The following article by Michael Knight was transcribed verbatim from:
http://www.buycontacthasbegun.com/oil-spill-latest.html
[Please click on the above link to view the 2 videos.]
Oil Spill Latest
By The Editor Of Earth Change Report
This page is an independent and unofficial log of the oil spill latest news events as they unfold from the Gulf of Mexico BP Oil spill. It is edited by Michael Knight, who started his international career as a journalist, photographer, cameraman and documentary director in 1960. Bookmark Now And Visit Often
June 03 2010: An animation of how the oil will spread to the Atlantic and as far as Europe in coming weeks was released today by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. [video]
by Michael Knight
The start of the Atlantic hurricane season has added a new dimension of disaster concerns to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Looking back, we know that this has been an accelerating catastrophe from the start. And it will get worse.
Let's review and then look to the future.
The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20 killing 11 people.
Millions of gallons of oil and gas immediately began gushing to the surface.
After an initial estimate of 1000 barrels a day, the Coast Guard told us 5000 barrels a day were being released. i(Wrong. Very wrong. And still wrong).
BP and other companies instantly started blaming each other for the accident.ii
BP said environmental impact would be "relatively tiny." iii(Very very wrong).
BP straight away asked fishermen and others on the initial cleanup crews to waive future legal claims in favor of a $5000 one-time payment. iv(They quit doing that when their self-serving strategy was exposed).
We learned they had failed to include a back-up acoustic trigger device to activate the Blowout Preventer that had failed to stop the gusher as it was intended to do.v
We learned that staff of the US government agency, the Minerals Management Service, had at times literally been in bed with BP executives - and cut them a lot of slack in their license applications.vi
Dick Cheney and the former administration were fingered for having held secret meetings with oil company executives to offer them a "wish list" that would make their lives much easier.viiA "top hat" procedure - lowering a 100-ton containment structure over the blowout - failed.viii
BP took a long time to release any video footage of the gusher, eventually did so under pressure, but some claim it has avoided showing the primary gusher hole to the public - only oil spurting from a broken pipe. And even this has been called a loop.
Independent scientists were quick to analyze video footage and calculate that there could be hundreds of times more oil being spewed into the ocean than BP and the Government were telling us.ix
News coverage was hampered when the US Coast Guard threatened to arrest a CBS film crew. Then access to much of the area was restricted.x
BP started pouring hundreds of thousands of gallons of a product called Corexit into the ocean to hide the escaping oil ias underwater globules - despite the fact that Corexit is itself highly toxic. (The EPA agreed to it, but later insisted on other types being used. BP ignored that call).xi
An early hearing into the disaster was told there had been arguments between on-site drilling engineers and BP executives as to the safety of certain procedures just prior to the blow-out.xii
Within days, huge areas of the Gulf - which supplies 40 per cent of the US seafood market - were closed to fishing.xiiiConcerns were raised that the oil would enter the Loop Current and find its way into the Caribbean and then up the East Coast. (This is obviously unstoppable).xiv
A "top kill" procedure involving pumping a million gallons of slurry down the hole failed.xv
The gusher was being described as a "spill," and then more correctly as a "volcano."
At least 120 miles of coastline has so far been contaminated, despite the deployment of oil containment booms - of which there are not enough.
Clean-up workers began to get very sick - nauseated by the fumes that we've been told can cause brain damage and even death.xvi BP said it was food poisoning. xvii
Numerous law suits have been filed by various parties, and six weeks into the disaster the US Administration started distancing itself from BP with the announcement that criminal charges might be brought against the company. xviii (May be PR spin).
Tens of thousands of people have seen their livelihoods put at risk - or disappear - because of the fishing ban. From fishermen to on-shore handling facilities to trucking firms and restaurants, the impact has been beyond disastrous.
BP started drilling two "relief wells" to intercept the blowout hole and plug it - but they won't be finished till August at the earliest.xix
BP (as of early June) planned another effort at siphoning oil into surface ships. This was to cut the riser pipe and try and cap it or capture some of the oil. Chances of success were put at about 60 per cent by the company - at about zero by others in the industry. It ran into problems early on.xx
Among thousands of suggestions (or rumors) as to how to stop the oil was one that a barge - or even a battleship - should be scuttled and sunk over the mouth of the well.xxi
A bomb - even an atomic bomb - was another suggestion. (Explosives had actually been used in the past by the legendary Red Adair to plug surface wells that had blown out). But the geology of the Gulf sea floor may preclude such an option - or make the problem far worse if it is resorted to.xxii
Late May, emergency medical tents were being set up to deal with continuing illness among clean-up workers.xxiii
Turtles fish and breeding birds started turning up dead or covered in oil as wildlife sanctuaries and breeding grounds became inundated with toxic water and oil.xxiv
Hurricane season officially started June 1 - with 14 to 23 stormsxxv predicted for the next few months. Any one (or more) of them could be strong enough to disrupt drilling of relief wells and other containment operations for at least 10 days. That could potentially see a further quarter million gallons a day polluting the Gulf, the Caribbean and the Atlantic on into September or beyond.
"Insider information" started appearing on the Internet, saying "secret plans" were being drawn up to evacuate millions of people from the Gulf Coast because of the possible life-threatening effects of the oil spill and its poisonous gases.xxvi
The NOAA put out a "fact sheet"xxvii implying that a hurricane could potentially drive the oil slick away from the coast - and that it would not pick up much of the highly toxic underwater dispersant and oil. It did not address the issue of acid rain or what gases released from the well might do to waterways, catchment areas, and city water supplies.
President Obama said things like "the buck stops here" xxviii (which he has said quite often about other issues) while critics said he hadn't said enough - or done enough - without saying what else he might do. Then along came the investigation and the hint of criminal charges. (Which won't stop the oil).
BP has promised to "clean up every last drop"xxix of the oil spill - and has seen billions of dollars wiped off its share market value.xxx It has not yet explained why it did not spend $500,000 on the system that would have stopped the gusher in its tracks - though it uses them in other oil fields outside the United States.
Having reviewed all that, and turning to the future, it can safely be said that this is a disaster of historic proportions and its ongoing effects are impossible to fully comprehend.
Nevertheless, the cloudy crystal ball gives us a hint of some possibilities.
As a transport hub for much of the United States, the port of New Orleans could lose the bulk of its incoming and outgoing trade if cargo vessels must be diverted to other places to avoid being contaminated by surface oil. Perhaps they could be pressure washed before docking rather than have them contaminate the port and surrounding waters, but the cost would be horrendous.
Seafood is either going to disappear from the menu, or become prohibitively expensive - which may be the only thing that will make some people realize what a catastrophe this reliance on oil as energy has turned into.
Health issues far worse than food poisoning are likely to overtake hundreds and perhaps thousands of people as who knows how much gas including benzene and methane makes its way into the atmosphere. The dead zones will no longer be limited to the undersea environment where oxygen has disappeared.
What hurricanes will do to either compound the problem - or clean it up - remains to be seen.
Hurricane season storm surges will certainly carry poisonous ocean waters into vast swathes of the Gulf coastline, destroying the marshes as breeding grounds and killing off the vegetation that holds the marshes together.
On shore, hotels and tourist resorts will suffer immeasurably, though an influx of clean-up workers may stave off the inevitable bankruptcies.
Should the hurricane season and its storm winds turn to acid rain, then as far as it travels agriculture, viticulture, cropping and farming of all kinds will be in jeopardy.
This could include the Rio Grande Valleyxxxi (as but one example) which according to Wikipedia is reliant on agribusiness and tourism. Cotton, sorghum, maize, and sugarcane are its leading crops, and the region is the center of citrus production and the most important area of vegetable production in the State of Texas.
To date, Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico, have been one of the most important areas of oil production in the United States.
Big Oil with its long-standing political connections has called the shots for decades.
The environment, ecology, even human lives have been both ignored, and lost in this endless quest for control of and profit from fossil fuels.
But with so many lives and livelihoods now so obviously at risk, this BP disaster may prove to be the beginning of the end for Big Oil.
(c) 2010 Michael Knight
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About the author: Michael Knight has been an investigative reporter, photo-journalist, cameraman and documentary director since 1960.
He is Editor of the international Internet newsletters "Earth Change Report" and "New Earth News" in which he writes about "everything from Inner Earth to Outer Space."
Permission granted to use the above, in its entirety only, with author bio attached.
email: editor (at) buycontacthasbegun.com
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Aside from the tragic deaths of 11 men when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, already, just as happened after 9/11, cleanup workers are becoming dangerously ill.
Fishermen Sick [video]
Knight believes that "unless the oil volcano is plugged, it has the potential to be a far worse catastrophe than any war, including those in which atomic weapons have been used.
"Neither BP, nor any politician, or the mainstream media will explore or even admit to what terrible consequences will result. We therefore have to look at the whole issue independently, and form our own conclusions - and even make radical changes for our future - because it will never be the same."
May 31 - Day 41:- "The commercial and recreational fishing closure is now 60,683 square miles, which is about 25 percent of the Gulf of Mexico exclusive economic zone, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."
Factoid: Louisiana's $2.4 billion seafood industry supplies up to 40 percent of U.S. seafood supply and employs over 27,000 people. The state is the second-biggest U.S. seafood harvester and the top provider of shrimp, oysters, crab and crawfish.
< b>Following is from a blog that claims government scientists and independents are being muzzled - so their worst fears are being presented anonymously.
If it happens - it's beyond words...
SUMMARY OF EXPECTATIONS"At some point the drilled hole in the earth will enlarge itself beneath the wellhead to weaken the area the wellhead rests upon.
"The intense pressure will then push the wellhead off the hole allowing a direct unrestricted flow of oil, etc.. The hole will continue to increase in size allowing more and more oil to rise into the Gulf. After several billion barrels of oil have been released, the pressure within the massive cavity five miles beneath the ocean floor will begin to normalize.
"This will allow the water, under the intense pressure at 1 mile deep, to be forced into the hole and the cavity where the oil was. The temperature at that depth is near 400 degrees, possibly more. The water will be vaporized and turned into steam, creating an enormous amount of force, lifting the Gulf floor. It is difficult to know how much water will go down to the core and therefore, its not possible to fully calculate the rise of the floor.
"The tsunami wave this will create will be anywhere from 20 to 80 feet high, possibly more. Then the floor will fall into the now vacant chamber. This is how nature will seal the hole.
"Depending on the height of the tsunami, the ocean debris, oil, and existing structures that will be washed away on shore and inland, will leave the area from 50 to 200 miles inland devoid of life.
"Even if the debris is cleaned up, the contaminants that will be in the ground and water supply will prohibit re-population of these areas for an unknown number of years. [End of scientists information release."
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