Saturday, January 10, 2015

Benefiting from the BP Oil Spill - Kevin Costner

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.

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