'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

[Jeff]

Apologies if I missed this from an earlier post:

BP has stopped drilling one of the relief wells to intercept the blown out Macondo bore so it can ready the rig's blowout preventer (BOP) to go on top of the crippled Macondo BOP.

Transocean boss Steve Newman told analysts today that Transocean semi-submersible rig Development Driller II had stopped drilling while BP tries a top kill to try to halt the flow of the Macondo well.

BP spokesman David Nicholas told UpstreamOnline that the rig was stopped so its BOP would be ready if needed.

"The (Developmen Driller II) has temporarily suspended drilling operations in preparation for the possible future deployment of its BOP on top of the (Macondo) BOP," he told UpstreamOnline in an email response.

"This is a possible future option for stopping flow from the well and, as throughout, we are advancing options in parallel."

BP operations boss Doug Suttles confirmed that the BOP was being prepped to be deployed but said that it had been at the ready since the beginning of the top kill operation and it was not a sign that BP thought the top kill would not work.

http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article216214.ece

So there's now only one relief well being drilled, though the White House had "ordered" BP to drill two.

[justdrew]

Krauthammer is such a fucking POS. So many vector changing phrases in there, don't even know where to begin. I mean, really?!?!? Have any of us really, actually, really, stopped beating our wives yet? No, we still beat them. They are beginning to like it, from what my wife's friend told me.

Charles Asshammer is a complete fool. There's no way to turn an entrenched bureaucracy around in a few months. the environmental waiver was given, as he says, in April 09, a few months after taking office. Pigs like Asshammer were apparently completely in favor of this, since the practice and staff were all put in place by that worthless piece of human garbage, bush. Not a peep out of these fascist clowns for years against it. No this isn't Obama's, this is bush's cataclysm to the extent it belongs to any president.

but the main problem is the idiot that decided to save money by stealing the drilling mud from this well to drill another well, instead of just making up another batch of mud. Talk about "penny wise and pound foolish" - this must be the greatest case in history.

[Nordic]

Wow, I wondered if the right wing noise machine assholes would continue to somehow blame this on environmentalists.

That takes some real brass balls.

How many people are stupid enough to believe them?

I'd say very very few, even half of the Palin supporters have to see through this shit. If you can wrap your brain around what Krauthammer is saying, you have to be completely insane. Your mind has to be broken in the first place.

Krauthammer should be taken out and shot. He's an enemy of the state. A domestic enemy.

[82_28]

Wow, I wondered if the right wing noise machine assholes would continue to somehow blame this on environmentalists.

That takes some real brass balls.

How many people are stupid enough to believe them?

I'd say very very few, even half of the Palin supporters have to see through this shit. If you can wrap your brain around what Krauthammer is saying, you have to be completely insane. Your mind has to be broken in the first place.

Krauthammer should be taken out and shot. He's an enemy of the state. A domestic enemy.

Well, they gotta leverage it somehow for some kind of gain. Because somebody is losing, somebody must win. In the midst of confusion and angst, why, you just simply fill in the blanks. Fascists thrive, as we know, on this shit. Place the blame down the food chain and profit. I don't think it's brass balls at all -- it's just simple cruelty made major and these motherfuckers have literally no conscience. Idiots like Krauthammer knew 10, 20, 30 years ago that there is no problem with being ecologically aware and empathic. But they're not idiots. They know what they are doing. It would be nice if everyone would just say "Jesus H Christ weren't we all wrong". But no. Can't do that, that admits defeat. To be defeated is the antithesis of what this iteration of America is all about. Except -- WAKE THE FUCK UP!

But they're trained to be cruel. In some Bernays-ian way they have taken right wing reactionary-ism and turned it into action. Little by little, this focus on the family family values shit has completely weakened every family and community there is. On the right, there never was any focus on the family. They despise the family. They despise life. They despise ideas of a helpful collective nature. They stick together while they drive the masses of humanity apart via their assets of destruction.

[Bruce Dazzling]

[ninakat]

IT’S TIME TO PRAY
May 29, 2010, 2100 PDT
Mike Ruppert

I haven’t been able to sleep well because of the obvious chicanery, stupidity and deception being practiced by BP, the mainstream media and the United States government. I have not been able figure out how giant plumes could be originating five miles in either direction of the well that is leaking. I wrote to Matt Simmons and this reply just came in. I’m doing what Matt asked, as quickly as I can. Dinner can wait.

…“In my opinion, what most likely happened when one of the largest surges of oil as gas blew out the BOP and within seconds, began melting down one of the world’s most technically advanced deepwater rigs ever built is that just the BOP and wellhead got tossed far away from the well bore but the riser which was attached to the rig floor was separated from the wellhead/BOP.

“What all the black crap coming out to create these plumes are is the oil from the reservoir and it is staying so deep under the ocean surface that only the recent tests by NOAA research vessels finally saw these giant plumes rapidly spreading across the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico.

“BP is in total denial that this could be real.

“It is time for the government to ask BP to step aside and bring the military into to managing this colossal failure of judgment by BP.

“Spread this news as we all need to better understand what is really happening.

“Very tragic story.

“Matt”

Let me add my thoughts. -- The obvious collusion between the USG and the mainstream media leads me to believe that the USG has known that a nuke would be the only option within a week of the explosion. About two weeks ago we posted on this blog a link to a story from (I think it was) The Telegraph saying that President Obama had dispatched a team of nuclear scientists to study the situation and evaluate the possibility of using a nuke. One was a co-inventor of the H-bomb. It was a credible story that no press outlet followed up on. Why not?

I believe that the leaks are devastating for all life in the Gulf and that large portions of the Gulf will be dead zones from seabed to surface within maybe six months. I believe that an announcement of a pending nuclear detonation will come within a week to ten days. I predict that US Continuity of Government provisions will be activated and that FEMA will, before end of summer, be placed in complete control of the Southeast United States… limited martial law.

I believe that mankind will have a very rude awakening when the nuclear announcement is made. We will be lucky if North Korea doesn’t seize the moment... or somebody else.

The U.S. government must intervene without hesitation. I completely agree with Matt Simmons. The battle now is to save all life in and around the Gulf of Mexico.

It is time to pray.

MCR

[Jeff]

I don't know what to make of Simmons. He's credentialed, sure, but that includes "energy advisor to President George W Bush," and as we should have learned from 9/11, some of the craziest and most fractious speculation originated with former Bush advisors. I haven't heard any other source for another, larger leak, and I haven't seen any sound evidence for Simmons saying there is one. So, I'm just saying, let's be wary about similar authorities staking claims to lead "Oilgate Truth."

Also, the geology of the gulf could mean bombing the well would only worsen things:

Roger Anderson and Albert Boulanger of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory describe the basic geology of the oil-rich parts of the Gulf:

Production in the deepwater province is centered in turbidite sands recently deposited from the Mississippi delta. Even more prolific rates have been recorded in the carbonates of Mexico, with the Golden Lane and Campeche reporting 100,000 barrel per day production from single wells. However, most of the deep and ultra-deepwater Gulf of Mexico is covered by the Sigsbee salt sheet that forms a large, near-surface “moonscape” culminating at the edge of the continental slope in an 800 meter high escarpment.

...

Salt is the dominant structural element of the ultra-deepwater Gulf of Mexico petroleum system. Large horizontal salt sheets, driven by the huge Plio-Pleistocene to Oligocene sediment dump of the Mississippi, Rio Grande and other Gulf Coast Rivers, dominate the slope to the Sigsbee escarpment. Salt movement is recorded by large, stepped, counter-regional growth faults and down-to-the-basin fault systems soling into evacuated salt surfaces. Horizontal velocities of salt movement to the south are in the several cm/year range, making this supposedly passive margin as tectonically active as most plate boundaries.

...

Porosities over 30 percent and permeabilities greater than one darcy in deepwater turbidite reservoirs have been commonly cited. Compaction and diagenesis of deepwater reservoir sands are minimal because of relatively recent and rapid sedimentation. Sands at almost 20,000 feet in the auger field (Garden Banks 426) still retain a porosity of 26% and a permeability of almost 350mdarcies. Pliocene and Pleistocene turbidite sands in the Green Canyon 205 field have reported porosities ranging from 28 to 32% with permeabilities between 400 mdarcies and 3 darcies. Connectivity in sheet sands and amalgamated sheet and channel sands is high for deepwater turbidite reservoirs and recovery efficiencies are in the 40-60% range.

...

The BP oil spill leak is occurring in the "Macondo" Prospect, Block 252, in the Mississippi Canyon Area of the Gulf (much of the oil-rich areas under the Gulf are in the Mississippi Canyon and Fan areas: "In the central Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi Canyon and Fan system is the dominant morphologic feature").

If the geology at Block 252 of the Macondo Prospect is like that described by Anderson and Boulanger for most of the oil-rich portion of the Gulf, then it might be difficult to stop the oil gusher without completing relief wells (which will take a couple of months).

Specifically, if there are salt layers on the top of the seabed, with high porosity near the surface, and salt movement, then sealing the whole leak zone might not work. The oil pressure is coming up at such high pressures (more than 2,000 pounds per square inch), that sealing the leaking riser and blowout preventer might just mean the oil squirts out somewhere else nearby, if the salty, porous rock is not solid enough to contain it.

Unless the government releases details of the geology underlying the spill site, people will not have an accurate picture of the oil spill situation. And failure to release such information may prevent creative scientists from coming up with a workable solution.

The first draft of Anderson and Boulanger's paper, in 2001, stated:

No means currently exists to produce oil and gas to market from such water depths!

(exclamation point is Anderson and Boulanger's).

If the geology at Block 252 is like that described by Anderson and Boulanger for most of the oil-rich portion of the Gulf, then it might be difficult to stop the oil gusher without completing relief wells (which will take a couple of months).

Specifically, if there are salt layers right under the sea floor, high porosity near the surface or salt movement, then sealing the leak by plugging the risers and blowout preventer might not work. The oil pressure is coming up at such high pressures (more than 2,000 pounds per square inch), that sealing the leaking equipment at the level of the seabed might just mean the oil will flow out somewhere else nearby.

[Gouda]

I'm confused. Are Ruppert and Simmons calling for a nuke?

The battle now is to save all life in and around the Gulf of Mexico.

By nuke?

[Bruce Dazzling]

IT’S TIME TO PRAY
May 29, 2010, 2100 PDT
Mike Ruppert

I haven’t been able to sleep well because of the obvious chicanery, stupidity and deception being practiced by BP, the mainstream media and the United States government. I have not been able figure out how giant plumes could be originating five miles in either direction of the well that is leaking. I wrote to Matt Simmons and this reply just came in. I’m doing what Matt asked, as quickly as I can. Dinner can wait.

…“In my opinion, what most likely happened when one of the largest surges of oil as gas blew out the BOP and within seconds, began melting down one of the world’s most technically advanced deepwater rigs ever built is that just the BOP and wellhead got tossed far away from the well bore but the riser which was attached to the rig floor was separated from the wellhead/BOP.

“What all the black crap coming out to create these plumes are is the oil from the reservoir and it is staying so deep under the ocean surface that only the recent tests by NOAA research vessels finally saw these giant plumes rapidly spreading across the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico.

“BP is in total denial that this could be real.

“It is time for the government to ask BP to step aside and bring the military into to managing this colossal failure of judgment by BP.

“Spread this news as we all need to better understand what is really happening.

“Very tragic story.

“Matt”

Let me add my thoughts. -- The obvious collusion between the USG and the mainstream media leads me to believe that the USG has known that a nuke would be the only option within a week of the explosion. About two weeks ago we posted on this blog a link to a story from (I think it was) The Telegraph saying that President Obama had dispatched a team of nuclear scientists to study the situation and evaluate the possibility of using a nuke. One was a co-inventor of the H-bomb. It was a credible story that no press outlet followed up on. Why not?

I believe that the leaks are devastating for all life in the Gulf and that large portions of the Gulf will be dead zones from seabed to surface within maybe six months. I believe that an announcement of a pending nuclear detonation will come within a week to ten days. I predict that US Continuity of Government provisions will be activated and that FEMA will, before end of summer, be placed in complete control of the Southeast United States… limited martial law.

I believe that mankind will have a very rude awakening when the nuclear announcement is made. We will be lucky if North Korea doesn’t seize the moment... or somebody else.

The U.S. government must intervene without hesitation. I completely agree with Matt Simmons. The battle now is to save all life in and around the Gulf of Mexico.

It is time to pray.

MCR

Nobody needs to twist my arm into taking an end timesian slant on the current state of the world, but I believe that Ruppert is jumping the gun a bit on the COG/Martial Law implementation.

I could be wrong, of course, but I don't think they're ready for that drastic a step just yet.

Regarding everything else he says, though, you should absolutely either pray, or smoke 'em if you got 'em.

[justdrew]

…“In my opinion, what most likely happened when one of the largest surges of oil as gas blew out the BOP and within seconds, began melting down one of the world’s most technically advanced deepwater rigs ever built is that just the BOP and wellhead got tossed far away from the well bore but the riser which was attached to the rig floor was separated from the wellhead/BOP.

how does that make any sense? "the BOP and wellhead got tossed far away from the well bore" - surely we've all seen the BOP sitting on top of the well bore?

[2012 Countdown]

Yep...reading this shit...should i be fearing for my life now? Good grief.

Re: Military getting involved-

Fury and despair as BP admits oil could leak for months

Former US secretary of state Colin Powell joined calls for the military to take command of the operation from BP. Powell said the problem was beyond the capacity of BP to solve and the government should bring in "decisive force". He said: "The military brings organisation, it brings control, it brings assets."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... er-horizon

=====
Obama’s Katrina? Maybe Worse
By FRANK RICH
Published: May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30rich.html

=========
BP and US Government 'Command Center' Guarded by Company From Afghan Embassy Hazing Scandal

I just got off the phone with my friends Naomi Klein, author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," and her husband Avi Lewis, host of al Jazeera English's popular program Fault Lines. They are traveling around the devastated US Gulf reporting on the horrific disaster caused by BP's massive oil spill. They described to me a run in that they just had with the private security company Wackenhut, which apparently has been hired to do the perimeter security for the "Deepwater Horizon Unified Command." The "Unified Command" is run jointly by BP and several US government agencies including the US Coast Guard, the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/bp-and-us ... ng-scandal

[cptmarginal]

Halliburton, Wackenhut & Homeland Security?

Nah, nothing suspicious here

[2012 Countdown]

And just look at the lying and denials...

BP's CEO disputes claims of underwater oil plumes in Gulf
By The Associated Press
May 30, 2010, 3:55PM
Patrick Semansky / The Associated Press
BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward is refuting claims by scientists that there are large undersea plumes from the Gulf oil spill.

Hayward said Sunday the oil is on the water's surface, and that BP's sampling shows "no evidence" of oil in the water column.
Scientists from several universities have reported plumes of what appears to be oil suspended in clouds that stretch for miles and reach hundreds of feet beneath the Gulf's surface.
Hayward also said the company is narrowing its response to the oil spill to the Louisiana coast and bulking up cleanup forces there for a fight that could last months.
Almost six weeks into the nation's worst spill, no significant oil has hit other Gulf states, but they remain guarded.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill ... f_und.html

===============

BP unsure exactly how much oil is in reservoir in Gulf spill
By The Associated Press
May 30, 2010, 4:01PM
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill ... h_oil.html

=====


Um...one more time????

Estimated by BP to hold 50 million barrels, the seam of oil has emptied as much as 740,000 barrels (one barrel is 42 gallons), or about 1.5 percent of the total. Because of the immense pressures of the earth's innards, geologists say, the deposit will completely unload into the Gulf unless the Deepwater Horizon well is capped.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0529/ ... o-the-Gulf

======
After 'top kill' fix fails, a dispiriting summer of oil, anger is ahead for Louisiana
By The Associated Press
May 30, 2010, 4:47PM

Fear is everywhere
Fear is afoot everywhere, and polarization prevails. Faith in institutions -- corporations, government, the media -- is down. Americans are angry, and they long ago grew accustomed to expecting the resolution of problems in very short order, even if reality rarely works that way.
So when something undefined and uncontrollable happens, they speculate in all the modern forums about collusion and nefarious dealings. In the process, this tale of environmental disaster and economic damage cripples the sea-to-shining-sea narrative that usually offers Americans comfort during uncertain times.

...They see a dissembling corporation, an ineffective government and an ocean surface covered by a viscous shell with the consistency of molasses and the peril of poison. To them, it comes down to only this: There is still a hole in the Earth. Crude oil is still spewing from it. And there is still, excruciatingly, no end in sight.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill ... a_dis.html

[82_28]

The thing with this, is it's just so damned big, so deep, the interests and industry so entrenched to our way of life and industry. Not only is the spill going to grow worse, the politicizing of it is going to become more confusing and chaotic. I really hate to say it, but this is it. We got conspiracies, we've got all sorts of hearsay and we have cataclysm. What a recipe for disaster!

[Simulist]

Faith in institutions -- corporations, government, the media -- is down.

In every cloud, there is a silver lining.