An environmental services company and helicopter service company in the booming oil region of western North Dakota have teamed up to develop an organic solution to cleaning up oil spills on water. Bakken Environmental Services developed a coating for wood chips that attracts oil and repels water. The chips would be dropped on localized oil spills by Double M Helicopter, then cleaned up by booms and suction, according to a story in Tuesday’s Bismarck Tribune.
To see how the new technology works, check out this video demonstration produced by the two North Dakota-based companies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvrM0Ykf16U
Just like thousands of energy industry workers are flooding into North Dakota to extract valuable oil reserves locked miles below the ground, so are environmental services and oil industry support service companies working toward solutions to important environmental challenges. Developments like this one could help build the confidence of North Dakotans that oil can be extracted safely and efficiently.
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#1 from Sean Harmer on March 07, 2012
Hi Jim -
Thanks for writing this piece and giving some background on the businessman. I know this happens all the time and I’m glad to see you pushed back. There is a lot of great content that has considerable value. Just taking it is essentially stealing from that value - which someone else created.
I doubt that businessman was trying to be malicious. However, there is a whole other world of malicious plagiarism, content theft, and data mining. I was just talking with someone recently who was trying to quantify the total damage caused to businesses that manage content , classifieds, or even user data. We’ll see what she comes back with.
Perhaps you can write a piece about the ways businesses or individuals can addresses this issue when they’re the victim. Like the DMCA, Captcha, etc…