"There's Another Leak, Much Bigger, 5 to 6 Miles Away"

[Georgiacopguy]

I just saw in an Associated Press areticle where for the first time, they detiaeld that BP is stil ltrying to "contain" the leak, not stop it. It certainly caught my eye, because it was the first time I saw a mainstream news bit where they pointed that out, usually it was a willful act of omission on their part.

[bigron]

In Memory of All That Is Lost

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/in_memory_of_all_that_is_lost_20100602/
Posted on Jun 2, 2010
By Amy Goodman

A makeshift cemetery on Grand Isle, La., in the Shay family front yard, commemorates the things they love that are now threatened by the BP oil disaster.

NEW ORLEANS—The anger is palpable across the Mississippi Delta. As the Deepwater Horizon oil geyser, almost a mile underwater, continues unabated, the brunt of this, the largest environmental catastrophe in United States history, is rolling onto the coast, impacting the ecology, the economy and entire ways of life.

I traveled across the bayous and towns of coastal Louisiana for four days, meeting the people on the front lines of the onrush of BP’s oil slick. They are angry, out of work and read the papers about people getting sick.

One person, whose job remains intact—at least so far—is BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward. Hayward, who was paid more than $4.5 million in 2009, lamented Sunday: “There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do. You know, I’d like my life back.” Hayward becomes more vilified with almost each of his utterances, which are clearly aimed at minimizing the perceived impact of the BP disaster. He will probably be increasingly guarded in his remarks, as U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder just toured the area and, in a public statement, said: “We must also ensure that anyone found responsible for this spill is held accountable. That means enforcing the appropriate civil—and if warranted, criminal—authorities to the full extent of the law.”

On Grand Isle, we met Dean Blanchard, who owns the largest shrimp business in the area. He took us out on his boat, where he expressed his strong feelings about President Barack Obama: “I thought he was a man of the people, that he would’ve come out and met the businesses that are suffering, and look at us, and tell us, give us a little assurance that he would help us, but he just hid by the Coast Guard station like all the other presidents.” Blanchard’s parents and grandparents were shrimpers. With his strong Cajun accent, he explained the effect of the tides on the oil:

“I made my living off of watching tides. We hunt shrimp. You can’t see a shrimp. You know how we know where the shrimp’s at? Because of the tides. When the tide goes out, the more water goes out, the more water comes back, and when it comes back, it brings everything with it. It usually brings the shrimp, but this time it’s going to be bringing the oil.”

Blanchard says fishermen are like farmers: “We lose money in January, February, March and April, preparing to harvest our crop in May, June and July. So we spend a lot of money preparing to get to May.” When the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, thousands of fisherfolk, their families, and the businesses and communities that depend on them saw their annual income disappear, with bleak prospects.

Many shrimp-boat owners have now been hired by BP to work on the cleanup. One local fisherman, John Wunstell Jr., was rushed to the hospital with respiratory problems that he attributed to the noxious environment.

He and others claim BP has prohibited the use of masks, and he has filed a request for an injunction to force BP to provide masks and other protective gear to cleanup workers. The response of BP’s Hayward? “I’m sure they were genuinely ill, but whether it was anything to do with dispersants and oil, whether it was food poisoning or some other reason for them being ill. ... It’s one of the big issues of keeping the army operating. You know, armies march on their stomachs.”

Blanchard was enraged. Why, he asked, did BP confiscate the clothing of their workers once they donned hospital gowns? He said: “I don’t think you need people’s clothes to test for food poisoning. You’d only need people’s clothes to test for chemical poisoning.”

Blanchard took us out into the Gulf to see the skimming operations. None of the boat owners would talk to us. Blanchard explained, “They’re scared to talk, and they’re scared to be seen, because BP has threatened them that if they talk to the media, they’re going to be fired.”

One fisherman, Glenn Swift, whom we met in Buras, La., confirmed that he signed a contract with a clause stating that speaking to the media was grounds for termination. When I asked him why, then, he was talking to me, he said: “I don’t feel it’s the right thing to shut somebody up. We’re supposed to live in the United States, and we’re supposed to have freedom of speech.”

Down the road from Blanchard, a family has erected 101 crosses in their front yard, each one commemorating something they love, like “brown pelicans,” “beach sunsets” and “sand between the toes.” The sign next to the cemetery of dreams reads, “In memory of all that is lost, courtesy of BP and our federal government.”

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2010 Amy Goodman

Distributed by King Features Syndicate

[bigron]

U.S. NEWS
JUNE 2, 2010, 4:42 P.M. ET.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604575282261635174400.html?mod=rss_Today's_Most_Popular


Oil Nears Florida as Effort to Contain Well Hits Snag

 
By SUSAN DAKER , STEPHEN WISNEFSKI And MIKE ESTERL



Technicians use a robotic saw at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico in this video grab taken from a BP live video feed June 1.
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BP PLC, under pressure to contain a massive oil spill that is affecting an increasingly wide swath of U.S. Gulf Coast shoreline, has hit a snag while trying to sever a pipe connected to the mile-deep well as a six-foot-long oil sheen was found along Florida's Panhandle shoreline Wednesday.

Overnight, the response team was able to "successfully" make the first shear cut of the pipe, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the spill, said at a news conference in Houma, La. However, a specialized saw got stuck while making a second fine cut that's needed before a containment device can be put in place.

BP hits another engineering snag and President Obama moves forcefully to take on Big Oil. WSJ's Joe White and Jeffrey Ball join the News Hub to discuss. Plus, why a couple would divorce after 40 years of marriage, and how it affects their family and friends.
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"They are working that problem right now. The goal later on today is to finish that cut and to be able to put a containment device on top of the wellhead," Adm. Allen said.

The containment device is designed to channel oil up to a ship on the surface. BP is pursuing this option after announcing over the weekend that a procedure known as a top kill, which appeared promising at first, had failed to plug the leak.

Despite the apparent setback with the new strategy, BP's shares were up 2.4% at $37.40 in midday trading in New York, tracking broader gains for the U.S. stock market. The company's shares fell 15% on Tuesday alone, wiping away $20 billion in market value, as investors considered the likelihood that the company won't be able to contain the leak until relief wells are completed in August, as well as the prospect of huge costs related to cleanup and lawsuits.

The Gulf Oil SpillSee graphics covering how the spill happened, what's being done to stop it, and the impact on the region.

View Interactive
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604575282261635174400.html?mod=rss_Today's_Most_Popular#
 

The Gulf Oil Spill .If the response team is unable to dislodge the saw, another saw would have to be used, Adm. Allen said. He added that there's no question that a second cut can be made, but it remains uncertain how precise the cut will be. The smoother the cut is, the better the chance will be that the containment device will be able to capture a greater quantity of oil.

An announcement will be made later Wednesday about whether or not a second saw will be wielded, Adm. Allen said.

"As soon as the cut is made that separates the remainder of the riser pipe from the lower marine riser package, they will assess the quality of the cut and either move to install the top cap, which is the tighter device, with actually a rubber seal around it, or the top hat, which is a little wider and has less of a seal," he said.

The procedure, which has never been attempted at these depths, could increase the flow of oil spewing into the water by 20%, at least temporarily, government officials have said in recent days. Adm. Allen reiterated that projection, but said the increase in the flow rate wouldn't occur until the second cut is finished.

Last week, a group of scientists led by the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that about 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day were spewing into the Gulf. An updated figure was not immediately available Wednesday.

The news of the snag Wednesday comes as the slick continues to spread and the environmental and economic toll increases.

Adm. Allen said hat oil has now made landfall on parts of Mississippi and that tar balls and sheening were apparent in Alabama. He said that oil hasn't yet hit the coast of Florida's Panhandle, but a spokeswoman at the Mobile, Ala., spill command center, confirmed that a six-foot-long oil sheen was found along Florida's Panhandle and said it was "close to the beach if not right on the beach."

The oil sheen appeared to be a small breakaway piece from a larger sheen measuring 50 feet by 20 feet that was still 46 miles off the coast of Pensacola on Tuesday afternoon, according to the spokeswoman.

Related VideoOutrage Over Gulf Spill BP: We Could Have Responded More Rapidly Oil Spills Eternal as Top Kill Fails BP Says $940 Million Spent on Gulf Cleanup So Far
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The Florida Panhandle is in the northwestern part of Florida, a long stretch of white sandy beaches popular with tourists from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Pensacola is located in the western-most part of the Panhandle, bordering Alabama.

It is the first time authorities have reported an oil sheen along Florida's coast following the April explosion.

The Coast Guard will decide later on Wednesday whether or not to approve a sand-berm project that state and local officials in Louisiana have been requesting in order to protect the shore, Adm. Allen said.

Write to Susan Daker at susan.daker@dowjones.com, Stephen Wisnefski at stephen.wisnefski@dowjones.com and Mike Esterl at mike.esterl@wsj.com

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

[bigron]

Who Runs America’s Response to the Oil Blowout?

Posted on Jun 2, 2010
By William Pfaff
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/who_runs_americas_response_to_the_oil_blowout_20100602/

PARIS—The conduct of Barack Obama in the BP affair, and all that preceded it, has become to this writer all but incomprehensible. Possibly it is that I do not live in Washington; but surely, in that city above all, the priorities of national interest and the self-preservative instincts of presidents and presidential administrations cannot have fundamentally changed.

On Sunday, I watched the president on international television as he walked on a Louisiana beach, accompanied by two or three others, including, I would imagine, a U.S. Coast Guard officer, and obviously—off-scene—by hundreds if not thousands of newsmen, broadcasters and cameramen.

He looked sad. He bent over and picked up a handful of sand and let it run through his fingers. He shook his head in concern. A cutaway showed his speeches earlier in this affair declaring that his administration is in charge of the great effort to save America’s coast and waters from the terrible pollution taking place, and the Caribbean Sea itself, from the volcano of oil erupting from the sea’s floor, meeting the sickly-colored, toxic chemicals being mixed into the sea, meant to disperse the oil. He insists that BP will pay for all the damage and cleanup and will be held responsible for any illegalities.

I cannot imagine a more compelling portrayal of impotence—of pathetic abdication and submission by this administration to victimization by forces it claims to be unable to control.

How can the president possibly say that his administration has “been in charge”? BP has been in charge from the start—it and its contract companies, all of them desperately trying to plug the hole in the bottom of the sea, and all with corporate interests of their own. The president has been in his office or operations center pleading with his associates and advisers to get BP to end the crisis. They claim that they are technically incompetent to give instructions to BP. That might be, but they can and must tell BP what priorities must be set, and what must be accomplished on what timescale.


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BP’s lawyers and lobbyists obviously have just as desperately been striving to allow BP to evade responsibility and blame it on anyone or everyone else, including incompetent or irresponsible or compromised federal regulators—and probably on God Himself in the end, if they cannot find anyone else to push it off onto. But God would, on the evidence of the existing universe, seem a more competent engineer than any employed by BP. In addition, He is not profit-driven in His decisions.

Allow me, in the house style of the eminent metropolitan columnists read with attention and respect in Washington, to write a speech for the president:

“My friends:

“The American nation has suffered a grievous blow from the catastrophe produced in the Caribbean by the British Petroleum company. This is the latest in a series of major accidents produced by this company’s American operations, causing loss of lives among its workers, unforgivable human suffering by private citizens, and great damage to private and public interests, continuing today in the Caribbean. This company has repeatedly given evidence of incompetence, disregard for the public interests of Americans, and for the national interest of the United States.

“I have therefore today given orders that the American functions of this company be seized by the American government, as in recent months we have been forced to seize banks and corporations devastated by economic crisis, such as General Motors, AIG and certain financial institutions.

“BP’s American management will be placed under public authority and will be instructed to terminate this oil emergency as rapidly as possible and in disregard of whatever costs must be incurred by the company. This effort will be conducted by BP through its own unrestricted best efforts, supervised by officers of the United States Coast Guard and U.S. Navy, the Energy and Treasury Departments of our government, and will be accompanied by an investigation by the Justice Department and its executive agencies, including the FBI, for any possible evidence of fraud, malfeasance or profiteering, contributing to this disaster. None of these agencies of government will incur any responsibility whatever for the decisions and actions of BP while conducting its operations to terminate this oil blowout.

“In no circumstances will company, proprietary or stockholder interest be given priority over measures to terminate this emergency and to safeguard the assets or interests of the United States public or government. No funds of this company shall be expended on political lobbying intended to influence Congress or the executive agencies of federal government until this emergency has formally been determined to have been ended.

“I am instructing that all BP assets within the United States, or in its surrounding waters, including funds immediately at its disposal, and all other BP funds accessible to the United States government, be seized and immediately sequestered so as to prevent the transfer of any funds or assets of this company outside United States jurisdiction and access. The disposition of those assets will eventually be determined by the courts, with priority given to the reimbursement of U.S. persons, property holders, and the redressment of damage or destruction to public assets and municipal, state and national interests for which the British Petroleum corporation is deemed by the courts to have been responsible.”

This is what the American people want to hear! President Obama wishes to be seen as decisive and as a leader? Here is the way to accomplish that. He wants a Democratic Congress elected in the fall? And a second presidential term for himself in 2012? This would make a decisive contribution to those ambitions.

Indeed, he could suitably conclude his speech by saying to his political opponents that any Republican who wishes to run for office in November as an opponent of these Obama administration crisis measures, and as a defender of British Petroleum and its corporate and stockholder interests, or its customary executive remuneration practices, as against the national interest of the United States, and redress of the damage that continues at this moment to be done to the United States and its individual citizens, is more than welcome to do so. Barack Obama may conclude that he relishes the prospect of taking them on at the polls in November.

Visit William Pfaff’s website for more on his latest book, “The Irony of Manifest Destiny: The Tragedy of America’s Foreign Policy” (Walker & Co., $25), at www.williampfaff.com.

[bigron]

Do Something

Posted on Jun 1, 2010
By Mike Luckovich
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/do_something_20100601/

[bigron]

Published on Wednesday, June 2, 2010 by YES! Magazine


Six Things to Do About the BP Gulf Disaster

by Sarah van Gelder

Instead of sitting helplessly on the sidelines, here are six things every American can do.

BP has failed repeatedly to stop the gushing oil disaster in the Gulf. It's trying again—using a technique that risks making matters worse—and saying that there may be no repair until August, when it finishes drilling relief wells.
The media, meanwhile, is treating much of the news from the Gulf like it's a contest between the "Drill Baby Drill" crowd and the Obama administration. It's not. It's a national disaster.

While those of us outside the world of deep-sea engineering have limited knowledge, there are some things we can and should demand:

1.The federal government needs to take charge and put BP under temporary receivership as recommended by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich [1]. BP was dishonest about the quantities of oil flowing into the Gulf, and their initial repair efforts have failed. The federal government is accountable to the American people, and it needs to decide what to do to protect our nation's water, wildlife, and shorelines of the Gulf (and wherever else the oil travels). As Reich argues, receivership would allow the government  to act with full authority and accountability, and to call on all the expertise available (not just BP's) to help make the difficult calls.

2.The cleaning and protection of coastlines needs to be ramped up. Whether that means hiring more local fishers, bringing in National Guard troops, or deploying citizen brigades on the beaches, the response needs to be aggressive and sustained. Even if the oil stopped flowing today, the contamination would continue washing up in sensitive coastal regions for months or longer. All workers should have training, equipment, and protective gear to keep them from being sickened by the oil and the toxic dispersants.

3.There should be generous pay for the armies of bird-rescuers and beach cleaners, and those out protecting shorelines with boats and booms. Families who are the immediate victims of the disaster should get first crack at the jobs, and their wages will help sustain the region through this economic storm. Charge BP (and any other companies responsible for the disaster) the full costs for as long as it takes to get this region clean, whether it's months or years.

4.Use the least toxic chemical dispersants and insist on full disclosure of the makeup of all the dispersants [2] being dumped into the Gulf. The U.S. EPA should determine which dispersants, if any, are used based on the long-term health of the Gulf and its shorelines and estuaries, not based on which companies have ties with BP [3] or which chemicals will be most likely to hide the effects and protect BP from embarrassing images of oil slicks. Use emergency powers, if necessary, to get a full disclosure of the makeup of the dispersants from BP or whoever is refusing to release it. Without this information, there's no way to keep the emergency responders safe, to properly treat stricken birds and sea life, and to assess the long-term damage.

5.Boycott BP [4], but also other oil companies. They are all spilling oil (see what Shell is doing in Nigeria [5], for example), and causing direct environmental damage. But using oil, no matter what company pumps it, is putting our entire planet at risk through disruption of the climate [6]. Melting ice caps, changing rainfall patterns, mega-storms and failing crops are already happening, but that is only the beginning if we start hitting climate tipping points [7]. We must kick our fossil fuel addiction. This is our part of the solution.

6.Begin a massive conversion to energy efficiency and renewable energy [8]. There is a lot of  blame to go around for this disaster, from the practice of putting cronies in charge of regulation to the corporate culture of putting profits above all else. But this disaster is above all happening because the oil that is easy to get to is already taken. Now oil companies are trying to get the oil that's hard to reach, from deep under the oceans, from hostile regions of the world, and from  dirty and destructive sources like tar sands [9]. We've entered a time that analyst and author Michael Klare calls "The Age of Tough Oil," [10] and the costs—human, environmental, economic, and strategic—are rising with each new barrel. Making our economy more energy efficient and building a renewable energy infrastructure offer immediate benefits in terms of jobs and economic stimulus and will sustain generations to come.
Sarah van Gelder wrote this article for YES! Magazine [11], a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Sarah is executive editor for YES! Magazine.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License [12]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/02-0

[bigron]

Associated Press

 - June 03, 2010
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/03/time-lid-bp-works-cap-gulf-oil-gusher-latest-try-capture-crude/

BP exec says some oil is flowing up pipe from new cap atop Gulf well but not sure how much

June 4: Oil is seen gushing around the cap placed by BP during efforts to contain the Deepwater Horizon leak in the Gulf.


     
GRAND ISLE, La. (AP) — BP reported some oil was flowing up a pipe Friday from a cap it wrestled onto its broken Gulf of Mexico well but crude still spewed and it was unclear how much could be captured in the latest bid to tame the nation's worst oil spill.

President Barack Obama was set to visit the Louisiana coast Friday, his second trip in a week and the third since the disaster unfolded following an April 20 oil rig explosion.

Meanwhile, waves of gooey tar blobs were washing ashore on the white sand of the Florida Panhandle and nearby Alabama beaches Friday as a slick from the spill moved closer to shore.

Spotters who had been seeing a few tar balls in recent days found a substantially larger number starting before dawn on the beaches of the Gulf Islands National Seashore and nearby areas, a county emergency official said. The park is a long string of connected barrier islands near Pensacola.

The government's point man for the crisis, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, said the cap's installation atop a severed pipe late Thursday was a positive development but it was too early to tell if will work. The funnel-like lid is designed to channel oil for pumping to a surface tanker.

"Even if successful, this is only a temporary and partial fix and we must continue our aggressive response operations at the source, on the surface and along the Gulf's precious coastline," Allen said in a statement.

BP's Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said it will be later in the day before they know how much is being captured.

"There is flow coming up the pipe. Just now, I don't know the exact rate," Suttles said on NBC's "Today" show.

Robots a mile beneath the Gulf positioned the lid over the main pipe on the leaking well Thursday night. Live video footage, though, showed that the oil seemed unimpeded.

To put the cap in place, BP had to slice off the pipe with giant shears after a diamond-edged saw became stuck.

Suttles said some of the oil still pouring out came from vents deliberately placed to keep icelike crystals from forming that could block the funnel. BP will try to close those four vents in succession and reduce the spill, he said.

If the idea fails — like every other attempt to control the six-week-old leak — the best chance is probably a relief well, which is at least two months away. The well has spit out between 21 million and 46 million gallons of oil since a rig exploded on April 20 about 50 miles from the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers. BP was leasing the rig and is responsible to fix and clean up the spill.

In oil-soaked Grand Isle, Jason French might as well have painted a bulls-eye on his back. His mission was to be BP's representative at a meeting for 50 or so residents who had gathered at a church to vent.

"We are all angry and frustrated," he said. "Feel free tonight to let me see that anger. Direct it at me, direct it at BP, but I want to assure you, the folks in this community, that we are working hard to remedy the situation."

Residents weren't buying it.

"Sorry doesn't pay the bills," said Susan Felio Price, a longtime resident.

"Through the negligence of BP we now find ourselves trying to roller-skate up a mountain," she said. "We're growing really weary. We're tired. We're sick and tired of being sick and tired. Someone's got to help us get to the top of that mountain."

President Barack Obama shared some of that anger ahead of his Gulf visit. He told CNN's Larry King that he was frustrated and used his strongest language in assailing BP.

"I am furious at this entire situation because this is an example where somebody didn't think through the consequences of their actions," Obama said. "This is imperiling an entire way of life and an entire region for potentially years."

Meanwhile, newly disclosed internal Coast Guard documents from the day after the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig indicated that U.S. officials were warning of a leak of 336,000 gallons per day of crude from the well in the event of a complete blowout.

The volume turned out to be much closer to that figure than the 42,000 gallons per day that BP first estimated. Weeks later that was revised to 210,000 gallons. Now, an estimated 500,000 to 1 million gallons of crude is believed to be leaking daily.

The Center for Public Integrity, which initially reported the Coast Guard logs, said it obtained them from Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The logs also showed early in the disaster that remote underwater robots were unable to activate the rig's blowout preventer, which was supposed to shut off the flow from the well in the event of such a catastrophic failure.

The damage to the environment was chilling on East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast, where workers found birds coated in thick, black goo. Images shot by an Associated Press photographer show Brown pelicans drenched in thick oil, struggling and flailing in the surf.

BP CEO Tony Hayward promised that the company would clean up every drop of oil and "restore the shoreline to its original state."

"BP will be here for a very long time. We realize this is just the beginning," he said.

Those on Grand Isle seemed less than convinced by BP's assurances.

"We want you to feel what we feel," said Leoda Bladsacker, a member of the town's council, as her voice trembled. "We're not going to be OK for a long, long time."

___

Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan in Washington and Paul J. Weber in Houston contributed to this report.

[agentbluescreen]

I think the one black fisherman's spokesman on democracynow.org news yesterday said it best:

Letting BP run this colossal Drilling Mismanagement Disaster Volcanic Oilspill Mismanagement Crisis "is like letting Dracula run the Red Cross and expecting to have blood at the end of the day"

[carlee]

heres some real truth   AP Photographer Charlie Riedel just filed the following images of seabirds caught in the oil slick on a beach on Louisiana's East Grand Terre Island. As BP engineers continue their efforts to cap the underwater flow of oil, landfall is becoming more frequent, and the effects more evident.   http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in_the_oil.html       

[Freeski]

heres some real truth   AP Photographer Charlie Riedel just filed the following images of seabirds caught in the oil slick on a beach on Louisiana's East Grand Terre Island. As BP engineers continue their efforts to cap the underwater flow of oil, landfall is becoming more frequent, and the effects more evident.   http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in_the_oil.html       

f**k the tyrants who are responsible for this and everything else. The assholes who run the world are despicable pieces of shit.

[carlee]

http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=11194  go read this article 

[bigron]

Gulf Oil Spill: Cap Placed Over Leak Collecting Only Fraction Of The Oil


MELISSA NELSON and HOLBROOK MOHR | 06/ 5/10 10:09 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/05/gulf-oil-spill-cap-placed_n_601691.html

PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. — Driftwood and seashells glazed with rust-colored tar lined the surf along the Gulf Coast's once-pristine white sand beaches Saturday, the crude from a busted oil well deep underwater showing up in greater quantities and farther east.

A cap placed over the gusher was collecting only a fraction of the oil, which had stained beaches with a waxy mess of tar balls and created an unusual orange foam in the surf.

In Gulf Shores, Ala., wooden boardwalks leading to beachfront hotels were spotted with oil from beachgoers' feet, and some condominiums were providing solvents for guests smeared with the brown goo. At Pensacola Beach, the retreating high tide left an orange stain in its wake.

Erin Tamber moved to the beach area after surviving Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, where she had lived for 30 years.

"I feel like I've gone from owning a piece of paradise to owning a toxic waste dump," she said as she inspected the beach Saturday morning.

President Barack Obama pledged Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address to fight the spill with the people of the Gulf Coast. His words for oil giant BP PLC were stern: "We will make sure they pay every single dime owed to the people along the Gulf coast."

So far, BP has failed to significantly stem the worst spill in U.S. history. The government's point man for the crisis, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, guessed early Friday that the cap was collecting 42,000 gallons a day – less than one-tenth of the amount leaking from the well. Later in the day, BP said in a tweet that since it was installed Thursday night, it had collected about 76,000 gallons.

The widening scope of the disaster deepened the anger and despair just as Obama arrived for his third visit to the stricken Gulf Coast.

On Obama's trip to the Grand Isle on the Louisiana coast, his motorcade passed a building adorned with his portrait reminiscent of posters of him during his presidential campaign. Instead of "hope" or "change," the words "what now?" were on his forehead.


The oil has reached the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. It has turned marshlands into death zones for wildlife and stained beaches rust and crimson. Some said it brought to mind the plagues and punishments of the Bible.

"In Revelations it says the water will turn to blood," said P.J. Hahn, director of coastal zone management for Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish. "That's what it looks like out here – like the Gulf is bleeding. This is going to choke the life out of everything."

He added: "It makes me want to cry."

Six weeks after the April 20 oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers, the well has leaked 22 million to 47 million gallons of oil, according to government estimates.

The mayor of Grand Isle, David Camardelle, choked up as he told the president of staying up nights worrying.

"We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow," Camardelle said. "I'm trying to keep Grand Isle alive."

A device resembling an upside-down funnel was lowered over the blown-out well a mile beneath the sea to try to capture most of the oil and direct it to a ship on the surface. But crude continued to escape into the Gulf early Saturday through vents designed to prevent ice crystals from clogging the cap. Engineers hoped to close several vents.

One unanswered question was whether the cap fit snugly. BP sheared off the well pipe before installing the cap but was unable to make a smooth cut.

As the operation went on at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the effect of the BP spill was increasingly evident.

Swimmers at Pensacola Beach rushed out of the water after wading into the mess, while other beachgoers inspected the clumps with fascination, some taking pictures.

Health officials said that people should stay away from the mess but that swallowing a little oil-tainted water or getting slimed by a tar ball is no reason for alarm.

On Saturday morning at a public beach in Gulf Shores, a long line of brown globs marked the high water line from overnight at the public beach.

"This is disgusting," said Macon Srygley, of McCalla, Ala. "I hate it for BP, but this has to be a lesson for anyone drilling in the ocean. We've got all this technology, but are we not smart enough to realize we can end ourselves with it?"

The tar balls look like shiny rocks or pieces of wood but create a nasty mess when touched. They put a red stain on the hands that cannot be rubbed off with sand or washed off in the ocean. Touching anything with the tar-stained hands leaves a rust-colored hand print.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said he's frustrated with the Coast Guard's response on the state's coast and will consider closing the beaches if the oil becomes a public health threat.

Meanwhile, BP CEO Tony Hayward assured investors that the company had "considerable firepower" to cope with the severe costs. Hayward and other senior BP executives struck a penitent note in their first comprehensive update to shareholders since the oil rig explosion, promising to meet its obligations related to the spill.

Frank Basson has a comfortable monopoly along the main drag in Grand Isle. He owns a restaurant, souvenir shop and daiquiri spot. Business plummeted once oil washed up on the shores, but he isn't going anywhere.

He came back after Hurricane Katrina, and if he has to close his doors, he figures he'll find a new venture. But he worries about the greater community.

"BP has to take care of us," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Greg Bluestein in Grand Isle, La.; Eileen Sullivan in Washington; Paul J. Weber in Houston; and Jay Reeves in Gulf Shores, Ala., contributed to this report.

[agentbluescreen]

Gulf Oil Spill: Cap Placed Over Leak Collecting Only Fraction Of The Oil


MELISSA NELSON and HOLBROOK MOHR | 06/ 5/10 10:09 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/05/gulf-oil-spill-cap-placed_n_601691.html


President Barack Obama pledged Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address to fight the spill with the people of the Gulf Coast. His words for oil giant BP PLC were stern: "We will make sure they pay every single dime owed to the people along the Gulf coast."

So far, BP has failed to significantly stem the worst spill in U.S. history. The government's point man for the crisis, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, guessed early Friday that the cap was collecting 42,000 gallons a day – less than one-tenth of the amount leaking from the well. Later in the day, BP said in a tweet that since it was installed Thursday night, it had collected about 76,000 gallons.

The widening scope of the disaster deepened the anger and despair just as Obama arrived for his third visit to the stricken Gulf Coast.

On Obama's trip to the Grand Isle on the Louisiana coast, his motorcade passed a building adorned with his portrait reminiscent of posters of him during his presidential campaign. Instead of "hope" or "change," the words "what now?" were on his forehead.


The oil has reached the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. It has turned marshlands into death zones for wildlife and stained beaches rust and crimson. Some said it brought to mind the plagues and punishments of the Bible.

Earth to Obama bin Soetero and his Communist-Defense Pentagon/al CIAduh/FEMA/DHS/BATFE mass murdering mobster gangs:

Federal Reserve Ducats cannot "pay for" a ruined world. This crisis management disaster was about protecting and defending continental America, not about protecting some bunch of negligent fly-by-night corporate crook's damn stupid oil well!

WHY has "America" borrowed and squandered endless trillions endlessly allegedly for "unmatched" defense against every sort of imagined boogie-men, yet we are always left totally defenseless from our real threats and real enemies?

[ekimdrachir]

It could be an explosive way to end the oil spill, but no one in the U.S. government is ready to break out the nukes.

So says a report in today’s New York Times, which dives into the persistent buzz that the fastest option for ending the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could be to use a nuclear weapon to collapse the well. The theory stems from the Soviet Union, who reportedly used nuclear weapons to stanch runaway gushers beginning in the 1960s.

While a nuclear weapon could hypothetically generate the power necessary to melt enough rock to re-seal the deep-sea gash, it’s not a method under consideration by the Obama Administration. “It’s crazy,” says one senior official to the Times.

Why the nuclear nixing? Part of it has to do with Obama’s recent push toward further reduction in the number of nuclear weapons. Use of a nuke — even in a peaceful situation — would also violate arms agreements signed by the U.S. And, of course, there’s the trifling concern of radiation and nuclear fallout — and the chance the bomb might make the flow worse.

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/06/03/will-the-u-s-nuke-the-oil-spill-dont-bet-on-it/#ixzz0pzcFQkpo

[H0llyw00d]

WHY has "America" borrowed and squandered endless trillions endlessly allegedly for "unmatched" defense against every sort of imagined boogie-men, yet we are always left totally defenseless from our real threats and real enemies?

+1

[Shroom!]

Those pictures of the oil-covered animals.... makes me so sad

[bigron]

Sunday, June 06, 2010
05:43 Mecca time, 02:43 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/06/20106604528663914.html
   
News Americas 
 
New BP device 'capturing oil' 

 
A BP video feed shows crude and gas being collected and siphoned off to a ship on the surface [Reuters]
 
A device designed to cap a massive undersea oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has captured about one-third of the crude that has been escaping daily from a damaged BP well, a US official said.

Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the government's point man for the crisis, said on Saturday that the amount of oil collected in the device designed by British energy giant BP was well above initial estimates.

"In the first full 24-hour cycle, yesterday they were able to bring up and produce 6,000 barrels of oil from the well," Allen told a press briefing in Alabama.

"The goal is to continue that production, and raise it up."

BP said on its Twitter feed that an estimated 6,077 barrels of oil had been collected within 24 hours and that "improvement in oil collection is expected over the next several days".

The US government estimated about 19,000 barrels (800,000 gallons/3 million litres) of crude are gushing into the sea per day.

BP has said it will provide daily updates on how much oil is being captured by the improvised device.

Modified device

The latest containment effort involves a cap placed over the leak that gathers the oil, allowing it to be siphoned up via a pipe to a container ship.

It is a modified version of an earlier bid in BP's six-week effort to stem the crude gushing from the ruptured pipe about 1.6 kilometres beneath the sea surface.

In depth

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/oildisaster/
 
The earlier attempt failed because cold temperatures and high pressure at the leak site caused the oil to form a sludge that could not be siphoned.

The cap has been redesigned with valves that can be slowly shut down to help prevent the build-up of gas hydrates – similar to ice crystals – that doomed the first attempt.

BP's relative success in trying to contain the spill marks the first significant progress 47 days after the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig blowout, which killed 11 people and sparked a massive environmental and economic crisis in the US Gulf states.

BP does not expect to fully halt the oil flow until August, when two relief wells are due to be completed.

Impact of spill

The slick is now threatening Alabama, Mississippi and Florida after contaminating more than 200 kilometres of Louisiana coastline.

There are reports of tar balls already washing up on the beaches of Florida.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/06/20106520481367846.html

Al Jazeera's Cath Turner, reporting from Pensacola Beach in Florida, said BP contractor crews there have been cleaning up tar balls that washed ashore on Saturday.

"The latest projections that we have for the oil spill is that it will continue to drift east," she said.

"So the impact of the oil spill will continue to get worse.

"The governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, is really begging for more attention, more money, more resources for the state of Florida, which is going to be undoubtedly the next worst-hit area. We've already seen the effects on Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama."

'Brutally unfair'

Barack Obama, the US president, who made his third visit to the coast on Friday, fended off criticism that the government had not moved aggressively enough to tackle the crisis.

In his weekly radio and internet address on Saturday, Obama said his administration has put in place the largest response to an environmental disaster in US history.
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/06/201065115320386213.html


Barack Obama has promised to stand by those affected by the massive oil spill disaster [EPA]

He reiterated some of the steps his administration has taken to respond to the spill, including mobilising National Guard troops.

Obama promised to stand with local residents "until they are made whole" from the oil spill catastrophe, describing its impact as "brutally unfair".

"These folks work hard," he said.

"They meet their responsibilities. But now because of a manmade catastrophe, one that's not their fault and that's beyond their control, their lives have been thrown into turmoil.

"It's brutally unfair. It's wrong. And what I told these men and women, and what I have said since the beginning of this disaster, is that I'm going to stand with the people of the Gulf Coast until they are made whole."

Meanwhile, some Caribbean nations are concerned the spill may reach their shores in the coming days.

The Caribbean Community (Caricom), a grouping of Caribbean states, warned that a recent change in wind patterns could push the oil past the southern tip of Florida and toward its northern member states, including the Bahamas and Jamaica.

Edwin Carrington, the group's secretary-general, said on Saturday that tourism-dependent countries in the 15-nation grouping are expressing concerns about the drifting spill.
 
 

[Jackson Holly]

"In the first full 24-hour cycle, yesterday they were able to bring up and produce 6,000 barrels of oil from the well," Allen told a press briefing in Alabama.

What about the other leaks ... what about the other gusher a few miles away? The article doesn't mention it.

[bigron]

BP faces another tough week despite well progress

 6:54am EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65204220100607?feedType=nl&feedName=usmorningdigest
By Anna Driver and Michael Peltier

SLIDE SHOW :
http://www.reuters.com/article/slideshow/idUSTRE65204220100607#a=3

VENICE, La./PENSACOLA BEACH, Florida (Reuters) - BP faces another difficult week of tough questions from investors and U.S. lawmakers despite making progress in capturing an increasing amount of oil spewing from a ruptured Gulf of Mexico well.

President Barack Obama also looks to challenge criticism he has not taken a forceful enough leadership role in tackling America's biggest environmental disaster, in its 49th day on Monday.

"We have had a lot of trials in the last year and a half," Obama said during a reception in Washington. "Right now we've got brothers and sisters in the Gulf Coast who are going through an incredibly difficult time ...

"I want to emphasize again that we're going to do everything we can in the weeks, months and years ahead to make things right," Obama said.

BP said its containment cap had captured 16,600 barrels of oil (697,200 gallons/2.64 million liters) between June 3 and June 6 and it expects an increase in volumes of both oil and gas collected in the next several days, enabling it to siphon the vast majority of oil spewing from the leak about a mile below the water's surface.

In early trading in London, BP's shares were up 3.25 percent to 436.60 pence on the news after losing about one-third of their value since the crisis began.

The progress over the weekend came as the company's chief executive, Tony Hayward, insisted he had no plans of quitting over his handling of the environmental disaster, marked by a string of failures since the April 20 rig explosion that triggered the oil spill.

Thad Allen, the Coast Guard admiral heading the federal relief effort, estimated the maximum collection from the containment device at about 15,000 barrels a day. Estimates put the well's leak at 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.

Despite the progress, some oil will continue to leak until at least August when BP hopes to intercept the well bore to pump in mud and put in place a cement plug to finally stop the gusher.

'INSULT TO NATURE'

The extent of the environmental impact of the spill is only gradually becoming apparent.

"It's just wrong," David Yarnold, executive director of the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, said after touring Louisiana's Barataria Bay by boat on Sunday.

"Water is not supposed to look like gasoline, and shouldn't have big globs of crude in it," he said, describing the oily sheen and large pools of thick, gooey rust-colored oil in the water he saw. "It's just an insult to nature."

As BP attempts to siphon off more and more of the gushing oil, it will also try to blunt the public relations nightmare.

Executives from Transocean Ltd, Halliburton and Anadarko Petroleum Corp -- central players in the biggest oil spill in U.S. history -- appear at an energy conference in New York on Monday, under pressure to explain how the disaster happened and discuss its ramifications.

Transocean operated the rig that caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, Halliburton cemented the work and Anadarko owns 25 percent of the well.

On Wednesday, BP gives its annual statistical review.

This week will also feature three hearings by various committees of the U.S. Congress -- two in Louisiana, on Monday and Wednesday, and one in Washington on Thursday -- where BP's handling of the crisis will come under scrutiny.

Representative Edward Markey, chairman of the House energy and environment subcommittee, asked BP for more details on Sunday of how much oil had spilled.

In a letter to the company, Markey said that information was needed, "to determine BP's financial liability in terms of fines, which could be as high as $4,300 per barrel."

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

The Obama administration has delayed plans to increase offshore drilling as a result of the spill. The crisis has put Obama on the defensive and distracted his team from their domestic agenda -- a new energy policy, reform of Wall Street and bolstering a struggling U.S. economy.

Obama wants to tap into public anger over images of polluted beaches and fishing grounds to press for faster development of alternative energy.

Democratic Senator John Kerry said lawmakers and Obama should now push that policy forward. "Here's what's important ... to put America on the course to true energy independence and self-reliance and to begin to wean ourselves from our addiction to oil," Kerry told ABC's "This Week."

But Republican Senator John Cornyn said his party opposed the broad energy bill favored by Democrats.

Oil began leaking from the well after the rig explosion that killed 11 workers. BP faces a criminal investigation, lawsuits, dwindling investor confidence and questions about its credit-worthiness. Its shares have lost about one-third of their value since the crisis began.

BP said it has spent $1 billion on the spill and vowed to pay all legitimate claims of those harmed by the disaster.

After contaminating wetland wildlife refuges in Louisiana and barrier islands in Mississippi and Alabama, the black tide of crude oil has started to wash up on some of the famous white beaches of Florida, where tourism accounts for nearly one million jobs.

Fully one-third of the Gulf's federal waters, or 78,603 square miles (202,582 square km), remains closed to fishing, and the toll of dead and injured birds and marine animals, including sea turtles and dolphins, is climbing.

(Additional reporting by Bruce Nichols in Houston, Tom Brown in Miami, Jeff Mason in Kenner, Louisiana, Kelli Dugan in Orange Beach, Alabama, Sarah Irwin in Buras, Louisiana, Jane Ross in Pensacola and Lisa Lambert in Washington; Writing by Mark Egan; Editing by Chris Wilson)

[citizenx]

Something really bad is happening, and they don't want anyone to know about it.  That much is for sure.

Part of this is justification for nationalaization, perhaps, but something really big IS coming down the pike for sure.

Meanwhile everyone is supposed to keep dreaming their dreamy dream...

I doubt if many people outside of America are even really paying attention right now.  World Cup is starting tomorrow -- gotta root for your favorite country, er ahh...team...er...ah...country.  Whatever.

Countries are also distractions for the people so they pay no attention to the movements of the global elite, and nationalization is the flip-side of nationalism.

I'm beginning to think this IS the depop "big one" and nobody is going to recognize it until it is far too late.  It is possible desperate moves, like nukes, might not be so crazy after all.  Some other nations, like the Russians need to step up and say something if they really have specialized knowledge here -- for the sake of the whole world.


Of course, maybe, they know something I don't -- like, maybe, our gov't. isn't very interested in stopping this "end-of-the-world" oil volcano for some reason.  I'm beginning to wonder if reports of real stress between the U.S. and Russia right now don't have some grain of truth to them.

To sum it up:  Man, this shit is fu#%ed!

[Freeski]

Somewhat related thread about the 1980 Jefferson Island / Lake Peigneur, LA disaster, including video of the spectacle. Amazing and scary stuff.

"In 20 November 1980, when the disaster took place, the Diamond Crystal Salt Company operated the Jefferson Island salt mine under the lake, while a Texaco oil rig drilled down from the surface of the lake searching for petroleum. Due to a miscalculation, the 14-inch (36 cm) drill bit entered the mine, starting a remarkable chain of events which at the time turned an almost 10-foot (3.0 m) deep freshwater lake into a salt water lake with a deep hole."

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=171302.msg1017870#msg1017870

[wouldntyouliketoknow]

bump

[Jackson Holly]

Gulf Oil Blowout 'Could Go
Years' If Not Dealt With
How The BP Catastrophe May Devastate Europe
By F. William Engdahl

Author of A Century of War: Anglo-American
Oil Politics and the New World Order
6-10-10
http://rense.com/general91/gulf.htm

The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to stop the world's worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.
 
In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States "could go on for years and years many years."
 
According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, "What BP drilled into was what we call a 'migration channel,' a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia." Ghawar, the world's most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. According to the abiotic science, Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.
 
As I wrote at the time of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake disaster, Haiti had been identified as having potentially huge hydrocasrbon reserves, as has neighboring Cuba. Kutcherov estimates that the entire Gulf of Mexico is one of the planet's most abundant accessible locations to extract oil and gas, at least before the Deepwater Horizon event this April.
 
"In my view the heads of BP reacted with panic at the scale of the oil spewing out of the well," Kutcherov adds. "What is inexplicable at this point is why they are trying one thing, failing, then trying a second, failing, then a third. Given the scale of the disaster they should try every conceivable option, even if it is ten, all at once in hope one works. Otherwise, this oil source could spew oil for years given the volumes coming to the surface already."
 
He stresses, "It is difficult to estimate how big this leakage is. There is no objective information available." But taking into consideration information about the last BP 'giant' discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, the Tiber field, some six miles deep, Kutcherov agrees with Ira Leifer a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara who says the oil may be gushing out at a rate of more than 100,000 barrels a day.
 
What the enormity of the oil spill does is to also further discredit clearly the oil companies' myth of "peak oil" which claims that the world is at or near the "peak" of economical oil extraction. That myth, which has been propagated in recent years by circles close to former oilman and Bush Vice President, Dick Cheney, has been effectively used by the giant oil majors to justify far higher oil prices than would be politically possible otherwise, by claiming a non-existent petroleum scarcity crisis.
Obama & BP Try to Hide
 
According to a report from Washington investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, "the Obama White House and British Petroleum are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP's liability for damage caused by what can be called a 'mega-disaster.'" Madsen cites sources within the US Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and Florida Department of Environmental Protection for his assertion.
 
Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary Salazar, are working with BP's chief executive officer Tony Hayward on legislation that would raise the cap on liability for damage claims from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10 billion. According to informed estimates cited by Madsen, however, the disaster has a real potential cost of at least $1,000 billion ($1 trillion). That estimate would support the pessimistic assessment of Kutcherov that the spill, if not rapidly controlled, "will destroy the entire coastline of the United States."
 
According to the Washington report of Madsen, BP statements that one of the leaks has been contained, are "pure public relations disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands for greater action by the Obama administration., according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers sources."
 
The White House has been resisting releasing any "damaging information" about the oil disaster. Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers experts estimate that if the ocean oil geyser is not stopped within 90 days, there will be irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond. At best, some Corps of Engineers experts say it could take two years to cement the chasm on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.
 
Only after the magnitude of the disaster became evident did Obama order Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano to declare the oil disaster a "national security issue." Although the Coast Guard and FEMA are part of her department, Napolitano's actual reasoning for invoking national security, according to Madsen, was merely to block media coverage of the immensity of the disaster that is unfolding for the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and their coastlines.
 
The Obama administration also conspired with BP to hide the extent of the oil leak, according to the cited federal and state sources. After the oil rig exploded and sank, the government stated that 42,000 gallons per day were gushing from the seabed chasm. Five days later, the federal government upped the leakage to 210,000 gallons a day. However, submersibles monitoring the escaping oil from the Gulf seabed are viewing television pictures of what they describe as a "volcanic-like" eruption of oil.
 
When the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA imagery of the Gulf oil slick, which is larger than is being reported by the media, it was reportedly denied the access. By chance, National Geographic managed to obtain satellite imagery shots of the extent of the disaster and posted them on their web site. Other satellite imagery reportedly being withheld by the Obama administration, shows that what lies under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be the size of Mount Everest. This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public, according to Madsen's sources.
 
The Corps of Engineers and FEMA are reported to be highly critical of the lack of support for quick action after the oil disaster by the Obama White House and the US Coast Guard. Only now has the Coast Guard understood the magnitude of the disaster, dispatching nearly 70 vessels to the affected area. Under the loose regulatory measures implemented by the Bush-Cheney Administration, the US Interior Department's Minerals Management Service became a simple "rubber stamp," approving whatever the oil companies wanted in terms of safety precautions that could have averted such a disaster. Madsen describes a state of "criminal collusion" between Cheney's former firm, Halliburton, and the Interior Department's MMS, and that the potential for similar disasters exists with the other 30,000 off-shore rigs that use the same shut-off valves.
 
Silence from Eco groups?... Follow the money
 
Without doubt at this point we are in the midst of what could be the greatest ecological catastrophe in history. The oil platform explosion took place almost within the current loop where the Gulf Stream originates. This has huge ecological and climatological consequences.
 
A cursory look at a map of the Gulf Stream shows that the oil is not just going to cover the beaches in the Gulf, it will spread to the Atlantic coasts up through North Carolina then on to the North Sea and Iceland. And beyond the damage to the beaches, sea life and water supplies, the Gulf stream has a very distinct chemistry, composition (marine organisms), density, temperature. What happens if the oil and the dispersants and all the toxic compounds they create actually change the nature of the Gulf Stream? No one can rule out potential changes including changes in the path of the Gulf Stream, and even small changes could have huge impacts. Europe, including England, is not an icy wasteland due to the warming from the Gulf Stream.
 
Yet there is a deafening silence from the very environmental organizations which ought to be at the barricades demanding that BP, the US Government and others act decisively.
 
That deafening silence of leading green or ecology organizations such as Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club and others may well be tied to a money trail that leads right back to the oil industry, notably to BP. Leading environmental organizations have gotten significant financial payoffs in recent years from BP in order that the oil company could remake itself with an "environment-friendly face," as in "beyond petroleum" the company's new branding.
 
The Nature Conservancy, described as "the world's most powerful environmental group," has awarded BP a seat on its International Leadership Council after the oil company gave the organization more than $10 million in recent years.
 
Until recently, the Conservancy and other environmental groups worked with BP in a coalition that lobbied Congress on climate-change issues. An employee of BP Exploration serves as an unpaid Conservancy trustee in Alaska. In addition, according to a recent report published by the Washington Post, Conservation International, another environmental group, has accepted $2 million in donations from BP and worked with the company on a number of projects, including one examining oil-extraction methods. From 2000 to 2006, John Browne, then BP's chief executive, sat on the CI board.
 
Further, The Environmental Defense Fund, another influential ecologist organization, joined with BP, Shell and other major corporations to form a Partnership for Climate Action, to promote 'market-based mechanisms' (sic) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
 
Environmental non-profit groups that have accepted donations from or joined in projects with BP include Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and Audubon. That could explain why the political outcry to date for decisive action in the Gulf has been so muted.
 
Of course those organizations are not going to be the ones to solve this catastrophe. The central point at this point is who is prepared to put the urgently demanded federal and international scientific resources into solving this crisis. Further actions of the likes of that from the Obama White House to date or from BP can only lead to the conclusion that some very powerful people want this debacle to continue. The next weeks will be critical to that assessment.

[Jackson Holly]

I noticed somebody moved an earlier post of mine to the Faux Controversy Thread. That's OK, maybe it belongs there, I don't know ... it might be over the top. (I do wonder though if the moderator saw the video of the lake disaster in Louisiana?)

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=171302.msg1017870#msg1017870
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=7378.msg1036512#msg1036512

Here is another incidence of something that is similar on a much smaller scale than this Gulf blowout ... but gives us an idea of what may be going on:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Javan mud volcano triggered
by drilling, not quake

By Claire Whitelaw, Durham University, and Robert Sanders
UC Berkeley Media Relations
09 June 2008

BERKELEY – A two-year-old mud volcano that is still spewing huge volumes of boiling mud, has displaced more than 30,000 people and caused millions of dollars in damage on the island of Java was triggered by the drilling of a gas exploration well, an international team of scientists has concluded.

The most detailed scientific analysis to date of the mud volcano disproves the theory that an earthquake that happened two days before it erupted in East Java, Indonesia, was to blame.

In the new analysis, the scientists outline and analyze a detailed record of operational incidents during the drilling of a gas exploration well, Banjar-Panji-1, that had been kept by oil and gas company Lapindo Brantas, which operated the well.

"We are more certain than ever that the Lusi mud volcano is an unnatural disaster and was triggered by drilling the Banjar-Panji-1 well," said lead author Richard Davies, a professor of earth sciences at Durham University in the United Kingdom.

The white plume in the centre of the picture is steam from the central vent of the volcano. (Ikonos satellite image, copyright CRISP NUS 2007/200)

The report by British, American, Indonesian and Australian scientists, including UC Berkeley's Michael Manga, professor of earth and planetary sciences, was published this week in the academic journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Lusi, already more than seven square kilometers (2.5 square miles) in extent, is still flowing at 100,000 cubic meters per day, enough to fill 53 Olympic swimming pools or submerge a football field under 610 feet of mud, the depth of a 61-story building.

Davies published research in January 2007 that argued that the drilling was most likely to blame for the eruption of Lusi on May 29, 2006. Manga subsequently published findings pointing a finger at drilling rather than an earthquake.

Davies' and Manga's initial theory was challenged not only by the company that drilled the well, but also by some experts who argued that the cause was the 6.3 magnitude Yogyakarta earthquake and its aftershocks that shook the island two days before the eruption. The epicenter of that earthquake, which caused almost 6,000 deaths in the capital, was 250 kilometers (160 miles) from the mud volcano, which is in the Porong subdistrict of Sidoarjo in East Java.

As part of the new study, Manga and UC Berkeley graduate student Maria Brumm undertook a systematic study to test the claims that the eruption was caused by this earthquake. They found that none of the ways earthquakes trigger eruptions could have played a role in Lusi.

"We have known for hundreds of years that earthquakes can trigger eruptions. In this case, the earthquake was simply too small and too far away," Manga said.

The new report concludes that the effect of the earthquake was minimal because the change in pressure underground due to the earthquake would have been tiny - much less, in fact, than the pressure changes generated by the tides or variations in atmospheric pressure. Instead, the scientists said they are "99 percent" certain that drilling operations were to blame.

"We show that the day before the mud volcano started, there was a huge 'kick' in the well, which is an influx of fluid and gas into the wellbore," said Davies, of Durham University's Centre for Research into Earth Energy Systems (CeREES). "We show that after the kick, the pressure in the well went beyond a critical level. This resulted in the leakage of the fluid from the well and the rock formations to the surface - a so-called 'underground blowout.' This fluid picked up mud during its ascent, and Lusi was born."

The leaking pressurized fluid fractured the surrounding rock, allowing the mud to spurt out of cracks rather than out of the wellhead, which normally could have been capped to stanch the flow. Davies said that chances of controlling this pressure would have been increased if there was more protective casing in the borehole.

"There is not a hope on Earth they are going to stop it now," Manga added. "You can plug up a hole, but if you try to plug a crack, stuff just flows around the plug, or the crack gets bigger. The well now has no effect on the erupting mud, it was just the trigger that initiated it."

Manga noted that mud volcanoes are hard to study because they frequently erupt underwater, such as in the Gulf of Mexico, where sediments are laid down rapidly. Lusi, which is short for lumpur Sidoarjo, Indonesian for Sidoarjo mud, is so far the world's largest known mud volcano and, because of its accessibility, the most studied active one.

"It's sad, because lots and lots of people are displaced, and five villages were buried in mud, but it will leave us with a better understanding of the birth, life and death of a volcano," Manga said.

Recent research in which Davies was involved showed that the dome of the mud volcano and the surrounding area are collapsing by up to three meters - nearly 10 feet - daily and could subside to depths of more than 140 meters (530 feet), having a significant environmental impact on the surrounding area for years to come.

Other authors of the report were petroleum engineer Rudi Rubiandini of the Institut Teknologi Bandung in Indonesia, Richard Swarbrick of Geopressure Technology Ltd. Science Labs in Durham, and Mark Tingay of the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/06/09_lusi.shtml

[Freeski]

Wow!

[carlee]

http://www.thebyteshow.com/Audio/MichaelCox/MichaelCox_WindSockReport5_10June2010_TBS.mp3  interesting interview about the spill

[White Rose Sophie]

Lefty... come on now. There is no way you can link an oil spill to scripture.

Couldn't resist.   

"And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood;
And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea and had life, died, and the third part of the ships were destroyed."

Revelation 8:8-9

[Dok]

UK Engineering Mag: Well casing could have been ejected from the well; ‘Doomsday Scenario’ happening?


In today’s rather optimistic online report BP now capturing 16k barrels/day at Deepwater Horizon from The Engineer, a 150-year old publication based in the U.K., an official from Cameron International described the potential problems that may have stopped the blowout preventer from functioning.

The first problem explored by the author, “Steel casing or casing hanger could have been ejected from the well and blocked the operation of the rams.”

Having part of the steel casing coming up the well was called a ‘Doomsday Scenario’ by an oil industry veteran during a recently televised interview:

The real doomsday scenario here… is if that casing gives up, and it does come through the other strings of pipe.  Remember, it is concentric pipe that holds this well together.  If it comes into the formation, basically, you‘ve got uncontrolled [oil] flow to the sea floor.  And that is the doomsday scenario.

http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/uk-engineering-mag-well-casing-could-have-been-ejected-from-the-well-doomsday-scenario-happening


RED ALERT! MSM reports "DOOMSDAY scenario" about new Oil Spill developments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_uMg84BBzE&feature=player_embedded

Senator confirms reports that wellbore is pierced; oil seeping from seabed in multiple places


Senator Bill Nelson was interviewed by Andrea Mitchell this morning on MSNBC and confirmed reports of oil seeping up from additional leak points on the seafloor.

Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL): Andrea we’re looking into something new right now, that there’s reports of oil that’s seeping up from the seabed… which would indicate, if that’s true, that the well casing itself is actually pierced… underneath the seabed. So, you know, the problems could be just enormous with what we’re facing.

Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC: Now let me understand better what you’re saying. If that is true that it is coming up from that seabed, even the relief well won’t be the final solution to cap this thing. That means that we’ve got oil gushing up at disparate places along the ocean floor.

Sen. Nelson: That  is possible, unless you get the plug down low enough, below where the pipe would be breached.

Sen. Bill Nelson: Reports of oil seeping up from seabed, well casing may be pierced.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bj_kco8qTQ&feature=player_embedded

http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/senator-confirms-reports-that-wellbore-is-pierced-oil-seeping-from-seabed-in-multiple-places

[Dok]

FAA: Aerial Spraying Operations

The Intel Hub -


The Federal Aviation Administration released a set of regulations on June 9, entitled NOTAM. This document laid out what could and couldn’t be done over the oil spill in regards to aircraft activity. BP, along with the federal government have basically put the entire airspace over the spill in a complete lock down mode. Even more interesting is the fact that the FAA is openly admitting to the existence of aerial spraying in the Gulf. One of the companies contracted out to do this “spraying” is none other than Evergreen Air.

No pilots may operate an aircraft in the areas covered by this NOTAM (except as described).

http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_0_5100.html#areas



6. With the exception of aircraft conducting aerial chemical dispersing operations;no fixed wing aircraft are authorized below 1000 feet above the surface unless for landing and takeoff.

[Dok]

Oil Expert: BP must ‘keep the well flowing to minimize oil and gas going out into the formation on the side’

Statements by oil and gas industry expert Bob Cavnar on MSNBC:

These stories that are coming out now, the one's in the ‘New York Times‘ and the ‘Washington Post‘… square with what I heard last week from those who were closer to the operation, that they experienced some kind of a failure during the Top Kill operation, and that‘s one of the reasons they shut down so quickly.


You‘ll recall, Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, they said it would be 48 hours more before they heard it was successful.  They suddenly announced that afternoon that they were shutting down the operation. …

Their biggest problem here right now is keeping the well flowing, since I believe they probably can‘t shut it in, for the fear of an underground blowout. …

I think they certainly probably—they likely had a casing failure during the Top Kill procedure.  Remember, they had 30,000 horsepower pumping mud at about as much as 80 barrels a minute.  That kind of casing was probably already damaged, could have certainly failed.

What tells me that they have a down hole problem is that they are working to fit a cap that latches on to the top of the blowout preventer, rather than just setting a new blowout preventer.  That means they can‘t shut the well in, because there‘s a pressure buildup.  So they have to keep the well flowing to minimize oil and gas going out into the formation on the side. …

I certainly would like BP to come out and say what they think.  This sub-surface failure that has been talked about several times, I would believe they need to address …

The real doomsday scenario here… is if that casing gives up, and it does come through the other strings of pipe.  Remember, it is concentric pipe that holds this well together.  If it comes into the formation, basically, you‘ve got uncontrolled flow to the sea floor.  And that is the doomsday scenario.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37592156/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/

http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/oil-expert-bp-must-keep-the-well-flowing-to-minimize-oil-and-gas-going-out-into-the-formation-on-the-side

[Jackson Holly]

Thanks DOK for keeping us informed ...

QUESTION:

What happens when enough oil is forced into the ocean and the ocean pressure
seeks to balance the forces? In other words, what happens when the flow goes
the other way?

[bigron]

BP and government authorities collude to suppress reality of oil spill


By David Walsh

http://uruknet.com/?p=m66911&hd=&size=1&l=e

WSWS, June 11, 2010

Numerous media accounts confirm that oil giant BP, in collusion with the Obama administration and various federal agencies, is attempting to block information about the extent of the damage wreaked on the Gulf Coast and other areas.

The New York Times reported Wednesday ("Efforts to Limit the Flow of Spill News") that "Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials."

The Times article describes the media "being kept at bay" is merely "another example of a broader problem of officials’ filtering what images of the spill the public sees," adding that "Scientists, too, have complained about the trickle of information that has emerged from BP and government sources."

Essentially, BP and the authorities are trying to suppress information about the oil spill just as the US military, with the complicity of the American media, has done in Iraq and Afghanistan. From Vietnam came images of wounded and dying soldiers, which had a significant impact on public opinion; from the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, notes Newsweek magazine, "pictures of dead otters, fish, and birds, as well as oil-covered shorelines, ignited nationwide outrage and led to a backlash against Exxon." The Pentagon and the corporate elite have learned a simple lesson: by whatever means necessary, prevent the population from learning the truth.

The Times observes, "Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor at the Associated Press, likened the situation to reporters being embedded with the military in Afghanistan. 'There is a continued effort to keep control over the access,’ Mr. Oreskes said. 'And even in places where the government is cooperating with us to provide access, it’s still a problem because it’s still access obtained through the government.’"

Indeed CNN has described its correspondent, Kyra Phillips, as "embedded" with US Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen.

There are numerous examples of BP and the government blocking media coverage of the oil spill. A CBS television crew was threatened in late May with arrest for attempting to film an oil-covered beach in Louisiana. A vessel carrying BP contractors and Coast Guard officials stopped the crew, and the pilot told CBS reporters, "This is BP rules, it’s not ours."

A reporter from Mother Jones recounted in detail how local deputies, at the behest of BP, prevented journalists from reaching Elmer’s Island Wildlife Refuge, also in Louisiana. An oil company representative told the reporter, "BP’s in charge because 'it’s BP’s oil.’"

An airplane pilot planning to carry a New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter over the oil slick was denied permission for the flight. "We were questioned extensively. Who was on the aircraft? Who did they work for?" recalled Rhonda Panepinto, who owns Southern Seaplane with her husband, Lyle. "The minute we mentioned media, the answer was: 'Not allowed.’"

When Associated Press photographer Gerald Herbert attempted to accompany Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of Jacques Cousteau, on a trip to Breton Island, a national wildlife refuge off the barrier islands of Louisiana, the US Coast Guard intervened. Newsweek reports, "Upon approaching the island, a Coast Guard boat stopped them. 'The first question was, 'Is there any press with you?’ says Herbert.’ They answered yes, and the Coast Guard said they couldn’t be there. 'I had to bite my tongue. That should have no bearing.’"

Newsweek comments: "Photographers who have traveled to the Gulf commonly say they believe that BP has exerted more control over coverage of the spill with the cooperation of the federal government and local law enforcement. 'It’s a running joke among the journalists covering the story that the words 'Coast Guard’ affixed to any vehicle, vessel, or plane should be prefixed with 'BP,’’ says Charlie Varley, a Louisiana-based photographer. 'It would be funny if it were not so serious.’"

At 10 pm the evening before a scheduled trip by Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, along with a group of journalists, on the Gulf of Mexico, reports the New York Times, "someone from the Department of Homeland Security’s legislative affairs office called the senator’s office to tell them that no journalists would be allowed.

"'They said it was the Department of Homeland Security’s response-wide policy not to allow elected officials and media on the same 'federal asset,’’ said Bryan Gulley, a spokesman for the senator. 'No further elaboration’ was given, Mr. Gulley added."

A reporter and photographer from the New York Daily News were told by a BP contractor that they could not have access to a public beach on Grand Isle, Louisiana. A local sheriff, brought in by the BP employee, told the reporter that "news media had to fill out paperwork and then be escorted by a BP official to get access to the beach." (New York Times)

The stories go on and on, underscoring, on the one hand, the determination of BP to conceal the catastrophe by suppressing images of the spill on land and sea. Financial questions are at the heart of this. The extent of the devastation has a bearing on the immediate fate of BP’s share price, as well as the amount of the damages eventually levied against the oil giant.

On the other hand, the collusion of the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Aviation Administration and other institutions with the censorship efforts of a private corporation reveals something about the character of the Obama administration and all levels of the government in the US: they are entirely subservient to the interests of big business and equally hostile to the interests of the American population.




 

[citizenx]

Jackson Holly,

If all fails (and no less an authority than physicist and professor, Michia Kaku, says the relief wells may fail) the leak may last for years.  There will be no pressure reversal anytime soon, and there are 4 billion barrels down there supposedly.

[Jackson Holly]

^ ^ ^

Yep ... my fears exactly. 

However, even top, level-headed observers are beginning to whisper that this thing is
developing quickly into an ERUPTION, not a leak or a spill. If the seafloor gives way at
some point, the oil/gas deposit would empty MUCH faster and the water would gush in
at tremendous force and would turn to steam in the heat of the interior. Right?

I believe the key ... and the scariest point ... is that the Gulf was formed apparently by
asteroid impact some millions of years ago. The structure of the crust no doubt was
weakened and fractured to some degree by such impact ... it may be ripe for a big one.
Should I say it? A yellowstone-type eruption?

[H0llyw00d]

Everyone can speculate or come up w/ faux solutions, but its all moot. Why??
Because these A-holes won't say whats really happening. Not 1 of us peons know exactly what the truth of this disaster is, therefore no one can possibly come up w/ a possible solution. there are maybe a dozen who truly know whats going on, and their not talking....
Now as far as cleanup, BP needs to foot this bill 100%...I mean we sit around and watch big oil rake in billions on QUARTERLY profits. Well its time to spend some of that you greedy corporate jerks....
But whats really going to happen?..
BP may have to fork over a 100 mil max, but we will foot the rest....
makes me sick to even think about it...

[citizenx]

Actually some estimates have the field at 6 billion barrels.   Oil is about 40% METHANE by mass.  Intentional release of powerful greenhouse gas?

Risking extinction level event to make global warming a reality?

Will the oil itself cause the top layer of the oceans to become anoxic?

What are the consequnces of the massive release of other substances, like hydrogen sulfide?

I don't think anybody knws these things for sure, one way or the other.

[pac522]

I just have one question, paper or plastic?


5 out of 5 roll eyes  

[Jackson Holly]

Everyone can speculate or come up w/ faux solutions, but its all moot. Why??
Because these A-holes won't say whats really happening. Not 1 of us peons know exactly what the truth of this disaster is, therefore no one can possibly come up w/ a possible solution. there are maybe a dozen who truly know whats going on, and their not talking....
Now as far as cleanup, BP needs to foot this bill 100%...I mean we sit around and watch big oil rake in billions on QUARTERLY profits. Well its time to spend some of that you greedy corporate jerks....
But whats really going to happen?..
BP may have to fork over a 100 mil max, but we will foot the rest....
makes me sick to even think about it...

I posted in another thread about the UNCLOS TREATY ... it looks to me like We The People are responsible for footing the bill. We can rant about BP all day, but it happened in our territory and our 'elected officials' let it happen. We signed the treaty ... we are responsible.


Read here:
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=171248.msg1019457#msg1019457

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=171248.msg1019494#msg1019494

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=171248.msg1019499#msg1019499

~~~~~~~

Marine Pollution.  States would be bound to prevent and control marine pollution from any source and would be liable for damage caused by violation of their international obligations to combat marine pollution.'

~~~~~~~

I believe we are liable!

[Jackson Holly]

SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2010

BP Official Admits to Damage
BENEATH THE SEA FLOOR


As I noted Tuesday, there is growing evidence that BP's oil well - technically called the "well casing" or "well bore" - has suffered damage beneath the level of the sea floor.

The evidence is growing stronger and stronger that there is substantial damage beneath the sea floor. Indeed, it appears that BP officials themselves have admitted to such damage. This has enormous impacts on both the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf, and the prospects for quickly stopping the leak this summer.

On May 31st, the Washington Post noted:

Sources at two companies involved with the well said that BP also discovered new damage inside the well below the seafloor and that, as a result, some of the drilling mud that was successfully forced into the well was going off to the side into rock formations.

"We discovered things that were broken in the sub-surface," said a BP official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said that mud was making it "out to the side, into the formation."

On June 2nd, Bloomberg pointed out:

Plugging the well is another challenge even after BP successfully intersects it, Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor, said. BP has said it believes the well bore to be damaged, which could hamper efforts to fill it with mud and set a concrete plug, Bea said.

Bea is an expert in offshore drilling and a high-level governmental adviser concerning disasters.

On the same day, the Wall Street Journal noted that there might be a leak in BP's well casing 1,000 feet beneath the sea floor:

BP PLC has concluded that its "top-kill" attempt last week to seal its broken well in the Gulf of Mexico may have failed due to a malfunctioning disk inside the well about 1,000 feet below the ocean floor.

***

The broken disk may have prevented the heavy drilling mud injected into the well last week from getting far enough down the well to overcome the pressure from the escaping oil and gas, people familiar with BP's findings said. They said much of the drilling mud may also have escaped from the well into the rock formation outside the wellbore.

On June 7th, Senator Bill Nelson told MSNBC that he's investigating reports of oil seeping up from additional leak points on the seafloor:

Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL): Andrea we’re looking into something new right now, that there’s reports of oil that’s seeping up from the seabed… which would indicate, if that’s true, that the well casing itself is actually pierced… underneath the seabed. So, you know, the problems could be just enormous with what we’re facing.

Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC: Now let me understand better what you’re saying. If that is true that it is coming up form that seabed, even the relief well won’t be the final solution to cap this thing. That means that we’ve got oil gushing up at disparate places along the ocean floor.

Sen. Nelson: That is possible, unless you get the plug down low enough, below where the pipe would be breached.

Indeed, loss of integrity in the well itself may explain why BP is drilling its relief wells more than ten thousand feet beneath the leaking pipes on the seafloor (and see this).

Yesterday, recently-retired Shell Oil President John Hofmeister said that the well casing below the sea floor may have been compromised:

[Question] What are the chances that the well casing below the sea floor has been compromised, and that gas and oil are coming up the outside of the well casing, eroding the surrounding soft rock. Could this lead to a catastrophic geological failure, unstoppable even by the relief wells?

John Hofmeister: This is what some people fear has occurred. It is also why the "top kill" process was halted. If the casing is compromised the well is that much more difficult to shut down, including the risk that the relief wells may not be enough. If the relief wells do not result in stopping the flow, the next and drastic step is to implode the well on top of itself, which carries other risks as well.

As noted yesterday in The Engineer magazine, an official from Cameron International - the manufacturer of the blowout preventer for BP's leaking oil drilling operation - noted that one cause of the failure of the BOP could have been damage to the well bore:

Steel casing or casing hanger could have been ejected from the well and blocked the operation of the rams.
Oil industry expert Rob Cavner believes that the casing might be damaged beneath the sea floor, noting:

The real doomsday scenario here… is if that casing gives up, and it does come through the other strings of pipe. Remember, it is concentric pipe that holds this well together. If it comes into the formation, basically, you‘ve got uncontrolled [oil] flow to the sea floor. And that is the doomsday scenario.

ENTIRE ARTICLE, with LINKS and VIDEOS:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/06/evidence-points-to-destruction-beneath.html

[larsonstdoc]

SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2010

BP Official Admits to Damage
BENEATH THE SEA FLOOR


As I noted Tuesday, there is growing evidence that BP's oil well - technically called the "well casing" or "well bore" - has suffered damage beneath the level of the sea floor.


The real doomsday scenario here… is if that casing gives up, and it does come through the other strings of pipe. Remember, it is concentric pipe that holds this well together. If it comes into the formation, basically, you‘ve got uncontrolled [oil] flow to the sea floor. And that is the doomsday scenario.

ENTIRE ARTICLE, with LINKS and VIDEOS:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/06/evidence-points-to-destruction-beneath.html

  I think this worse than doomsday.  After reading all these articles  and listening to the alternative  talk radio shows, I have come to the conclusion that it will take years to fix, if ever.