Interview with Kenneth "Shaw" Thompson III: Oil Mop president and

New Orleans CityBusiness, Aug 28, 2006 by Tommy Santora

Oil Mop LLC was established more than 30 years ago in Belle Chasse as one of the first 24-hour oil spill emergency response firms in the Gulf South. It has since handled thousands of oil and hazardous materials spills. Kenneth "Shaw" Thompson III, Oil Mop president and CEO, says the company handles up to 40 calls a week. Thompson began his career as an oil spill field responder with Oil Mop in the summer before his last semester in college.

Do you enjoy fieldwork or the administrative side?

I enjoy the fieldwork and still try to get out in the field as much as I can. I like being in the field and I think in a service business you have to be in touch with your clients and familiar with what you guys have to do on a daily basis.

What's more important - getting the job done right or containing the spill quickly?

The key element is getting the job done safely. Behind that is getting it done right and hopefully that would also mean getting it done quickly. We certainly want to get on and off the project as quickly as possible for our clients to resume business.

What are your personal communications tools?

I carry two cell phones, Nextel radio, Blackberry and an air card for my laptop. Communications are critical in our business. If we can't be found, then we have problems. If you can't find me, you're not trying.

Your business counts on oil companies making mistakes but you have diversified over the years to offer other services. What else do you offer?

Besides emergency response, which is our specialty and our main line of business, we do tank cleaning, sell a lot of materials and equipment for companies to clean up their own spills in-house like containment boom and oil skimmers.

We have a transportation division that provides disposal boxes and trucks to handle company's wastes to facilities of their choice. We do a lot of safety training for our employees and offer outside training to our customers.

Is your emergency response more like an on-call fire station or a NASCAR pit crew?

Probably a fire station. The only big difference is we don't have the luxury of being subsidized by the private government when nothing is going on. Our challenge is if there's not an emergency, we need to find other productive things for our employees to do until that bell rings. We have a backlog of routine jobs that don't necessarily have a timeline on them but are important to our services.

What's the most challenging spill you had pre- and post-Katrina?

Post-Katrina, there was a tank facility in Pointe a la Hache that had a large amount of oil spilled in a remote location. There was no road access. There were no hotels. We found resources to house and feed several hundred people on site involved in the cleanup. Pre- Katrina, we were involved in the Exxon-Valdez cleanup in another remote location where we had to find a way to bring supplies in. The ones in remote locations and long distances away are the most challenging.

What's the most unusual spill you have had to clean up?

On the West Bank when a hot sauce manufacturer had a tank rupture and it filled the streets with hot sauce. It created an interesting and difficult response. That material is best left in the bottle.