CARRIE KELLY The Pipeline


The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has resurrected an oil containment boom company that has been lying dormant for the past 17 years.


Three brothers are carrying on their father’s dream by marketing his patented invention, previously sold through his company OSCAR until 1993.


The fencing product, called Aqua Hedge, was used following the Exxon Valdez spill and could certainly be used in cases even as large as the Gulf oil spill to contain oil, says Stephen Neal.


Stephen and his brothers Michael and Mark are the owners of Calgary-based Canadian Floating Fence Corp.


“My dad called me up the day of the (Gulf of Mexico) oil spill and said ‘you boys need to get involved’,” Stephen says of his father James Neal, who invented the floating fence containment system in 1972 after watching a news report on an oil spill in Nova Scotia.


“My dad wondered why no one could clean it up, so he began experimenting, using the bathtub and our outdoor swimming pools as kids to test his materials,” Stephen says.


The US Coast Guard was his biggest customer, but a poor economy eventually led to a stop in production of the booms. But years later, there has been an environmental shift, and the time is right to relaunch it, he says.


“We now have investors and are going ahead with building our first full-sized working model. It’s nice to revitalize my dad’s dream.”


Since it took a few months to get the manufacturing of the product in place, they didn’t end up taking the Aqua Hedge to the Gulf of Mexico. But they now hope to get it into wide distribution so companies can have it on hand in case they ever experience a similar emergency.


“We are going to be manufacturing in Calgary,” says Stephen, adding that a second manufacturing location will be set up in Mobile, Alabama.


The Aqua Hedge is four feet high with one foot of the high-density polyethylene material set above the water and the rest of it underwater.


“It literally floats with the waves and the currents. The mesh material on the fence allows the water to go through as fast as you want. The mesh will take out everything from silt to crude oil,” says Stephen.


“This is a way to productively and quickly attend to oil spills.”


In the case of a spill in the ocean or a river, the Aqua Hedge can easily be deployed to encircle the spill and contain it until it can be skimmed out of the water, says Stephen.


“Our boom is close to 99 per cent recyclable, but it is also reusable. If there is oil on it, the oil can be reclaimed.”


The product has longevity, he says, adding that the last installation of the fencing system by his father’s company was done at the Duke Energy Plant 17 years ago and is still in operation.


Once Canadian Floating Fence Corp. gets into full manufacturing mode of the Aqua Hedge, the Neal brothers plan to patent their marshland cleaning equipment.


WESTERN CANADIAN PIPELINE | FALL 2010 15


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