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BP rejects Avatar director's call for Russian mini-subs to help

© RIA Novosti . Nikolai Rutin / Go to the mediabankBP rejects Avatar director's call for Russian mini-subs to help
BP rejects Avatar director's call for Russian mini-subs to help - Sputnik International
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U.S. filmmaker James Cameron suggested to BP that Russian mini-subs Mir help to tackle oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but the oil major rejected the idea, a senior Russian researcher said on Thursday.

 U.S. filmmaker James Cameron suggested to BP that Russian mini-subs Mir help to tackle oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but the oil major rejected the idea, a senior Russian researcher said on Thursday.

Anatoly Sagalevich of Russia's Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, which owns the Mir submersibles, said he discussed with Cameron how the min-subs could help to tackle the oil spill, but British Petroleum (BP) authorities had strongly rejected the proposal.

Cameron, the director of the two highest-grossing films of all time, Avatar and Titanic, worked with the Mir mini-subs while filming in the latter 1997. The advanced deep-water equipment, used during an expedition to the sunken liner, helped to film the ship's destroyed interiors and provided the movie with more authentic sets.

Cameron took part in a meeting at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington on Tuesday at which possible solutions to the oil leak were discussed.

Speaking at the All Things Digital technology conference on Wednesday, Cameron said he offered to help with the spill, but BP turned him down.

Cameron is considered an expert in deepwater submersibles following his filming of The Abyss in 1989 and work on Titanic and a 2003 documentary on the wreck, Ghosts of the Abyss.

"Over the last few weeks I've watched, as we all have, with growing horror and heartache, watching what's happening in the Gulf and thinking those morons don't know what they're doing," he said at the conference.

Sagalevich said Cameron wanted specialists from the Institute of Oceanology to eliminate the oil spill.

Explaining BP's dismissal of his institute's expertise, Sagalevich said: "We are Russians, and if we go to the Gulf of Mexico with Mirs and do something there, the Americans would be appalled."

An explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform, owned by BP, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the Louisiana coast, on April 20, causing a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The blast claimed the lives of 11 rig workers and injured another 17.

Repeated efforts to stop the oil gushing up from the seabed have met with failure and the spill poses a major threat to the Gulf of Mexico's flora and fauna.

MOSCOW, June 3 (RIA Novosti)

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