- This is one of the several inquiries from concerned
residents in the gulf:
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- I recently made a post to your wall regarding the NOAA
vessel Okeanos Explorer which in past weeks has spent a great deal of time
running grids in the Macondo Well area. If you click on the link in the
message it will take take you to the NOAA Fleet Map. In the left hand column
you can click on the Okeanos Explorer button and it will highlight that
vessel's location, which at present shows it still in the Macondo area.
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- If you click on the Okeanos symbol, which is EX, a window
pops up. Within that window is a link showing the vessel's latest track.
You can zoom in on that track with the tool provided in the left hand corner
of the screen. After reading through the list of this vessel's capabilities,
my guess would be that they are mapping the sea floor extensively in this
region. They also ran down the ridge along the entire Florida coast south
to the Keys.
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- I was wondering if you might have any thoughts on what
information they might be able to gather or what they are looking for.
http://shiptracker.noaa.gov/gShiptracker/map.aspx
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- NOAA Fleet Map ; shiptracker.noaa.gov
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- 1. Thank you Peter for alerting me on this. Had been
busy with some "discoveries" on the tsunami-triggering devices.
Another stealth weapon of mass-destruction with enormous economic spinoff
for the perpetrators. There is always a broad spectrum of stocks you can
invest in and short sell to reap enormous windfalls on an accidental "disaster"
that could be reliably predicted well before hand.
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- 2. Since the beginning of the disaster, experts had known
the wide and long term consequences of the Macondo Blowout. The perpetrators
knew as well but it was to their interest to narrowly focus on just Well
A; so as to avoid highly embarrassing questions for which the answers were
blatantly obvious.
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- 3. They were at the same time also interested in knowing
the scope of their destruction; in preparation for their next disaster
in the pipeline.
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- 4. But they could not openly survey in the immediate
aftermath of the blowout. It would be an open admission that the late Matts
Simmons and many gulf-truth advocates were dead right. Well A was just
the dud. The blown crater at the 3rd well was spewing more than 100,000
barrels per day. Even worse the highly corrosive mix of brine, and gas
ingress into every crevices and permeable sections of the formation, creating
new pathways to the seafloor for the heavier hydrocarbons from the Macondo
reservoir.
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- 5. A seafloor survey then would have revealed the ugly
truths about the broken seafloor and precarious salt formation they were
trying so hard to hide.
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- 6. So why now?
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- 7. Well, thanks to hard working and persistent gulf-truth
activists (Trisha Sprinstead, Trisha James, Real Coastal warriors, Maureen,
Michele & others) and the unfortunate recurrence of dead wildlife,
tainted seafood, oil slicks etc, the fundamental issues of the BP Gulf
Oil disaster were kept alive. Contrary to what the court and regulators
said, the number of sick gulf victims increases and the gulf water is not
getting any better. BP has no choice but to come up with a better PR exercise,
one that is more convincing in stamping out the persistent doubts of BP's
"good intentions to make the Gulf as good as before" if not in
deeds but at least in a documented "scientific research" remotely
controlled and funded by BP.
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- 8. Is this supposed to be the "ultimate survey-research"
that will put an end to more than 15 months of "speculations"?
No wonder WHOI would have no part of it. If I refused as WHOI had, I could
then be dismissed as being "not credible" and unwilling to submit
to ground-proofing.
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- 9. After more than a year of grouting, patching up and
destroying all critical evidence in the seabed around the Macondo wells
they are confident enough, the "modified seafloor" would not
be criminally incriminating. It is akin to letting a murderer a month to
clean up the crime scene before sending in the CSI team. Previous ROV videos
showed planted marker ropes and buoys at the known gas vents and oil seeps
locations at between 50 to 700m from well A. See one video of the gas
/ oil vent at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgDxR0nYTFo
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- 10. Having marked and monitored these gas / oil vents,
it would be easy for BP's funded seafloor survey to avoid those locations
with a single sweep lines a few tens of metres apart. The irregularly spaced
lines would have too much uncovered zones in between to be of significant
value.
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- 11. The fact that the seafloor survey (using the various
multibeam sonar and sub-bottom profiling techniques) has been delayed by
more than 15 months is by itself an open admission BP had a lot of skeletons
to hide in this disaster. Such seafloor survey should have been conducted
as soon as possible as to determine the causes of the disaster. So my
strong hunch is that this belated seafloor survey is nothing more than
a carefully choreographed survey designed to show the world that the Macondo
Disaster had ended and the new oil spills are nothing more than natural
random spills.
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- 12. So now you see why I was asked to submit my recommended
locations for ground proofing?
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- 13. It was a well-calculated risk game that BP could
not loose...akin to "Head BP wins, Tail BK lose". I had played
this game many times in the past. Rov camera view is like a "pin-hole"
view of the universe. A gas vent or oil seep just a few metres off the
ROV track and you see nothing. Without an expert's interpretation, many
of you would not make anything significant out of the video shown in (9).
In fact if I had not followed a rov live tour of the seabed on 1 Nov 2010,
I could not have been so dead certain of the seabed conditions.
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- 14. see http://bklim.newsvine.com/_news/2010/10/31/5386300-a-new-drilling
-rig-at-macondo-site?commentId=18975303#c18975303 .quote " LT, I had
a 2 hours live tour of the seafloor around the site last night. It is a
lot worse than we thought. Will be writing on it shortly." ..#4.3
- Mon Nov 1, 2010 6:15 PM PDT
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- 15. Should I obediently followed BP's orders into the
"trap"? Heck no, especially when so many of my predicted scenarios
are being proven right.
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- 16. Should I be surprised I was asked to recommend some
locations to check with the ROV, so soon after BP's denials of the new
oil spills in late August 2011? How could BP be serious about finding
the truth of the new oil spills if they had already outright rejected any
connection to the Macondo Wells and blowout in April 2010. I do not blame
my contacts and those gulf-truthers who had been working hard to get my
assessment verified. BP should know better than to come up with this trick
of "urgent requests" at the very last minute. I am sure they
had the research-survey cruise planned months ago.
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- 17. There was no excuse for this last minute request
on 30th Aug 2011: "BK, I need to know what needs to be looked at and
photo'd to support your letters claims that oil is leeching from the fractures
and fissures justifiying the concerns addressed in your letter. Do you
know the GPS coordinates and location that need to be re visited with the
discovery being requested. Time is critical as BP and USCG has assets there,
trying to determine where the oil is coming from."
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- 18. But I was prepared. Instead of specific locations,
I requested "routine systematic mapping" in which the survey
lines were run on regular grid- lines with data scan overlapping and crossing
each other. This is how all site surveys had been conducted. Many leading
geohazards survey companies like Fugro had been caught cheating trying
to beat the grid-line survey system. You can't since adulterating the data
on some lines will lead to discrepancies on the other lines. It is like
you can cheat on some lines some of the time but you cannot cheat on all
the lines at the same time. But with single lines recce, you cannot tie
in data from isolated lines. There is a lot of room for adulteration. Why
waste millions of dollars on a survey that is going to be full of holes
and open to serious technical contention?
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- 19. BP's Macondo bathymetric chart was supposedly surveyed
using an AUV with MBES. In truth, the chart was compiled from a surface
single beam echo sounder, a secondary backup system in the event the AUV
mounted MBES (primary system) failed to function. It is an industry- wide
scam because leading geohazards survey companies get away with such crimes
with impunity all the time. BP's erroneous Macondo bathymetric chart is
one documented example of such a scam.
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- 20. See http://bklim.newsvine.com/_news/2010/09/03/5039904-forensic-analysis-of-bps-bathymetric-chart
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- 21. Struggling between airports and travelling with a
high fever, I managed to send in my recommendation of a detailed AUV (autonomous
underwater vehicle) survey utilising multibeam echo sounder (MBES), seafloor
mapping system using side scan sonar and sub-bottom profiling (4x4 pinger);
all of which are standard site survey tools. See figures 161-1 and 2 which
are self-explanatory.
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- 22. My survey recommendation was the minimum to establish
the link between between last years oil spew (scattered rov videos with
adulterated coordinates), the seafloor and sub-seabed features with the
recently observed oil slicks.
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- 23. If we can establish where the past and recent oil
had surfaced at the seabed, we can generally interpret the "migrating"
and widening circles of new pathways since April 2010. This information
would be critical in designing battle plans to solve the worsening periodic
oil spills the Gulf is going to experience time and time again whenever
there is shallow crustal adjustment. It is no coincidence the recent new
spills followed the 5.8 (mag) 6km (depth) 23rd Aug 2011 shallow quake 8
km SSW from Mineral, Virginia. The last major oil slicks were observed
in mid to late
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- March, following the great (9 mag) Japan quake on 11
March 2011. 24. Although data from the ongoing seafloor survey carried
out by Okeanos Explorer since 1Sept 2011 are not yet available, the different
emphasis in survey coverage is already telling.
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- 25. The vessel's track history seemed to suggest a higher
emphasis in the south-western edges of the Biloxi Dome, the southern edged
of Whiting Dome and generally south of the Macondo prospects. While there
may yet be geologically valid reasons for the emphasis south of the Macondo
wells, the shelf edges 6 to 8 km north-west of Macondo Wells and the badly
eroded north-western edges of Whiting Dome should at least be surveyed
with some grid-lines (see areas A and B in figure 161-2, 161-2A and 161-3).
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- 26. BP's vessels and drilling rigs had been observed
working for quite some time in both areas (A & B) even after the well
was supposedly capped in 15 July. The 22 mile long underwater plume (first
denied by BP and later confirmed by many independent research cruises),
was suspected to have originated from the cracks in the seafloor at these
locations. By avoiding these critical areas, can the present survey investigation
be truly objective and independent in investigating the truth of the Macondo
Blowout?
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- 27. Almost all the oil sightings are north of the Macondo
wells, not south. Why did the survey deliberately (?) avoid the shelf edges
north of Macondo to concentrate in the south? In March 2011, new oil spills
were suspected to have come from "leaks in the seabed" north
of the Matherhorn field. The shelf edges bordering the Mississippi-Alabama
Shelf, appear pretty fractured with large crevices and in potential danger
of sliding into gigantic submarine landslides. Submarine landslides are
more effective in generating tsunami than quakes without significant landslides.
Both the 2011 Japan and 2004 Sumatra Quakes had giant tsunamis due to the
accompanying large submarine mass displacement.
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- 28. If the Okeanos Explorer could afford to survey the
shelf edge all along the West Florida Escarpment down to the Florida Keys,
why can't BP or the organisers of the research-survey cruise spare some
effort to survey the more "rugged" shelf edge bordering the Mississippi
-Alabama Shelf where the new and past oil slicks had been observed?
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- 29. Is the main objective of the BP-funded and probably
BP-directed research-survey cruise, to reconnaissance for naturally occurring
oil/gas seeps and other geological data to substantiate and distance the
new-found oil slicks from the Gulf Oil Spill disaster that originated from
the Macondo Blowout on 20 April 2010? Could the main objective be looking
for any evidence to absolve BP from living up to their legal obligations;
rather than seeking the truth?
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- 30. These are my expressed concerns following numerous
inquiries on the "strange" course of action taken by NOAA. NOAA
can survey every inch of the Gulf seafloor for the next 30 years (for all
we care) but should the priority not be determining the linkage and long
term consequence of the Macondo Blowout first?
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