Louisiana deep oil drilling disaster

[Peter Lemkin]

Here is an MSNBC YouTube interview with Matt Simmons which suggests there is actually another leak not show in the famous live video feed ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDGAoU1H2...e=youtu.be

Well, [pun intended] it seems we were all being fooled by BP, as the famous plume shots are just the or a small leak; from the new information, there has to be a much larger leak [rate unknown, but likely 100 x - 1000 x the rate of the small leak we've all been watching].....so, as to the question of this now being capable of affecting the Atlantic via the Gulf Stream, I'd say...its just a matter of time. :beer: Very depressing. the Gulf is ****ed for decades, even it the flow is stopped now. It now has an almost null% chance, unless BP knows about the real leak and is only feeding everyone the tiny one as PR :help: This seems likely, as no barium mud nor cement is seen going to the small leak and they've been pumping it for two days now.....so there really is a cover-up going on, and things are MUCH worse than feared!!!! mokin:

[Ed Jewett]

Well, apologies for being AWOL on today's updates... personal stuff and all, and "drama" at another venue, and so on... Here's a crude update... Yes, indeed, people are waking up a lot to the fact that efforts have failed, ther's a video of someone's very expletive-delated explanation of the arrogance in the oil industry, there is a piece by Heinberg (one of the peak oil experts), there was video of a Congressman from LA breaking down in emotion, there was a Presidential press conference, and I clicked on the White House[dot]gov web site long enough to send a message to the POTUS (name and address required) which said in part “… your delayed reaction non-response was a grievous disservice to the US, its people, its spirit. You have failed. I expect your resignation on my table in the morning.” [/FONT]

I am now setting up a betting parlor with the long and short positions on the response:

* A Predator drone attack as joked about at the White House Correspondents dinner;
* a visit by some armed privateers;
* a visit by someone with a false passport, a syringe and a pillow; or
* an IRS audit;
* none.

Oh, and Dave Lindorrf has a meter embedded at his site ringing up the gallons in the event (with differening estimates):

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/

[Carsten Wiethoff]

I bet 100$ on NO RESPONSE.
Any takers?:heeeelllllooooo:

[Peter Lemkin]

May 27 (Reuters) - Mud on the lens of the camera providing video images of the pipe gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico has blocked the view of the attempt to stop the spill, BP Plc (BP.L) said on Thursday.

There was no attempt attempt to prevent the public from watching efforts to plug the leak from the damaged well, a BP spokesman said.

"It's just operational," said BP spokesman Jon Pack. "The camera that was closest to the riser got mud on its lens".

Last week BP began broadcasting video images of its leaking underwater oil well, following pressure from U.S. Congressional leaders concerned about the lack of progress in halting what is now the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

Since then the images have focused on a plume of black crude oil flowing from a pipe, called a riser, which is connected to the well head. However, on Thursday all video has been of the equipment at the top of the well.

On Wednesday BP began its latest attempt to plug the well, in an operation dubbed "top kill", involving pumping heavy drilling fluid into the blow out preventer, a heavy piece of equipment that sits on top of the well. The goal is to stall the flow of oil with the heavy fluids and then pump concrete into the well to shut if off for good.

Some of the mud being pumped into the blow out preventer traveled up the riser, expanding the plume of leaking oil, and this was what obstructed the camera, Pack said. He said he was unaware if it would be possible to solve the problem and restore images of the leaking riser.

On Thursday BP said it was making progress on plugging the ruptured well as U.S. government figures showed the disaster has eclipsed the previous worst U.S. oil spill caused when the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989 and spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound [ID:nN26238003].

BP shares jumped 6.0 percent in London on the comments from BP and from the U.S. Coast Guard suggesting the flow of oil had already been restricted by the pumping of the drilling mud into the blow out preventer.

The success or failure of the latest operation to stop the oil spill will continue to move the company's shares, analysts at French bank Societe Generale said in a research note on Thursday.

The oil company is aware that traders are watching the live video link closely for signs that the operation has succeeded but has warned that images from the seabed will be an unreliable indicator of progress.

BP said at around 1800 CDT (2300 GMT) on Wednesday that it would take 24 hours to know if the latest operation had been a success
------------------------------------------------------------
mud on the lens.....:aetsch:

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Obviously there is Canadian Legislation requiring offshore drills (in the arctic) to be accompanied by a relief drill in the same season, to have available an effective means of stopping a spill, should that happen at the main drill.

And clearly BP does not like that. The result is obvious.

Reference: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1326...arketsNews

I quote:

It has yet to announce plans to drill in the region but shortly before the U.S. disaster, BP and other oil companies urged Canadian regulators to drop a requirement stipulating that companies operating in the Arctic had to drill relief wells in the same season as the primary well.
Cullen argued the companies had made this request because drilling a relief well within the required time limit would be too expensive, given the difficult Arctic conditions.

[Keith Millea]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/28-2
Published on Friday, May 28, 2010 by CommonDreams.org Getting Naked to Expose BP

by Medea Benjamin

Diane Wilson, a fourth generation shrimper from the Texas Gulf and a founder of CODEPINK, has been watching the BP spill and the botched clean-up with a mixture of dread and anger. After all, it's her livelihood and that of her community that's at stake. "I've lived all my life in the Gulf Coast, in the oil, chemical, and gas hellhole we call an energy corridor," said Diane Wilson with her Texas twang. "I've been fightin' these polluters for 21 years. But this BP spill is the nail in the coffin of the people who make their living along the gulf coast. This is our 9/11 in slow motion."
Diane has been incensed by the cavalier attitude of BP CEO Tony Hayward, who said that the largest oil spill in US history is a tiny speck in the vast ocean. "He had the nerve to say that those miles upon miles of underwater oil plumes that stretch to who knows where and do who knows what to the fisheries, the ecosystem, and Gulf of Mexico for possibly generations, is really going to have a ‘very, very modest impact.' Sittin' there listening to BP's lies made my blood boil," Diane fumed. "I realized I better get off my butt and do somethin' about it."

This 61-year-old grandmother of five is all about action. To protest chemical companies polluting her bay, in 2002 Diane climbed a chemical tower, chained herself to it and then did a 30-day water-only hunger strike. As a CODEPINK cofounder who tried to stop the invasion of Iraq in 2003, an invasion she knew was all about oil, Diane got arrested confronting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at a Congressional hearing. Then she scaled and tied herself to the White House fence (and almost got shot by a sniper). She even traveled to Iraq when the U.S. military was about to attack, putting herself forward as a human shield.

So Diane put out a call for people to join her in Houston on Monday, May 24, to protest at the BP headquarters. Looking for a creative way to expose the company's criminal behavior (and entice the media, who rarely cover protests in Texas), Diane was inspired by the example of a group of women from Nigeria who took over a Chevron oil rig and threatened to strip naked if the company didn't hire more local workers and invest in the community. Faced with just the threat of nudity, Chevron gave in.

"If the Nigerian women could use their bodies on the Niger Delta, why can't we do it in downtown Houston?" Diane reasoned.

Diane doesn't take nudity lightly. She didn't grow up in a hippie commune, but in a fundamentalist Pentecostal family in rural Texas. "I was taught that flesh is sinful, it's the devil. I was so modest that if my sister said the word ‘bra', I would climb under the table. I was horrified by anything intimate. So for me, using nudity to expose the truth about BP was WAY outside my comfort zone. But I realized that it's the destruction of our ecosystem by corporate greed that's obscene, not a woman's body."
To prepare for the action, Diane got 100 pounds of fish from her fishing buddies, old fishing nets to drag the dead fish and fake oil to dump on them. She and one of her daughters made beautiful signs saying "Expose BP" and "The Naked Truth about Drill, Baby, Drill" and put them on big sandwich boards. "You could say we was cheatin' because we decided to use sandwich boards to cover our private parts, but that's about as nude as those of us from Texas can get," laughed Diane. "We'll leave the full-on nudity to the women from California."

The action was superb. About 100 people showed up from all over Texas and six other states--including California. Some people wore pasties that said "No BP", some dressed as fishermen, oily birds and fish. Diane put on her white rubber fishing boots, smeared herself with oil and wore a sandwich board that read "Expose BP's Obscene Side." Two imposter oil workers in BP uniforms doused the group with fake oil, causing the birds and fish to recoil and die on the sidewalk. The police and BP security stood by watching, as nice as could be. It was obvious that BP higher ups had the good sense to tell them that arresting protesters would not help their image.

The group was having fun mocking BP, but when Diane took the megaphone to speak, the tone changed. "I am here because I'm outraged," she said, her voice shaking, tears welling up in her eyes. "My family has lived on this gulf for 100 years, we've been fishing these waters for generations and now we're seeing it decimated. All we're getting from BP is lies. We're not getting any answers from the government. That's why people have to hit the streets to demand solutions."

After the action, I sat down with Diane to hear her solutions and ideas for future actions. "BP should be shaken down like a rotten fig tree," she said. "The government should seize their profits and use them for the clean up and then to invest in clean energy. We should shame those senators who want to stop the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act legislation that would raise oil companies' liability from a pitiful $75 million to $10 billion. And we should demand that our government stop offshore drilling. No new permits, period. We have to seize this moment to move our country away from fossil fuels that are responsible for environmental devastation and wars."
CODEPINK has asked our supporters to email letters to Senator Murkowski, asking her to stop blocking the Big Bailout Prevention Act. It's time to protect the fishermen, the coastal residents and the wildlife, not the corporation at fault for the disaster. But for Diane, sending emails is not enough. She is calling on people throughout the country to boycott BP-not just passively, but by getting out to BP gas stations to protest and educate their communities on the company and the catastrophe.

CODEPINK supports her call to action and is providing resources for action on our website. We'll also be bringing Diane to Washington, DC, to confront Congress, the White House Administration, and BP executives with the crude awakening about Big Oil.

"Pass out fliers to drivers. Ride your bikes around the stations. Get creative. Hey, maybe you even want to do your own nude protest," she grins. "Expose BP. Expose that Drill, Baby, Drill means Spill, Baby, Spill. After all, what's at stake is nothing less than our planet. And that's the naked truth."

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org) and CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org).

[Ed Jewett]

ABC News went underwater in the Gulf with Philippe Cousteau Jr., grandson of famous explorer Jacques Cousteau, and he described what he saw as "one of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen underwater."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lBQkNgY3bY&feature=player_embedded#!

[Ed Jewett]

[Ed Jewett]

ECOLOGICAL DENIAL OF THE GULF OIL DISASTER: U.S. POLICES HEAD TOWARD COLLAPSE
By Jan Lundberg Saturday, 29 May 2010


PHOTO: THE SIZE OF THE SPILL TWO WEEKS AGO

Petrocollapse that stems from the effects of global peak oil extraction has been raised a notch and clarified by the Gulf disaster. But make no mistake: the uncounted millions of gallons of rampaging oil and chemicals are just par for the course, slated to enter the ecosystem anyway. The idea that things were under control before the BP blowout, or that soon things might again be under control, is as delusional as the continuation of the oil wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: keep on fighting, killing, and wasting while we hope for some positive result. But in reality, we have no business over there -- even if we could afford the trillions of dollars spent. Similarly, we have no business extracting and refining oil or other fossil fuels -- unless our business is death and the unraveling of nature. Count me out. How about you?
Reprinted from COUNTERCURRENTS
The impact of the Gulf oil disaster on the national psyche and the economy have barely begun. When Florida, a more substantial state than Louisiana, is hit by the unprecedented pollution assured to have lasting effects, the quickened erosion of confidence in government, industry and modern technology may accelerate the end of this current phase of U.S. society. A transition or breakdown was already afoot. Thus, the shock of the Gulf oil disaster's impacts will further undermine the dominant consumer culture and life as we know it.
There are several unacknowledged problems with the oil gusher and the growing mess:
(1) The first priority has been to plug the hole and stop the hemorrhage. This is only logical and understandable, but it does not include the idea of retreating from the ongoing, inevitable devastation of usual petroleum industry activity. Who is framing the discussion, and why?
(2) The idea of cleaning up the current mess in the Gulf is questionable. Yes, it must be tried, but clean-up attempts give the impression that this is the answer and that clean up will be successful. The dispersal of the oil, much of it not even visible yet on the surface, presents an insurmountable challenge to contain. Again, the ongoing devastation of petroleum activity is exempt from consideration except by marginalized, independent thinkers and activists.
(3) Finally, the ecological consequences of the Gulf oil disaster are global. Louisiana's suffering is the tip of the iceberg that industrial society has smashed into. The oil and chemicals are on their way to Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas, an inevitably Texas and Mexico -- even before hurricanes hit and drive much of the oil onto many a shore. Even if all the spilled oil could be gathered by men in boats, it would somewhere be burned in engines in order to warm the globe in the name of the economy. The ocean is a sad place for oil pollution, but so is the atmosphere.
The economy must be declared subservient to the ecosystem. Any good citizen must become a foe of the present economy and a friend or worshipper of nature, before it is too late. Recently one Christian church leader publicly prayed that the oil would be blown south. Not only is this a wish for devastation of Mexico and other countries, this wish reveals total ecological ignorance.
The Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) president Frances Beinecke appeared on the PBS TV Newshour on May 27 along with the American Petroleum Institute's (API) chief economist John Felmy. They had a similar message regarding future energy alternatives, except that Felmy warned that oil is still to be heavily relied upon, and any pause in offshore oil drilling has economic impacts.
Rather than take a stand for slashing energy use, Beinecke came out for a clean energy transformation. She mentioned "oil addiction," but implied that solar panels, etc. are the answer. Her ignorance of energy technologies' ability to replace petroleum, based on assumptions about continued energy and agricultural-chemicals' & fuels' availability for the present overpopulation, is only typical. Thus, her ecological ignorance is almost as dangerous as the American Petroleum Institute's and President Obama's. Beinecke’s praise for the just-announced brief moratorium on offshore oil drilling buys into calming the public while setting the stage for a resumption of full-on oil addiction and energy gluttony. NRDC wants something better, but lacks the vision to offer it.
It was API, not NRDC, that brought up the fact that there are 250 million motor vehicles on U.S. roads. The opportunity for a real environmentalist to say we need to cut back on the number of vehicles by adopting a car-free lifestyle was missed, deliberately. The auto is as sacred to the major environmental groups as it is to API and its friend the government.
The U.S. is missing an historic chance to question oil dependence and to actually do something about it -- instead of scrambling to react to the moment and gazing off into the haze to some Holy Grail of clean energy for perpetual consumption. Worse, the business-as-usual approach to the present Gulf oil disaster continues the national pretense of ecological stability. The ongoing assault against nature cannot be denied, except by those holding their ears and eyes closed while they continue to shell out dollars to buy cars, gasoline and plastic. They wish to continue uninterrupted their lives of shopping, paying their bills, and imagining they have the best leadership in Washington and state capitals that money can buy.
Petrocollapse that stems from the effects of global peak oil extraction has been raised a notch and clarified by the Gulf disaster. But make no mistake: the uncounted millions of gallons of rampaging oil and chemicals are just par for the course, slated to enter the ecosystem anyway. The idea that things were under control before the BP blowout, or that soon things might again be under control, is as delusional as the continuation of the oil wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: keep on fighting, killing, and wasting while we hope for some positive result. But in reality, we have no business over there -- even if we could afford the trillions of dollars spent. Similarly, we have no business extracting and refining oil or other fossil fuels -- unless our business is death and the unraveling of nature. Count me out. How about you?
President Obama's May 27 news conference was almost a convincing performance, suggesting with his deep, clear voice that he is doing his best to deal with a crisis. However, he doesn't understand the true nature of the crisis. The crisis was raging before the blowout, when our commander-in-chief and "nut case at the wheel" called for more offshore oil drilling. Does he now warn of worse-case scenarios, now that they’re possible? No, he’s a pacifier -- except with his war machine.
When the President brings his little daughter Malia into the news conference, to depict himself as a regular guy shaving and assuring a child (emblematic of the American people) that he is on top of the situation, he is surely desperate. Obama tries to exude confidence over handling the BP oil disaster, but is he really so unshakable when the evidence is clear that BP's handling of the event and clean-up have been less than competent? And when the government has been predictably slow and inefficient? On-the-ground reports tell more than official assurances. Aside from protecting one's job performance as a politician or corporado, there is a public relations campaign to tranquilize the American people and fool the world. Except, people are not as simple minded and gullible as BP and Obama hope. The question is whether people will get beyond blaming and hand-wringing to the point of taking wise action.
Until then, Drill Baby Drill is mostly alive and well. This is excused among pseudo progressives such as the Democratic Party leadership, and people buy it because the Republicans are a tad worse and might invade Iran. To believe in such non-solutions is to hope that the march of the sheople to the slaughter house can be slowed down a bit -- with a clean energy miracle coming along some day or decade to save us from having to make lifestyle change and experience the collapse of the American Empire.
No matter what Obama does or does not do, no matter how much he or the public "get it" or don't get it, the Gulf oil disaster is an historic, watershed event far greater than Exxon Valdez. Collapse of the system has gotten a big boost.
* * * * *
Jan Lundberg is a former oil industry analyst who, among other functions, formally studied offshore oil drilling's potential for California on behalf of the oil industry -- resulting in Congress's immediate lifting of the moratorium there in the mid 1980s. He ran Lundberg Survey which published the Lundberg Letter, then known widely as “the bible of the oil industry.”

Last Updated ( Saturday, 29 May 2010 )

http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/1669/1/

[Magda Hassan]

The only thing that the US seems able to organize for is war and looting.