Leak Rate 25,000 bpd -- TERROR NOT RULED OUT
Economic Damage in Tens of Billions -- Environmental Catastrophe -- Bigger then Katrina
April 30, 2010, 1330 PDT -- I watched the press conference live. The question came from a Dow Jones reporter. Present on the stage (among others) were Slazar (Interior), Napolitano (DHS), The Chiarman of BP, Gov. Jindal and a Coast Guard Admiral. The Dow Jones reporter confronted the attendees with two scientific studies saying that the leak rate from the sunken oil rig in the gulf was actually 25,000 barrels per day or five times more than BP had been stating as of this morning. Intial reports kept it a a couple hundred barrels per day but the number of barrels -- and the size of the slick -- continue to grow. No one on the dais denied or even modestly refuted the number. They had been totally busted. The Coast Guard Admiral, protecting her service, stepped up and said, "We have been operating since Day One as though this were a worst-case scenario." The BP Chairman took the mic and also did not deny it. He mumbled something about "we're responding as the numbers get bigger."
Terrorism or an act of war has not been ruled out. DHS and Interior have assumed command of the investigation. According to the BP Chairman no one has a clue what caused the explosion.
Then it got really scary. Someone said clearly that the whole world was watching because of what this meant for already-funded offshore exploration under development. The safety measures designed to protect against a blowout have failed completely. How many more billions of research and millions in cost per fix are going to be needed? How many projects delayed or halted?
Worse: The oil slick is now the size of Delaware. It will be Ohio-sized within days. Florida has declared a state of emergency. All commercial fishing in the Gulf is threatened. All widlife is threatened. And when and if the slick gets to NOLA it will have a disatarous impact on energy production and the brave, battered, courageous people who live there. Coastal refineries may have to close... What might happen if the oil ignited? Oil should be at $100 before the end of next week. I suspect between $150 and $200 (maybe higher) this summer.
Worse: Napolitano and Salazar are already talking about huge claim funds. Massive class-actions against BP are starting. Insurance claims may well dwarf Katrina. The economy of the entire Gulf Coast is in jeopardy. From what I heard there is no real plan to stop the leak and no estimation as to when that will happen. (I might have missed that.) What happens when the slick hits Cuba? The rest of the Caribbean?
The current fradulent Wall Street bubble will pop in shorter order than anticipated.
Within about a week, man's greed and reach for energy have found natural and unyielding limits. Two coal mine disasters and an oil slick that will cause as yet unknown catastrophic damage, loss of life and property. And yet there are still those in this movement who think we need to argue with people who believe there's plenty of easy oil about anything.
It would be so poetic if history recorded that this was the event that marked the cliff edge of human industrial civilization. Maybe then someone will get the point. Maybe then we will find our hundredth monkey... And maybe Mother Earth will have poisoned us with the substance we have so greedily raped her -- and killed each other -- for... "You want oil?... I'll give you oil."
MCR
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28 comments:
Mike:
Comments on this article that posits cementing as the determining factor of the rig explosion?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575214593564769072.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular
If the 18 of 39 statistic matters, BP, Cameron, and Halliburton face serious joint and several liability exposure.
Peter J. of Minneapolis
I am a 42 year old male who has one cause that has been important to me since I was a little kid and that the environment! I am not embarrased to say I shed a tear today watching the news conference on CNN. The first thing I thought of was that someone did this on purpose. am I wrong? I hope so.
Real scary. Thanks mike. Sorry mother for our habits and addictions. I think I'm ready to move to the land, practice ancient skills, quit my job, and build the lifeboats with as much gusto as possible. Ever since rubicon my life has been more and more about awareness. Anything I can do to help is yours. You're welcome in our tribe. All of you.
They have been drilling for oil offshore since the late 19th century and still it seems they can't do it safely. BP might want to consider spending some of that £40million a DAY profit on better working practices.
I have just read another article which suggests a second BP rig has sunk in the gulf of Mexico:
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=115801
Thanks Michael for the blog and for opening my eyes to peak oil and the potential fallout. I am and will continue to spread the word.
A Monkey
2nd oil rig overturns on Gulf Coast
Coincidence?
Namaste
The environmental disaster is massive, the economic impact major. But I do not see how this event could significantly impact crude oil prices in 2010. If the NOLA refineries are shut in, the shortages would be of refined products in the US only.
The least the US government can do is to forbid these oildiggings so near land. But I can guess that if they go further out in the sea the deeper the oil will be! And the more expensive!
ingridyvonne, Sweden
@ Paul: yeah I caught that :) there was another bloke on the BH blog (sceptic/luke warm blog) so I think that's 4 or 5 of us [lol] there are a lot of fractured communities/POV intertwining tho.
Alot of the P.O. crowd are environmentalists (or pseudo-enviros), seem to take the AGW spin as gospel.
The AGW alarmists fall into a few camps too, most see the Carbon credit scam for what it is, but refuse to see the connections and join the dots re CCX, Co2 & P.O. claiming AGW is "the" problem, permacultureists seem to fall into this camp too.
The AGW sceptics for the most part seem to doubt P.O.
Then there's the NWO conspiracy folks who doubt everything.
For me MCR's work points to CCX being the elites income stream replacement for oil/bankster profits. Take this and follow the money through Al Gore et al. and the fraudulent science, backed by the MSM, P.O. nullifying AGW anyway. Throw in the Greens link to the elites, how AGW has diverted the environmental activist agenda to work for the elites, and against the environment. Mix in some NWO carbon based money system, and the electronification of money transactions, eliminating black market profit in the longer term, with all the big brother control systems, misinformation, and it's a master stroke plan!
I'm left perplexed that more people don't see it!
Oh well, back to the garden :)
The least this would lead to is the US govenement forbid oildigging this far to such sensitive land as New Orleans and the other landareas!
It's almost a set up for commodities speculation. Who's to say there wasn't a sabotage act? An underwater leak after cementing pipe should have nothing to do with an explosion on the rig deck, all they would have had to do was vent and flare off based on pressure monitoring. Setting pipe shouldn't cause an explosion on deck. I've known first hand many wildcatters, chainhands, and rig operators and have a good understanding of the engineering and technical processes. It's been reported underwater acoustic safety monitoring requirements were lobbied out of EPA requirements for this and other drilling rigs. I'd like to know more about that.
If a second rig has exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, then it is almost certainly deliberate. North Korea, perhaps? That country has recently rather acquired the manner of a desperate hive preparing to swarm.
Dear MCR; I absolutely love it when you make a post. Its always powerful and makes one think. WHAT IS THE 100TH MONKEY????? I don't understand???
Give you poetry
The deadly and poisonous vapours of NAPHTHA wells, sacked by the imperial army of Rome, contaminated the air. This event caused the misfortune of the Empire, the Antonine Plague. The most powerful civilization was punished by Apollo. It was the beginning of its collapse.
Gamedog:
Please spell out the abbreviations you're using, such as "AGW," "CCX", and "NWO". I know "NWO" = "New World Order". The others I do not know. This will help neophytes and old hands on the blog alike.
Peter J. of Minneapolis
gamedog...LOL...I think you just set the record for the most abbreviations or acronyms ever utilized in a post in here!
ChuckP...Click Here for the 100th Monkey Effect
ChuckP: The "100th monkey" is a metaphor from the move "Collapse". Mike recounts a study done of how monkeys survived on a Pacific island that had been used for atomic weapons testing. A few of the monkeys were taught to wash their (radiation-contaminated) coconuts before eating them. This healthy practice spread slowly among the monkeys...until the 100th monkey learned it, very soon after, 10,000 monkeys were doing it, with many more following. Or something like that, I might be slightly off in the details. Just did some quick Googling and came up with this as a starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect
Mike's talking about the "100th monkey" was one of my favorite parts of Collapse.
Part of the challenge IMO is that illumination/understanding of the PO predicament is not really the same as a repeatable, socially spread practice, like washing coconuts. However, some practices which fall out of that understanding, are easy to spread without necessarily requiring a full comprehension of PO's full implications...look at the backyard gardening movement, for instance.
Others - like bike commuting (one of my personal favorites, bikes are magical amplifiers of human power) - are a tougher sell to people addicted to convenience and cushiness, and who are prone to believe that with "green" technology, anything is possible.
Give you poetry
The deadly and poisonous vapours of NAPHTHA wells, sacked by the imperial army of Rome, contaminated the air. This event caused the misfortune of the Empire, the Antonine Plague. The most powerful civilization was punished by Apollo. It was the beginning of its collapse.
Give you poetry
The deadly and poisonous vapours of NAPHTHA wells, sacked by the imperial army of Rome, contaminated the air. This event caused the misfortune of the Empire, the Antonine Plague. The most powerful civilization was punished by Apollo. It was the beginning of its collapse.
We should long before now have recognized the sheer illogic that would have us mine the very substance of our planet to support humankind's enterprising ideas throughout its biosphere. Consuming the bowels of this Divine Sphere which is our home is nothing short of insanity
Peter: AGW = Anthropogenic Global Warming = Man made via Co2 emissions = alarmists.
Luke warmers (generally) recognise [i]some[/i] warming, tho remain open minded about the cause, & probably sceptical about the AGW science. Sceptics recognise some warming, but (generally) think todays temps are a natural cycle, no warmer than the 1930's or MWP (medieval warm period).
CCX = carbon credit exchanges of the various sorts.
FWIW I'm sceptic, I reject the Co2 hypothesis, but think deforestation has localised effected cloud cover, forests being the natural "moderator" of climate, and therefore caused localised climate changes within a natural cycle driven by the Sun and Earths orbital position (Milankovitch cycles). I recognise temps are changing, but only in line with the general rise from the last ice age. It's all natural, AKA The Null Hypothesis, which has never been falsified by AGW science.
====================
The Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Some Background and What It Means
@peter
while gamedog is out digging in his garden...
AGW = anthropomorphic global warming (or man-made global warming)
CCX = not sure of the expansion, but is the Chicago based carbon trading exchange
NWO = New World Order (as you correctly stated)
hope this helps!
Namaste
For those of you who don't know what the 100th monkey is, you can look it up on Wikipedia. It's a theory about critical mass and the tipping point of a new paradigm. It had to do with monkeys and islands after WW2 in the Pacific.
Gamedog, about your link on the Deepwater disaster:
Gail the Actuary is a very good source of information, but not my favorite policy maker.
He/she says:
"Presumably, with less oil, the downslope in the direction of the natural order of things will be even quicker. While some may not object to this, it would seem to me that it would make the urgency of adapting to the new world order even greater than it would be otherwise. This would suggest that we should be putting our efforts into energy sources that are truly renewable with only local materials--small scale wind, run of the stream hydro, and solar of the type that might be used to heat hot water a bit, but not to create electricity. These would not allow us to maintain BAU, or a world very close to BAU."
The importance of continuing deep-water drilling, to Gail, is that America does not produce that much high-quality oil, and might be cut off from world supplies due to credit problems or some other mischance. Business as usual (BAU) would be impossible. So drill, baby drill.
Gail berates "environmentalists" for caring more about beaches than highways (ribbons of asphalt). The environmental freaks I know are against more asphalt on beaches, farmland, mountains and most everywhere else. He says fish can rebound, eventually. Sure, in a couple of centuries. This treasuring attitude for BAU is common among a certain slice of PO people.
Get over it, Gail. Yes, we're on a steep downslope, industry-wise. Learn to garden. Don't expect ribbons of asphalt and a couple of family cars to enjoy it on. Yes, the population will drop, so stay healthy and eat right and develop good relations with those around you so you won't be among the first to go.
Gail says, basically "shit happens" when you test new technologies. Well, man, if they cost us coastlines and permanent irradiation and loss of forest cover and the destruction of our soils, I'd like to encourage the others out there to shun new technologies. I'm not even comfortable with the ones deloyed in my own lifetime.
Mike
I am interested if anybody else is disturbed that this policy of big oil policing itself should be questioned by the fact they attempted to continue to collect oil from the well for a month before conceding to a topkill. Seems like an outside authority could have saved the gulf from about 90% of the oil.
I know of a relitively simple way that would work i would say at least a 98 99 percent chance not to stop the leak but to totally contain it and pump it to ships then we can work on pluging it and i live near a company that could buid this devise but i can not animate so i dont know how to get it out but it would cert...ainly stop the slick and allow recovery of the oil oh and no chance of this being blocked by ice and it would create jobs for a few days. You know damn well they could at the very least know how to collect 100 percent of the oil coming out its not rocket science
I am a web designer in St Pete and I have put together a central website to report the real tryth behind this gulf oil desaster. Please help me by submitting whatever you find onlien about the BP cover up at http://www.gulfoildisasterblog.com.
Charlie Trig
www.TrigWebDesign.com
I am a web designer in St Pete and I have put together a central website to report the real truth behind this gulf oil disaster. Please help me by submitting whatever you find online about the BP cover up at http://www.gulfoildisasterblog.com.
Charlie Trig
www.TrigWebDesign.com
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