Most people may know Kevin Costner mainly as an actor or
even maybe for his singing, production, or directing, but he has accomplished
much more than this. Kevin Costner is an entrepreneurial icon and a very successful
business investor. Most know Kevin Costner from his leading roles in the films
The Big Chill (1983), For Love of the game (1999) and many more. In 1978,
Costner graduated from California
State University with a degree in business.
In 1993, Costner obtained a licensed patent from the
Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory for an oil- water separator,
and since then he has invested about $20 million in an oil separator produced
by Louisiana-based Ocean Therapy Solutions. Costner’s company which now offers
these oil-water separators is now called Blue Water
Planet Solutions. Costner’s company stated that the way this technology
works is “By spinning two
fluids of different densities within a rotating container designed and built
using this patented technology, the lighter fluid is forced toward the center
of the rotor." “This allows dense, viscous oil to be removed from much
lighter water.”
In 2010,
the BP Oil Spill occurred and for a total of 87 days, over 200 million gallons of oil was driven into the Gulf
of Mexico, making it the largest oil spill in the history of the United States.
The primary explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 people and
injured 17 others. Many people’s livelihoods suffered because of the BP oil spill,
but Costner actually benefited from this disaster because his company played an
important role in cleaning up the major oil spill. Because Costner’s company
had the proper centrifuge technology to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico, BP signed
a $16 million contract with Ocean Therapy Solutions (Blue Water Planet
Solutions) for their Equipment and technology.
