NEW 4-Mile Long Oil Slick Near BP’s Gulf Oil Well

BP’s Macondo Well May Leak for Years.  Washington's Blog.  Excerpts:

From CNN:

An oil sheen about four miles long has appeared in the Gulf of Mexico near the site of the worst oil spill in U.S. history, a Coast Guard spokesman said Thursday.


It was not immediately clear where the oil is coming from, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Ryan Tippets. [Although previous oil has been matched as a "dead ringer" to the BP well.]

Coast Guardsmen went to the location after seeing the oil on a satellite image, Tippets said. The response team collected samples and sent them to the Coast Guard Marine Safety Lab in Connecticut for testing.
***
The sheen is near the spot where, on April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded over the Macondo well, killing 11 workers and spewing oil that spread across a huge portion of the Gulf.

This is interesting, and a little disturbing to boot.. 
(Interview by Washington's Blog with Dr. Robert Bea, a member of the Deepwater Horizon Study Group.)

WB: I have heard that BP is underestimating the size of the oil reservoir. Is it possible that the reservoir is bigger than BP is estimating, and so – if not completely killed – the leak could therefore go on for longer than most assume?


Bea: That’s plausible.

WB: The chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon said that the Macondo well was originally drilled in another location, but that “going faster caused the bottom of the well to split open, swallowing tools”, and that BP abandoned that well. You’ve spoken to that technician and looked into the incident, and concluded that “they damn near blew up the rig.”

Do you know where that abandoned well location is, and do you know if that well is still leaking?

Bea: The abandoned well is very close to the current well location. BP had to file reports showing the location of the abandoned well and the new well [with the Minerals Management Service], so the location of the abandoned well is known.

We don’t know if the abandoned well is leaking.

WB: Matthew Simmons talked about a second leaking well. There are rumors on the Internet that the original well is still leaking. Do you have any information that can either disprove or confirm that allegation?

Bea: There are two uncorroborated reports. One is that there is a leak 400 feet West of the present well’s surface location. There is another report that there is a leak several miles to the West.

[Bea does not know whether either report is true at this time, because BP is not sharing information with the government, let alone the public.]

Random, unacknowledged oil leaks for decades to come?  Who said environmental disasters can't be fun? 

PHOTOS: Oil washing up on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Isaac

It was only a matter of time.. Greenpeace.  Photos at the link.  Excerpts:

Oil is washing up along the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Isaac, confirming concerns that the storm could churn up oil in the Gulf of Mexico. A Greenpeace research team took samples from beaches along the Alabama coast on September 2, including from an area with hundreds of tar balls in the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge.

According to the US Coast Guard, oiled pelicans and other wildlife have been found in Louisiana marshes as well. As people struggle with flooding, wind damage, and power outages in the wake of the hurricane, officials have expressed concerns that on top of that disaster, Hurricane Isaac may stir up oil from the BP spill:

“This is another disaster on top of the hurricane that we’re going to have to deal with,” Garret Graves, chairman of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, told The Huffington Post. “The threat is not insignificant.”

Up to 1 million barrels of oil are estimated to remain in the Gulf of Mexico. That oil remains, Graves said, because BP has failed to clean it all up in the more than two years since the tragedy. “That’s four to five times the oil that was spilled with the Exxon Valdez,” he added.
 

It took awhile, but this phenomenon will likely repeat itself with each new hurricane that passes this area of the Gulf.  Just one more thing to look forward to, right?  Heckuva job, BP..  Heckuva job.

Big Doin's Afoot..

Turkey expels Israeli ambassador, suspends military ties with Israel over flotilla raid  Tick.  Washington Post.  Excerpts:

Turkey says it is expelling the Israeli ambassador and cutting military ties with Israel over the country’s refusal to apologize for last year’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla.

And:

Davutoglu also said Turkey was suspending all military agreements signed between the former allies, saying “it is time Israel pays a price.”

This is not a positive turn of events.

New evidence of a massive oil slick near Deepwater Horizon site   Story and video from Raw Story.  Excerpts:

A California nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of wildlife has discovered what seems to be a massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico near the area of the original Deepwater Horizon spill.

In a flight over the Gulf Tuesday, OnWingsOfCare.org founder and pilot Dr. Bonny Schumaker spotted an oil slick that stretched for nearly 10 miles.

Last week, two Louisiana State University men took a boat into the Gulf and returned with video evidence of large blooms of crude oil swelling up to the water’s surface where the doomed oil rig once hovered.

BP had firmly denied that the well is continuing to leak.

“None of this is true,” they said in a statement.

New Data Supports Previous Fairewinds Analysis, as Contamination Spreads in Japan and Worldwide  The latest video from Arnie Gundersen.  From accompanying article:

Newly released neutron data from three University of California San Diego scientists confirms Fairewinds' April analysis that the nuclear core at Fukushima Daiichi turned on and off after TEPCO claimed its reactors had been shutdown. This periodic nuclear chain reaction (inadvertent criticality) continued to contaminate the surrounding environment and upper atmosphere with large doses of radioactivity.

In a second area of concern, Fairewinds disagrees the NRC's latest report claiming that all Fukushima spent fuel pools had no problems following the earthquake. In a new revelation, the NRC claims that the plutonium found more than 1 mile offsite actually came from inside the nuclear reactors. If such a statement were true, it indicates that the nuclear power plant containments failed and were breached with debris landing far from the power plants themselves.

..

Third, the burning of radioactive materials (building materials, trees, lawn grass, rice straw) by the Japanese government will cause radioactive Cesium to spread even further into areas within Japan that have been previously clean, and across the Pacific Ocean to North America.

Burning contaminated materials.  What could possibly go wrong?  Fukushima:  37 degrees North Latitude.  Southern Missouri:  36 degrees North Latitude.  Being globally down wind from Fukushima is awesome.

The Imminent Failure Of The Eurozone Excerpts from Zero Hedge.

Japan, and the E.U. are declining. That is, about one-sixth of the world's population is losing ground. These big economies are the ones that lead the rest of the world, including China. Countries like China, India, and Brazil, depend on the health of the big economies to keep buying their products and commodities so they can grow and generate wealth for their citizens.

What is especially concerning is the blow-up that is about to happen in Europe. It is not something that is happening "over there." In a world that is so interconnected financially and by trade, a sinking Europe is everyone's concern.

Their problems are much the same as ours with a twist. Their governments and central banks have also pursued reckless monetary and fiscal policies and now, effect is following cause. They have more or less followed the same policies as has the U.S., much to the same end. They spent large, engaged in Keynesian fiscal stimulus in a bailout attempt, ran up huge debts and deficits, and their economies are in decline.

The twist is the European Monetary Union (EMU), known as the eurozone. It is as if here in the U.S. there was no federal government and each state was truly sovereign, but there was a Federal Reserve Bank. Some states spend more than others, funding deficits by borrowing huge sums to support programs their citizens wanted. The profligate states want the Fed to buy their debt and float them loans created out of thin air, or otherwise they will go belly up and they will take down many states' banks. The responsible states know they will be stuck with the bill.

Even Goldman Sachs Secretly Believes That An Economic Collapse Is Coming  Before It's News.  Excerpts:

Goldman Sachs is doing it again. Goldman is telling the public that everything is going to be just fine, but meanwhile they are advising their top clients to bet on a huge financial collapse. On August 16th, a 54 page report authored by Goldman strategist Alan Brazil was distributed to institutional clients. The general public was not intended to see this report. Fortunately, some folks over at the Wall Street Journal got their hands on a copy and they have filled us in on some of the details.

It turns out that Goldman Sachs secretly believes that an economic collapse is coming, and they have some very interesting ideas about how to make money in the turbulent financial environment that we will soon be entering. In the report, Brazil says that the U.S. debt problem cannot be solved with more debt, that the European sovereign debt crisis is going to get even worse and that there are large numbers of financial institutions in Europe that are on the verge of collapse. If this is what people at the highest levels of the financial world are talking about, perhaps we should all start paying attention.

There is a tremendous amount of fear in the global financial community right now. As I wrote about the other day, the financial world is about to hit the panic button. Things could start falling apart at any time. Most of these big banks will not admit how bad things are publicly, but privately there is a whole lot of freaking out going on.

I don't know about anyone else, but all this Big Picture Doom is actually having the opposite effect.  The closer we get to whatever will ultimately happen, the calmer I get.  Strange, but much much emotionally lighter, that's for sure..  Have a great weekend.

August 27, 2011

Gandhi on ending injustice: Speak the truth because Truth is God

Fukushima Cesium Leaks 'Equal 168 Hiroshimas'

"Medicinal marijuana oil made from cannabis buds, when ingested thrice daily, for two months, will destroy leukemia and cancer cells.  Here is just one study which shows the results:"

Only 2% of welfare applicants in Florida failed drug tests 

Mysterious apocalyptic sounds are being heard around the world

Leonor Exploring Libyan Archeology - Leptis Magna

Scientists: Oil fouling Gulf matches Deepwater Horizon well (photo gallery, video)  Recent history repeats..

Oil Rising from Macondo Well: BP Hires Fleet of 40 Shrimp Boats to Lay Boom Around Deepwater Horizon Site

From The Stuart Smith Blog.  British Petrolium's catastrophe:  The gift that keeps on giving--and by giving, I mean destroying..  And by gift, well, I'm just being a sarcastic dick.  Excerpts:

No, this isn’t a post from last year. Oil from the Macondo Well site is fouling the Gulf anew – and BP is scrambling to contain both the crude and the PR nightmare that waits in the wings. Reliable sources tell us that BP has hired 40 boats from Venice to Grand Isle to lay boom around the Deepwater Horizon site – located just 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. The fleet rushed to the scene late last week and worked through the weekend to contain what was becoming a massive slick at the site of the Macondo wellhead, which was officially “killed” back in September 2010.

The truly frightening part of this development, as reported in a previous post (see below), is the oil may be coming from cracks and fissures in the seafloor caused by the work BP did during its failed attempts to cap the runaway Macondo Well – and that type of leakage can’t be stopped, ever.

..

Fresh oil is surfacing all over the northern quadrant of the Gulf of Mexico. Reports of slicks that meander for miles and huge expanses of oil sheen that look like phantom islands are becoming common, again. Fresh oil, only slightly weathered, is washing ashore in areas hit hardest by last year’s massive spill, like Breton Island, Ship Island, the Chandeleurs and northern Barataria Bay. BP has reactivated its Vessels of Opportunity (VoO) program to handle cleanup.

..

The fifty-thousand-dollar question, of course, is where is all the new oil coming from?

One theory: The Macondo Well site, located just 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, is still leaking untold amounts of oil into the Gulf. Some argue that the casing on the capped well itself is leaking. Others believe oil is seeping through cracks and fissures in the seafloor caused by months of high-impact work on the site, including a range of recovery activities (some disclosed, some not) as well as the abortive “top kill” effort.

In January 2011, a prominent “geohazards specialist” wrote an urgent letter to two members of Congress..  suggesting that the Macondo site is leaking oil like a sieve.  Here’s an excerpt from that letter (see it in its entirety at link below):

There is no question that the oil seepages, gas columns, fissures and blowout craters in the seafloor around the Macondo wellhead… have been the direct result of indiscriminate drilling, grouting, injection of dispersant and other undisclosed recover activities. As the rogue well had not been successfully cemented and plugged at the base of the well by the relief wells, unknown quantities of hydrocarbons are still leaking out from the reservoir at high pressure and are seeping through multiple fault lines to the seabed. It is not possible to cap this oil leakage.

BK Lim, the letter’s author, has more than 30 years of experience working inside the oil and gas industry for companies like Shell, Petronas and Pearl Oil.

More from Mr. Lim’s letter:

The continuing hydrocarbon seepage would have long term, irreversible and potentially dire consequences in the GOM (Gulf of Mexico)…

 

The letter is dated Jan. 14, 2011 – and we’ve been seeing more and more evidence that the scenario Mr. Lim describes is indeed taking place deep below the Gulf’s surface.

There's more, but you get it..  Ahh, the Good Old Days of 2010, where all we had to worry about was a massive environmental tragedy, lackadaisical corporate response and responsibility, and invisible government intervention/action. 

It's good to see that we as a planet learned from our mistakes and everything turned out all right.