The new oil boom

It’s a good time to be an oil specialist. Lucrative contracts beckon both from BP and the US government as they prepare for the obligatory Natural Resource Damage Assessment. But there are strings attached in either case: scientists probably won’t be able to publish their research for confidentiality reasons. Some academics have already declined offers for this reason. There is, of course, nothing unusual about secrecy rules for work contracted out to a private company or government-backed research with legal implications. But it could mean that, in the absence of independent funding for such work, a detailed understanding of the effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill will never be made public

On the other hand,oil clean-up technology could be improved by the carrot of a $1.4m prize dangled by the X Prize Foundation, a Californian organisation that aims to stimulate “radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.” It previously offered a $10m award for developing a privately funded, manned spacecraft, won by the company Scaled Composites, now working on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic commercial spaceflight programme. Entries for the oil prize are already being prepared. The foundation, it seems, has now noticed there are better ways to spend its money.