'll be it," he told the newspaper. "We were hoping for the breakthrough, the silver bullet. None came."