would be out of luck. she would be grounded. they ve got the flotilla of ships and brain power of dc here and on the gulf coast. this will be one more tool to help use to battle the oil spill. one way to put it, reynolds, a controller, command center telling everybody where to go. there s oil here, get the skimmer boats over here and get the oil up. one more thing. i talked about a blimp. but a-whale, we ve been talking about the skimmer ship billed as the world s largest oil skimming vessel. are they ever going to get this thing out there and working? it seems like they ve been testing and testing and testing. looks like it might be next week. you re talking about this being a whale literally. it s a freak of a boat. take a look at that thing. it s over the length of 3 1/2 football fields long, the size of a ten-story building in height in the water line to the bridge tower. it is a tremendous ship. and what they re doing is they ve been doing a series of tests. last week they had
disaster. here is what s happening now. the coast guard says a new containment vessel, the helix producer, is now partly connected to the gushing well but won t be completely hooked up until the rough seas in that area start to die down. when it s fully operational we re told it can collect up to 53,000 barrels of oil a day, raising a lot of questions about why it has just arrived there. that would double the amount being collected right now. meanwhile, the verdict is still out on the supertanker skimmer known as a whale, the coast guard saying that results so far there inconclusive, they ve had a lot of weather problems with that one as well. phil keating joins us live from grande aisle, louisiana. he s been watching this throughout the entire process. so phil, how are they going to improve a whale s performance out there? well, one of the problems that the a whale has encountered, which it was not anticipated because of the size of the ship was that the wind on the beach means five
condition of the seas. when you have three to five-foot waves, unless you have a huge skimmer with a large boom system, it becomes a problem. the a whale could be that vessel, but tests of the a whale have been inconclusive. skimming and burning, those efforts they have undertaken since almost day one, have been inconsistent. they ve got another vessel. that helix producer. that s the third one. they re going to bring in a fourth. they re in the process of hooking up the helix. two will be the primary vessels. they think they can capture the majority of it and get it to shore and get it sent out of there, but again, it all takes time. the helix producer and the other producer have been on the way for quite some time. we re going to have more on
really hampered the skimming effort offshore and near the spill site, also in mississippi, alabama and florida. so they really lost five days last week because of hurricane alex and the remaining remnants of that 120ir8 storm and now they re dealing with patchy storms and that s really hindering a lot of the efforts to try and contain and corral that oil. while we were out there, we got a chance to look up and look down and see some of the areas surrounding the a-whale that has the capacity to take in 500,000 barrels of oily water per day. there s a lot of hype, but the coast guard has been skeptical saying it needs a little bit more testing, because it s such a large tanker, but the problem is this oil spill is not one big
publicly, threatening the very close and unique relationship between two of america s most important allies in the middle east. cnn, jerusalem. the oil gushing into the gulf of mexico now has reached a disturbing new location. we ll tell you where tar balls are showing up now for the first time. also, a fresh look at the giant oil skimmer. it s called a-whale. is it working the way it s supposed to? that is the question. and queen elizabeth comes to new york. and britain s own richard quest, well, he s there to greet her. stand by for his unique take on the royal visit.