Kevin Costner's company to help clean up oil spill

A device developed by Hollywood actor Kevin Costner's company could help clean up the massive oil spill that has contaminated the Gulf of Mexico over the past few weeks.

BP spokesman Mark Proegler said that the oil major had approved a test of Costner's Ocean Therapy device to help the company clean up the Gulf after its Deepwater Horizon drill rig exploded and began spewing oil into the water.

Costner, along with his brother Dan, has huge investments in Ocean Therapy Solutions, a Louisiana-based firm company that has invented a $24 million centrifuge machine called Ocean Therapy that can apparently separate oil from contaminated seawater.

The machine -- described as a processing device that separates oil from water -- was first developed by scientists hired by Costner following the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska, reports the New York Post.

"The machines are basically sophisticated centrifuge devices that can handle a huge volume of water and separate at unprecedented rates," Ocean Therapy Solutions CEO John Houghtaling told CBS's New Orleans affiliate WWL-TV.

"They were developed from older centrifuge technology. Normal centrifuge machines are very slow and sensitive to different ratios of oil to water mixtures at intake. Costner has been funding a team of scientists for the last 15 years to develop a technology which could be used for massive oil spills."

"Years before I got involved, oil spills came and I would wonder why we couldn't clean this up," he said.