- 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 enormoity 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.
-
-
- Endnotes:
-
-
- Vladimir Kutcherov, telephone discussion with the author,
June 9, 2010.
- Ibid.
- F. William Engdahl, The Fateful Geological Prize Called
Haiti, Global Research.ca, January 30, 2010, accessed in HYPERLINK "http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17287"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17287
- Vladimir Kutcherov, op. cit.
- Ira Leifer, Scientist: BP Well Could Be Leaking 100,000
Barrels of Oil a Day, June 9, 2010, accessed in HYPERLINK "http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/9/scientist_bp_well_could_be_leaking"
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/9/scientist_bp_well_could_be_leaking
- Wayne Madsen, The Coverup: BPs Crude Politics and the
Looming Environmental Mega Disaster, May 6, 2010, accessed in HYPERLINK
"http://oilprice.com/Environment/Oil-Spills/The-Cover-up-BP-s-Crude-
- Politics-and-the-Looming-Environmental-Mega-Disaster.html"
http://oilprice.com/Environment/Oil-Spills/The-Cover-up-BP-s-Crude-
- Politics-and-the-Looming-Environmental-Mega-Disaster.html
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Tim Findley, Natures' Landlord, Range Magazine, Spring
2003.
- Joe Stephens, Nature Conservancy faces potential backlash
from ties with BP, Washington Post, May 24, 2010, accessed in HYPERLINK
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR2010052302164.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR2010052302164.html
- Ibid.
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