Harnessing the Grid

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY   View Document Here


Mr. Andrew J. Cipollo, Irrevocable Trustee of the Atlas Monetary International Trust (“AMIT“ or the “Trust” or the “Howard Hughes Trust”) proposes to assist British Petroleum (BP) and other agencies in solving the emergency elimination of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. AMIT offers the capability to close the leaking well-head by employing the Glomar Explorer, which is owned by the Trust. The Glomar Explorer has the capability to perform deep-sea (up to 12,000 feet deep) operations such as excising the structure surrounding the well-head and placing the valve cap on the well-head to shut off the oil flow.

The Glomar Explorer was used by the Trust to raise a Soviet sub in 1975, which called for some of the unusual tasks cited for the current emergency. The Glomar Explorer is the only ship in the world known to have this capability at such depths. The ship is reported to be on sub-lease to Marathon Oil Co. consortium in Indonesian waters at last report, but not in use and could be diverted to the Gulf of Mexico as a National Emergency act.

In addition, Mr. Cipollo has come up with a system, in which he proposes to deploy using old stripped down transport aircraft that can be floated to vacuum the surface oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Such a system can be acquired relatively rapidly and outfitted with off-the-shelf equipment inexpensively. It is estimated that such a conversion can be completed in 30 days per aircraft working 24 hours per day with several crews simultaneously. Tentatively, AMIT plans to build 10 systems at the vacated Roosevelt Roads Naval Base in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, which the Trust has acquired. The aircraft can be loaded aboard sea-going barges from the Base’s port facilities and transported into the Gulf of Mexico for deployment.

To execute the Program, the Trust will form a Project Management Team to work with BP and all the agencies involved in the well-head shut-down and the oil clean-up program utilizing the Glomar Explorer and a Stripped Down DC-8 Skimmer System designed by Mr. Cipollo. The Team will be led by Mr. Stanley Spector, President & CEO of Semispec International, Inc. the supplier of the Gallium Arsenide/Concentrator Photovoltaic Systems being deployed by AMIT in its National Economic Program (see harnessingthegrid.com). Mr. Spector has 50 years experience successfully managing major aerospace projects. He is the “father” of the Apache helicopter.

Mr. Cipollo, Mr. Spector and all of the team members are prepared to give their maximum support to this project in the knowledge that this is a National emergency with dire consequences for the Nation. It is our sincere belief that this program is the solution to the problem in conjunction with all the other efforts being made by the many dedicated people now involved. AMIT with Howard Hughes and their people have a history of stepping up when called upon to help the Nation in its time of need.


PHASE I
UNDERWATER WELL-HEAD CAPPING

Mr. Andrew J. Cipollo, AMIT Irrevocable Trustee proposes to deploy the Glomar Explorer, a deep sea drilling ship as shown in Figures 1 - 4 to excise the structure around the well-head of the leaking BP site in the Gulf of Mexico on the basis of a National emergency. The ship is believed to be located in Indonesian waters for Marathon Oil Co. on a lease from the U.S. Navy. The ship is owned by AMIT, which completely supports the deployment if such arrangements can be made with all the parties involved. In view of the seriousness of the current problem, all the parties have a direct interest in the solution and are expected to fully cooperate.

The Glomar Explorer has unique capabilities to perform the proposed mission. The vertical structure lowered in the water has the capability to mount a robot adaptable to sensors, torch cutters, mechanical cutters and scissors for clamping objects. The system is controlled from the ship by observing the underwater site with its own cameras, which can be monitored in the control room. The ship is precisely positioned by using GPS and a stabilization system in roll, pitch, yaw and planar motion by the use of stern and bow thrusters and gimbaled mounts for the vertical structure to keep the working end precisely over a well-head up to a depth of 20,000 ft.

Based on a preliminary assessment, the structure around the well-head could be cut away from the top down with a round saw larger than the well-head to expose it for further service. A valve cap could then be placed down through the structure and clamped on top of the well-head and the valve closed. It is estimated that this could be completed within a week of the Glomar Explorer’s arrival on site.

If the Glomar Explorer is in Indonesian waters, it would take approximately 17 days or sooner to arrive on site via the Panama Canal, which it has transited before. The ship is not in use at this time and an earlier arrival might be possible.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PHASE I

Mr. Stanley R. Spector, President & CEO of Semispec International, Inc. will head up a project Management Team acquired from his Company and other members of AMIT’s organization, including Mr. Cipollo. The Team members have many years of successful program management experience on major projects and we expect this to be a lean team, with dependency on the manpower already in place as much as possible and avoiding unnecessary duplication of effort.

Success comes about by close coordination and communication with all the participating organizations, which will be extant in this program. The Project Management organization will manage Phase I, Underwater Well-Head Capping and Phase II, Surface Oil Recovery & Disposal for the Trust’s role. The principal AMIT organizations will be Systems Engineering for both Phases and Manufacturing for Phase II, plus the usual staff operations. Systems Engineering will prepare the Work Breakdown Structure for both Phases and record and control performance and cost progress versus budget for maximum transparenc

of AMIT’s operations. Systems engineers will be assigned to work with and assist BP in the recovery program as needed in executing the tasks, which will be defined when AMIT joins the operations underway.

THE GLOMAR EXPLORER

Figure 1. Glomar Explorer


Figure 2. Glomar Explorer Machinery
A view of the complex machinery used to raise and lower the docking legs. The middle left shows one of 4 cranes on the Explorer.

Figure 3. Cross-section of the Glomar Explorer


Figure 4. Control Equipment for Recovery Operations

A van, put aboard ship, controlled the recovery equipment. It was driven to the dock and one of the Explorer's cranes lowered the van below open deck plates. Through these monitors, technicians viewed the Soviet Golf II submarine and controlled the robotic equipment to grapple the sub and bring it to the surface. The equipment was assembled at a Lockheed facility, sort of a Lockheed "Marine Skunk Works". The Explorer's submarine recovery crew was trained with this equpment using a mockup of the Russian sub they were to recover.

Glomar Explorer Partial History
While everyone admired the ship's enormous lifting capacity, it seemed no one was much interested in operating the vessel because of her staggering cost. From March to June 1976, the General Services Administration (GSA) published advertisements inviting businesses to submit proposals for leasing the ship. By the end of four months, GSA had received a total of seven bids, including a $2.00 offer submitted by a Lincoln, Nebraska college student, and a $1.98 offer from a man who said he planned to seek a government contract to salvage the nuclear reactors of two United States submarines. The Lockheed Missile and Space Company submitted a 3 million dollar, two-year lease proposal contingent upon the company's ability to secure financing. But the GSA had already extended the bid deadline twice to allow Lockheed to find financial backers for its project without success and the agency concluded that there was no reason to believe Lockheed would find the funds in the near future.
Although the scientific community rallied to the defense of the Hughes Glomar Explorer, urging the President to maintain the ship as a national asset, no agency or department of the government wanted to assume the maintenance and operating cost. So in September 1976, the GSA turned the Hughes Glomar Explorer over to the Navy for mothballing, and in January 1977, after she was prepared for dry docking at a cost of more than two million dollars, the ship became part of the navy's Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet.
Leasing
Then, in September 1978, a consortium called Ocean Minerals Company of Mountain View, California announced that it had leased the Hughes Glomar Explorer and that in November would begin testing a prototype deepsea mining system in the Pacific Ocean. The consortium included subsidiaries of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, Royal Dutch Shell, and Boskalis Westminster Group NV of the Netherlands. Another partner, and the prime contractor, was the Lockheed Missile and Space Company.
In 1997, the ship was taken to Cascade General for modifications that converted her to a dynamically-positioned deep sea drilling ship, capable of drilling in waters of 7,500 feet up to 20,000 ft. The conversion cost over $180 million and was completed during the first quarter of 1998 and covered by the Hughes Trust.
The conversion of the vessel in 1997 was the start of a 30-year lease from the U.S. Navy to Global Marine Drilling. Global Marine merged with Santa Fe International Corporation in 2001 to become GlobalSantaFe Corporation, which merged with Transocean Inc. in November 2007 and operates the vessel as the GSF Explorer.
The GSF Explorer is currently on hire to a consortium led by Marathon Oil, to drill offshore in Indonesia until March 2012 although its reported to be idle at this time.

TABLE I. GLOMAR EXPLORER SPECIFICATIONS

Name:
USNS Glomar Explorer
Builder:
Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., Chester, Pennsylvania
Launched:
1 November 1972
In service:
1 July 1973
Fate:
Leased
General characteristics
Type:
Drillship
Displacement:
50,500 long tons (51,310 t) light
Length:
619 ft (189 m)
Beam:
110 ft (33 m)
Draft:
46 ft (14 m)
Propulsion:
Diesel-electric
5 × Nordberg 16-cylinder diesel engines driving 4,160 V AC generators turning 6 × 2,200 hp (1.6 MW) DC shaft motors, twin shafts
Speed:
10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)


PHASE II
SURFACE OIL RECOVERY AND DISPOSAL

SUMMARY

Mr. Cipollo has conceived of a simple and inexpensive way to recover the surface oil by using old, large, stripped-down fixed-wing transport aircraft to vacuum the oil into large wing tanks of the aircraft where the oil is treated and fed into a furnace as fuel to produce steam for electric power generation and mixed with the oil in the wings. Figure 5 illustrates the concept.

AIRCRAFT APPLICATION

There are many old and retired fixed wing aircraft available such as the DC-8 as illustrated, in Figure 5., which can be stripped down to a basic shell and sealed with styrofoam to make them floating platforms to skim the surface oil and burn it off as a fuel supply for generating electricity and steam in equipment installed in the aircraft as shown in Figure 5. AMIT proposes to acquire 10 aircraft and modify them as shown in Figure 5, at an estimated cost of $1 million each. The aircraft will be brought to the site by barge and lowered into the water in the vicinity of the oil spill. The aircraft operating crew then would power the plane forward with the electrically powered fans, which can be individually controlled to provide directional control for turns, and forward and reverse motion of the aircraft.

OIL RECOVERY AND DISPOSAL

As the aircraft is propelled forward, the leading edge of the aircraft’s wings forcefully picks up the surface oil into holding tanks in the wing. Seawater steam from the self-contained steam generators in the fuselage is injected into the wing tanks, which lightens the collected oil. This wing tank oil is then agitated and aerated to prepare it for burning and vacuumed into the aircraft filter for carbon collection. The fuel then goes to the furnace to heat seawater in pipes surrounding the furnace to produce steam for the steam turbine to generator to supply electricity for the operation of the propulsion fans and other aircraft equipment. Thus, it’s a self-contained system recovering and disposing of the oil at the same time, with no pollution or exhaust, which is recycled.

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

The aircraft and system equipment acquisition, modification and installation would take approximately 30 days each to complete at an estimated cost of $1 million. It is proposed to use as much off-the-shelf new or used equipment as possible to avoid unnecessary engineering and fabrication costs and minimum time for completion.

AMIT can perform the work at Roosevelt Roads Navel Base in Ceiba, Puerto Rico. AMIT recently acquired the Base to conduct its National Economic Program (see “harnessingthegrid.com”), which includes providing such services worldwide in the near future with such assets as the Stripped Down DC-8 Skimmer System and the Glomar Explorer, in emergencies.


Figure 5. STRIPPED DOWN DC- 8 SKIMMER SYSTEM


PROJECT MANAGEMENT PHASE II

As previously noted, AMIT will carry its greatest responsibility in Phase II. The Project Team headed up by Mr. Spector (see attached resume) is an official Advisor to AMIT in addition to his role as President and CEO of Semispec International, Inc. Woodland Hills, CA. Mr. Spector has volunteered to take on this additional duty from his normal management responsibilities in producing Gallium Arsenide/Concentrator Photovoltaic (GaAs/CPV) Systems for the National Economic Program for the Trust. He’s the “father” of the Apache helicopter and successfully managed numerous other weapon system programs.

The AMIT project team will coordinate with all the agencies involved in the BP rig oil spill recovery program in the Gulf of Mexico. They will immediately make contact with senior officers of the U.S. Coast Guard and the BP Recovery Team to apprise them of this proposal and the related logistics and time schedule involved in its execution in addition to arranging for financial assistance to implement the proposed Program.

PROJECT FUNDING

The AMIT Project Team will seek a retainer of $5 million to initiate the movement of the Glomar Explorer and make the vessel ready for the closing of the BP well-head. In addition, the Project Team will be assembled from many of the technical and management people involved with AMIT on its National Economic Program. AMIT leaders and team members recognize the urgency of the Gulf oil spill and its horrific consequences to Gulf states and businesses as well as the Nation. The Team is prepared to give the highest priority to this project at the expense of their other activities.

Project funds can be placed in any bank account accessible for draw down by the Project Management Team. For convenience, the Team has access to an Atlas New Mexico Holding Corp. (an AMIT subsidiary) bank account in the Wells Fargo Bank, of Farmington, New Mexico. AMIT will perform the work on a cost-plus contract in view of the inability to assess the actual costs at this time. The Project Team will provide complete control of the progress and expenditures with transparency for the funder to assure the integrity of its efforts.


STANLEY R. SPECTOR

Engineering & Management Background

Mr. Spector is an international expert in solar energy systems design and engineering development with over 25 years experience in this field. In addition, he has over 50 years experience in the management and development of major projects. He has been a founder of several companies in the semiconductor and solar energy business He has been primarily responsible for the engineering and development of photovoltaic power plants, in addition to several weapon system programs for the U.S. and several foreign countries. He has a reputation of being a visionary “who can do the impossible”.

Mr. Spector's background reflects extensive experience and responsibilities in corporate management, engineering management, systems design, program management,, manufacturing and marketing working for such companies as Unisys, Hughes Aircraft Co, Hughes Helicopters, Kollsman Instrument Co., Intermetal Technology and Semispec International.

In addition to solar systems, Mr. Spector was also a senior executive in the aerospace business in charge of the systems engineering for major projects. He is the “father” of the Apache helicopter having participated in its original design and operations analysis. He carried out corporate responsibilities in engineering management including: research and development programs; and organization and management of Systems Engineering and Systems Analysis operations. During this period, Mr. Spector also initiated design and development of several new weapon systems for foreign governments. The latter resulted in doubling the Company's sales and increasing profits 5-fold in two years, and the Apache program resulted in an increase of sales and profits 25-fold in five years.

In his mid-years, Mr. Spector served as an Advanced Programs Manager in high technology management including systems design and program management for an airborne weapon system resulting in over one-half billion dollars in sales and
$75 million in profit for a major corporation.

In his early career, Mr. Spector was also a product and production engineer for flight control systems where he successfully and profitably took precision electro-mechanical equipment from the drawing board into production and turnkey phases.

Mr. Spector is a published author with numerous papers on high technology systems concepts. He has been recognized in the 20th/21st Editions of Who's Who in Finance and Industry.

As a Reserve Colonel in U.S. Air Force intelligence, he uncovered a major Soviet threat to national security directly resulting in a presidential action to initiate a
$1 billion project to counter the threat. In addition, he was honored for his special work for the Air Staff with the Presidential Award of the Meritorious Service Medal while he commanded a special Reserve Unit at the Rand Corporation, a think tank.

Mr. Spector holds a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from New York University and a Master of Science Degree in Industrial and Management Engineering from Columbia University. He is also a graduate of the Air Command & Staff College, the Industrial College of the Armed Forces and the Air War College.