Sqrl,
I just want to add that heavy-weight environmental regulations are actually making the oil spill much worse in the gulf. Many countries have equipment that effectively sucks up oil from the surface of the ocean, separates the oil from the water, and returns the mostly-clean water back to the ocean. The water that is returned to the ocean still contains some oil, but as the water and oil separate that oil will be captured in a future pass on the oil spill.
With the way environmental regulations are written, these ships can not operate in the gulf because they're returning "Dirty" water to the ocean; and as a result the skimmers are capturing 90% to 95% water, and taking 10 times as many trips to capture as much oil as one of these other ships can. As a result of this regulation, about 10% of the oil that could potentially be captured is being captured, and a massive amount of damage is done to the environment (supposedly) in order to protect the environment.
