Archive for June 10th, 2010

Oil Justice

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

I look at BP’s cheery full-page ad on page 8-A of Key West citizen. The cheery ad about what a great claims payer BP is.
 
Then, I look at the distressing article on page 7-A, reporting the difficulty, frustration, terror and mounting rage Gulf coast people in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida are experiencing in their attempts to get BP to pay their claims.
 
Then, I look at the front-page article about all the law suits out of the Keys that already have been filed against BP by people who do not trust BP to honor their claims, despite BP’s promise that people who have claims filed by BP do not waive their rights to sue BP later on.
 
Then, I wonder what in the hell Key West Citizen is doing, letting BP keep running it truly offensive full-page ads every day of the week, when the cost of those ads could be used to pay claims of Keys people against BP?
 
Then, I wonder why Key West Citizen has not slammed BP for spending all of that money running full-page ads, insted of paying claims pronto?
 
Then, I wonder why Key West Citizen has not published an Editorial demanding that BP not pay dividends to its stockholders this year; an Editorial demanding that BP escrow all of what would have been paid in dividends for claims and environmental clean up and restoration? After all, BP’s first duty is not to his stockholders, but to the people and planet is has ravaged.
 
Then, I wonder why every newspaper in American is not screaming for the same thing?
 
Then, I wonder why President Obama, who wants to kick ass, has not seized all of BP’s American assets, as collateral for the payment of claims and environmental clean up and restoration?
 
Then, I wonder why President Obama has not already filed suit, on behalf of America, against BP in England and in the World Court at Hague, Netherlands, demanding an injunction against BP paying its dividend, and asking for unspecified damages caused by BP to America?
 
Then I remember this that I read online yesterday:

I’m going to hazard a few predictions here. I hope I’m wrong. If I am you can crucify me later.
 
Neither BP nor anyone else has any workable idea how to stop the leak. If they did it would have been stopped by now.
 
The leak will continue to flow into the ocean for the foreseeable future, until the reservoir pressure drops to lower than the pressure of the weight of the ocean pressing down on it.
 
At some point perhaps the seabed will collapse into an emptying reservoir and there will be seabed earthquakes? And maybe tsunamis?
 
BP will not be “shoved aside”. The government will not take over the management of the disaster response. Neither BP nor any of its management will face any substantive sanctions or criminal charges for this. Nor will BP be “debarred” from government contracts by the EPA.
 
For a very simple and obvious reason.
 
The government has the largest military in the world to supply and operate, and the government has two military occupations in progress to run.

 
BP has been one of the biggest suppliers of fuel to the Pentagon in recent years, with much of its oil going to U.S. military operations in the Mideast. (It sold $2.2 billion in oil to the Pentagon last year, making it
No. 1 among all the oil companies in sales to the military, according to the latest figures from the Defense Energy Support Center.)

 
The government is going to do everything they can possibly do to keep BP alive and healthy, to keep their largest supplier of fuel to the military operating profitably and supplying that fuel.
 
Ken Salazar spouting his “”We will keep our boot on their neck until the job gets done” line to the media is PR to keep the peasants from burning down the castle, and is probably the only way he has of avoiding being made the scapegoat and saving himself.
 
Sorry about the Gulf of Mexico, folks. It’s being sacrificed for the (heave) greater good.
 
All Antemedius stories about BP’s Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil leak are
here.
  
Then I remember this that I found online yesterday:

Over two weeks later US Senator Nelson [Florida, former astronaut] confirms Multiple Leaks from the Sea Floor Surrounding the Oil Rig 06/07/1020

To date we have yet to here a single report from the Main Stream Media about these explosions or the additional leaks that have been reported as a result of these explosions, until now.
FireDogLake Reports US Senator Nelson From Florida has confirmed these reports today on MSNBC:

Oil and gas are leaking from the seabed surrounding the BP Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida told Andrea Mitchell today on MSNBC. Nelson, one of the most informed and diligent Congressmen on the BP gulf oil spill issue, has received reports of leaks in the well, located in the Mississippi Canyon sector. This is potentially huge and devastating news.

If Nelson is correct in that assertion, and he is smart enough to not make such assertions lightly, so I think they must be taken at face value, it means the well casing and well bore are compromised and the gig is up on containment pending a completely effective attempt to seal the well from the bottom via successful “relief wells”. In fact, I have confirmed with Senator Nelson’s office that they are fully aware of the breaking news and significance of what the Senator said to Andrea Mitchell.

Furthermore, contrary to the happy talk propounded by BP, the Obama Administration and the press, the likely success of the “relief well” effort on the first try in August is nowhere near a certainty; and certainly nowhere near the certainty it is being painted as.

The firedoglake blog is reporting

 A series of explosions appears to have collapsed the seafloor and blown up the BOP at the well head. Oil and gas are billowing out of a depression in the seafloor where the BOP used to be at an exponentially greater rate than anything seen before.

I was to busy writing Live BP Gulf Oil Spill Webcam Video Reveals 5 Leaks and took my eye off of the BP Live Video Webcam of Gulf Oil Spill so I can’t confirm this.
 
While the live feed still shows the leak is intact people watching the feed are suggesting the cameras are now looping old video feed.

Could This Be The Start Of The Following Extinction Event Posted to Slashdot?

From Slashdot:

Here’s a listing of several scientific and economic guides for estimating the volume of flow of the leak in the Gulf of Mexico erupting at a rate of somewhere around 1 million barrels per day. A new video released shows the largest hole spewing oil and natural gas from an aperture 5 feet in diameter at a rate of approximately 4 barrels per second. The oil coming up through 5,000 feet of pressurized salt water acts like a fractionating column. What you see on the surface is just around 20% of what is actually underneath the approximate 9,000 square miles of slick on the surface. The natural gas doesn’t bubble to the top but gets suspended in the water, depleting the oxygen from the water. BP would not have been celebrating with execs on the rig just prior to the explosion if it had not been capable producing at least 500,000 barrels per day — under control. If the rock gave way due to the out-of-control gushing (or due to a nuke being detonated to contain the leak), it could become a Yellowstone Caldera type event, except from below a mile of sea, with a 1/4-mile opening, with up to 150,000 psi of oil and natural gas behind it, from a reserve nearly as large as the Gulf of Mexico containing trillions of barrels of oil. That would be an Earth extinction event.

Then I remember this email I received yesterday:
 
Sloan - 
Two things:
 
1. There’s no question, dispersants are being heavily used subsea where the oil is leaking out from under the LMRP cap ( the thing BP put to catch some of the leaking oil ). At the wellhead there are currently two ROV’s that are applying dispersants 24/7 to the leaking oil. 
 
You can see all the subsea ROV’s working at once at http://bp.isevil.org . The ones applying dispersant have the words “dispersant ops” at the bottom of their data readouts. 

2. This spill has essentially happened before, in the Gulf of Mexico, in 1979. So the guy saying this is the first time is spouting complete BS.  That spill was called Ixtoc 1 ( more information here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill ) and spilled close to 150 million gallons into the GOM. They tried much of the same crap to stop Ixtoc. The junk shot, the top hat (they called it “the sombrero “) and the top kill. Eventually, after 9 months the only thing to stop it was relief wells. Video here  - http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/rachel-maddow-more-spills-change-more-they

Eric, Big Pine Key 
 
Then I remember another email I received yesterday:
 
Sloan,
 
Do we now have an “Aahahh!” moment on why BP hasn’t tried to use microbes?  In their shortsighted, panicked, desire to save the well and limit public awareness of their big screw up, they chose to use dispersants to conceal the magnitude of their foul deeds, not thinking of ways to clean up their mess.  Now when they learn microbes could have been used effectively for the oil on the surface, they become aware that their earlier mischief has rendered microbal use much less effective or ineffective against the monstrous columns of coagulated raw oil they have unleashed on Mother Earth.  The truth is not in them.
 
Hawkman 
 
(An Alabama lawyer, Hawkman once was “court counsel” for a smallish oil and gas company.)
 
Then I remember another email I received yesterday, from a Monroe County employee who forgot to send the Malox: 
 
Sloan,I think you’ll be interested in this report blog on the seabed collapse
and the well casing itself is believed to be not only damaged, but
destroyed by the explosion. There is a lot more going on here than a
relief well or two can solve.
 
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/06/09/gulf-oil-spill-sea-floor-col
lapse-seabed-leaks-prevent-bp-capping-2/
Gulf Oil Spill Sea Floor Collapse and Seabed Leaks May Prevent BP From Capping Well.BP Gulf oil spill crater
   
   
   
Over Two weeks after it was widely reported that a series of  explosions caused a sea floor to collapse caused a series of new leaks on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor by those watching the BP live oil leak cam the Government is now investigating those reports.
I first reported here a series of those explosion of oil and debris continued and caused topkill to fail although there was no immediate mention of the event in the media, until now.
Last night Countdown Keith Olberman said their is evidence now that an underground blowout may be happening, oil seeping out of BP’s leaking well through the ocean floor.
Possible Seafloor Gas Leak
Could this be one of many possible leaks on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico?

Olbermann reports that BP discovered during the topkill procedure BP discovered the well was broken beneath the subsurface and the mud being shot into the well was making it out to the side and into the rock surrounding the well.

Rob Cavner, an oil industry expert, called directly on BP to be transparent about the explosions that caused top-kill to fall and address the internet rumors of the massive subsurface leaks caused by an underground blowout.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that BP concluded that its “top-kill” attempt may have failed due to a blown disk inside the well about 1,000 feet below the ocean floor that may have allowed drilling mud to escape from the well into the rock formation outside the wellbore.
 
Senator Bill Nelson reports that the well casing itself may have been actually pierced, which now are confirmed by multiple sources, indicate the “problem could be just enormous”.
 
How enormous? Well as Keith Olberman puts it “what’s worse than doomsday”?
 
These new leaks in the well casing are in addition to well casing blowout that an an internal White House investigation fingers for causing the oil rig to explode in the first place.
 
These new leak we are facing because could mean we have oil gushing up in multiple disparate places on the Gulf sea floor and could also indicate that the relief well that BP is counting on to cap the Gulf oil spill won’t be the final solution to stop the leaking oil well.
 
Oil could begin leaking from any crack or crevice in the surrounding sea floor and the entire area could be leaking like a sponge.
Is there two leaks in this video? Notice the main leak and what appears to be a second leak coming from the sea floor on the right.

During Top Kill Mud shoots from under the BOP indicating a separate leak may becoming from the seafloor

The ultimate solution that BP has been touting almost since the disaster began has been “relief wells.”

Company CEO Tony Hayward has repeatedly told the public that the strategy is a sure thing.
 
However Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor and oil industry expert, says that these these leaks in the well casing may cause problems with BP’s plan to cap the oil leak using a relief well and hold BP from capping the leak until christmas.
 
In fact last year’s Montara oil leak in the Timor Sea took 5 passes before the relief well actually hit the leaking well casing and this operation is further complicated by a much higher leak rate, twice the distance under the seafloor, hurricanes, dense rock and other problems.
 
As I have already reported, experts have also warned that if the relief well blows an additional 240,000 barrels of oil per day could begin spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.
 
How likely is it that the relief well might blow?
 
We can’t be sure but nola.com reports that a relief well exploded just last year destroying a second well and destroying another rig
 
Even if the oil well is capped in accordance to BP’s August time frame the results will still be catastrophic. 
 
Take for example NOAA current 72 hour forecast for the area of uncertainty which contains the “hundreds of thousands of smaller spills” that the BP Gulf oil spill has split up into.
 
BP Gulf oil spill 72 Hour Uncertainty Trajectory 6/08/2010
BP Gulf oil spill 72 Hour Uncertainty Trajectory 6/08/2010
Gulf Oil Spill Over Pittsburgh PA
Gulf Oil Spill Over Pittsburgh PA
Gulf Oil Spill Over Sacramento California
Gulf Oil Spill Over Sacramento California
Gulf Oil Spill Over Great Britain
Gulf Oil Spill Over Great Britain
Gulf Oil Spill Over Paris France
Gulf Oil Spill Over Paris France
BP Gulf Oil Spill Over Rome Italy
BP Gulf Oil Spill Over Rome Italy
Compare your city or country to the size of the BP Gulf oil spill.
 
And prominent oil industry insider Matt Simmons believes that the well casing may have been destroyed when the oil rig exploded.
Simmons was an energy adviser to President George W. Bush, is an adviser to the Oil Depletion Analysis Center, and is a member of the National Petroleum Council and the Council on Foreign Relations.
 
On May 27th, Simmons addressed this issue on MSNBC:

On May 26th, Simmons referred to this again on a second appearance on MSNBC:

And he referred to it again on Bloomberg on May 28th:

And again on MSNBC yesterday:

Further Reading:

16? rupture burst disks that may have failed and caused topkill to fail according the the Wall Street Journal.
  
Then, I think maybe the wellhead explosion that sunk BP’s Deepwater Horizon also fractured the the oil dome below the seabed . . . Maybe the topkill effort exacerbated the fracture . . . maybe the the oil dome is cracking even more . . . maybe the oil dome is doomed . . . maybe the Gulf of Mexico is doomed . . . Maybe the upper Gulf coast, the Texas Gulf coast, the west coast of Florida, the Florida Keys, the north coast of Cuba, the Bahamas, the east coast of the US, Bermuda, the coasts of Ireland, Britain, Western Europe and northwest Africa are doomed. Then, I think maybe the planet is doomed.

Then, I think maybe the courts of Britain and the World Court might like to see these photos and read these rants as part of their decision to entertain President Obama’s lawsuits to sequester ALL OF BP’S ASSETS, since ALL OF BP’S ASSETS are going to be needed to  reimburse America, Cuba, the Bahamas, Ireland, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Spain and northwest African countries, and clean up and restore their coastal environments.

Then, I think maybe Scotland Yard and Interpol might view BP’s activities in the Gulf of Mexico before Deepwater Horizon blew up as a criminal matter, and the use of dispersants at the seabed as an attempt to cover up the crime.

Already I’m wondering why come President Obama has not already gotten the US Attorney General to initiate criminal prosecution against BP and its management for all of the above, and for attempted, if not actual, assassination of the entire planet?

El Presidente said he wanted to kick asses. Well, let’s see if he really meant it.

Meanwhile, he already is being tried in the High Court, for getting into bed with Big Oil.

Sloan Bashinsky