- It is time to ask why on earth the Obama administration
and the Coast Guard are allowing BP to continue keeping a tight lid on
the top of the run-away, damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico. Leaks from
the sea floor are appearing and growing in number, making it clear that
the BP Deepwater Horizon well is gravely damaged. That being the case,
it is obvious that any effort to restrict the flow of oil from the top
of the well, by increasing the pressure inside the 2.5-mile long casing
that runs down to the oil reservoir will only make any breaches in the
casing worse, allowing oil and gas under high pressure to move into the
surrounding concrete liner and the geological formations, where they will
force their way up to the surface in an uncontrollable way.
-
- Why would anyone want this to happen?
-
- Well, clearly BP doesn't care. The company is
financially on the ropes anyway, and so its executives may well be figuring
they have nothing to lose by making a long-shot bet. But for the sake of
the environment and the lives of the people who depend upon the Gulf of
Mexico and its coastline, that kind of risky thinking cannot be permitted.
-
- Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the nominal
head of the disaster response operation, this morning admitted that methane
appears to be seeping from the surrounding seabed, and demanded that BP
monitor the sea floor closely and be prepared to remove the cap immediately
if ordered to do so. There are fears the blowout could get worse, with
oil and gas rising uncontrollably from the sea floor, perhaps even undermining
and destroying the blowout preventer assembly. Even White House Press Secretary
Robert Gibbs is today admitting that gas is leaking from the top of the
well assembly and from the sea floor.
-
- It all raises the question of why this temporary fix
of capping the top of the well was ever even attempted, knowing that there
was a strong likelihood that the 13,000 feet of well casing had been damaged
by the initial violent blowout and by the racing oil and gas and debris
pressing up from deep in the bowels of the earth.
-
- As I pointed out earlier, there was already clear evidence
that the casing had been breached. While it had not been mentioned in
mainstream news reports, one view taken of the sea floor taken by a videocam
on the Hos ROV 1, one of the remote robot submersibles monitoring the wellhead,
and on display on the BP website, beginning at about 2:48:40 Central Time
on June 16, showed clouds of muddy looking water suddenly spring up and
begin obscuring the view of the sea floor. Some of the billowing material
was light colored, and could have been mud pushed up by leaking methane
gas. Some looked decidedly dark brown, like the oil that has been seen
coming from the top of the BOP.
-
- A second rover, the Viking Poseidon ROV 1, which was
not included in the live cams displayed from BP's public access site on
June 16, but which could be seen live here, also showed a large cloud of
churning brown material billowing up from the sea floor beginning at 3:06:00
Central Time.
- (http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/incident_
- response/STAGING/local_assets/html/Viking_Poseidon_ROV1.html)
- Other images showed bubbles rising form the sea floor--something
that had not been seen earlier.
-
- BP has repeatedly shut down cameras on its live-viewing
website when they started showing spewing gas or oil, but here is one video
that was saved by someone of oil billowing out of the ground near the BOP
this morning at 3:38 am.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0koe1OW27zM&feature=player_embedded
-
- If any of these video images are in fact showing oil
or gas coming out of the ground around the wellhead, it could mean only
one thing: that the liner has been seriously breached somewhere below ground,
and that there is no way to either stop the oil flow, or even collect it
all from above the wellhead....
-
- For the rest of this story in ThisCantBeHappening! by
DAVE LINDORFF, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/140
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