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 At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf 
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
Second drilling rig overturns in Louisiana
Friday, April 30 09:52 pm

The U.S. Coast Guard said Friday it was responding to another oil drilling rig accident near Morgan City, Louisiana. Skip related content

The "mobile inland drilling unit" overturned in the Charenton navigational channel south of U.S. Highway 90 at Morgan City.


http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100430/tw ... cf3b4.html?


Tue May 04, 2010 7:25 am
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
No, I did not write this. Big ole K&R to Doc Velocity at ATS, though!

Gulf Oil Spill Another Extinction-Level HOAX?

I was born in Texas in 1959 and lived on the Texas Gulf Coast for about 30 years. Waay back in the 1960s, I remember wandering along the beach at Galveston, collecting shells and shark teeth, and often stepping into globs of sticky tar, which would stain my skin brown for days afterwards. When we went swimming in the surf, we'd come back with brown globs on our skin and swim trunks — and that stuff did not wash out of fabric. :clap

When we went crabbing along the Gulf Coast, we'd bring back hundreds of big, male Blue Crabs in our massive cooler, which we filled with seawater to keep the crustaceans alive as long as possible. As the crabs glowered up at us through the water, we could see that they were exhaling thick, brown globs that would rise up and spread out in a rainbow on the surface.

I asked my Dad what the hell this stuff was, and he'd tell me it was crude oil. Pointing out to the horizon, he brought my attention to the various oil rigs that were barely visible in the Gulf of Mexico, and he explained that there were hundreds of those rigs out there, many miles off the Texas and Louisiana coast, and that they leaked crude oil like a sieve.

All the time.

He knew. He had fished the oil rigs, went right out there and tied off to them and watched the oil bubbling up, spreading out in millions of blobs, and creating a rainbow sheen across the surface of the deep blue water.

This was back in the 1960s.

As an adult on the Gulf Coast, I fished the surf and offshore myself, and saw the same exact crude oil slicks, the never-ending tide of brown blobs and the petroleum sheen. This was in the 70s, the 80s and 90s. The leakage was ONGOING, those rigs had been leaking for my entire life.

Check this out:

Image

That's a satellite shot of the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas and Louisiana coast. You're probably looking at an area of 100 miles across, depicting a considerable number of offshore oil rigs (and gas rigs). Each of the dark trails you see stretching for tens of miles across the surface is an oil slick generated by each rig.

That's just normal spillage that occurs every minute of every day, year-in, year-out, for decades. Unchecked and unreported (to the public). But anybody who lives on the Gulf KNOWS the truth of the matter. :wavey

Offshore oil rigs EACH leak HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF GALLONS OF CRUDE OIL into the Gulf of Mexico every year, for as long as I can remember. That's millions of gallons annually. You've been living with it and swimming in it and eating it all your lives.

And that's why it's my firm opinion that this "catastrophic" oil leak in the Gulf is a bunch of hogwash. Another environmental hoax being perpetrated in order to advance the Green Agenda — The Global Warming Hoax has fallen through, it failed to touch the heart of the public, so now they're going to hit you where it hurts — they're going to USE THIS "catastrophic" leak to drive up your gas prices, drive up your seafood prices and everything else.

Gee, I wonder why Obama's FEMA team isn't jumping all over this to head off the "potential catastrophe"? Why haven't they tried burning off the oil slick as they vowed to do several days ago? :hmm

It's because crude oil floating around in the Gulf doesn't burn. If there was any chance of an oil slick in the Gulf catching fire, it would have burned out the offshore oil industry decades ago. Look at the picture above and tell me that wouldn't be a catastrophe IF IT WAS POSSIBLE for a crude oil slick to catch fire. :silly

They're offering bullshît solutions for a bullshît emergency, because the public doesn't know the difference. And Obama's Emergency Management team isn't mobilized because they KNOW there's no emergency. :clap

— Doc Velocity

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread567720/pg1

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Tue May 04, 2010 10:02 am
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
Come on, guys - show 'em that ole Oil Field Trash can do attitude! One down - two to go! :heart

BP Says One Oil Leak of Three Is Shut Off :clap
By SAM DOLNICK and LIZ ROBBINS

BATON ROUGE, La. —For the first time since an explosion on a drilling rig 15 days ago left an undersea well spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, engineers succeeded in shutting off one of the three leaks from the damaged well late Tuesday night, a spokesman for BP said on Wednesday morning.

Though by itself the move was not expected to reduce the amount of oil being released — estimated at 210,000 gallons a day — it “does enable to us to make progress, to winnow down the focus from three leaks to two,” said the spokesman, John Curry.

Submersible robots, controlled remotely from a ship on the surface, were able to place a specially designed valve over the end of a leaking drill pipe lying on the sea floor in water about 5,000 feet deep, and stop oil from escaping at that point, Mr. Curry said. The company had been trying since Monday to place the specially designed valve but had been hampered by rough seas and high winds that diminished on Tuesday.

With one valve shut, BP is now turning its attention to capping the worst of the leaks. Crews have loaded a 98-ton, four-story structure called a containment dome onto a barge, and are expected to tow it at midday Wednesday to the site of the spill, a 12-hour trip.

The plan is to lower the dome to the sea floor and place it over the leak, capturing the gushing oil and funneling it up to a rig waiting at the surface. That is expected to be operational by the end of the week, BP officials said.

Weather conditions continued to look promising on Wednesday, allowing recovery crews to move forward on several fronts to control the spread of the oil slick.

Mr. Curry said crews were preparing to conduct a “controlled burn” of some of the oil at sea, and that skimming boats were out in other areas to corral the thick oil from the surface of the water. Aircraft were also expected to resume dropping dispersants from overhead.

The report of progress in containing the leak came as BP, which is responsible for cleaning up the vast oil spill resulting from the fatal explosion and fire that destroyed the rig it was leasing, acknowledged that the flow of oil could become vastly larger than initially estimated.

In a closed-door briefing for members of Congress, a senior BP executive conceded Tuesday that the ruptured oil well could conceivably spill as much as 60,000 barrels a day of oil, more than 10 times the estimate of the current flow. :hmm

The scope of the problem has grown drastically since the rig, the Deepwater Horizon, sank into the gulf. Now, the discussion with BP on Capitol Hill is certain to intensify pressure on the company, which is facing a crisis similar to what the Toyota Motor Company had with uncontrolled acceleration — despite its efforts to control the damage to its reputation as a corporate citizen, the problem may be worsening.

Amid growing uncertainty about the extent of the leak, and when it might be stanched, pressure on BP intensified on multiple fronts Tuesday, from increasingly frustrated residents of the Gulf Coast to federal, state and local officials demanding more from the company.

The company considered a broad advertising campaign, but top BP executives rejected the idea before planning even started. “In our view, the big glossy expressions of regret don’t have a lot of credibility,” said Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman. :clap

Instead, the company has dispatched executives to hold town meetings in the affected region, and it has turned to lower-profile social media outlets to trumpet its cleanup efforts and moves to organize volunteers.

Sam Dolnick reported from Baton Rouge, La., and Liz Robbins reported from New York. Campbell Robertson contributed reporting from New Orleans, John M. Broder from Washington, and Clifford Krauss from Houston. Sewell Chan contributed reporting from Washington.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/us/06spill.html

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Wed May 05, 2010 7:38 am
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
‘Dome’ Lowered Into Sea to Cap Oil Leak-Latest Oil Spill Dome

VENICE, Louisiana : Friday, 07 May 2010 00:48

VENICE, Louisiana -Workers lowered a huge dome over an oil leak gushing from a sunken rig deep in the Gulf of Mexico Friday as energy giant BP raced to contain a slick moving perilously closer to the US coast.

The unprecedented operation to drop the 100-ton (90-tonne) chamber some 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the surface to cap the leak was expected to be completed within hours Friday.

"They are in the process of lowering it now," BP spokesman John Curry told AFP about the operation seen as the best hope to stave off the biggest US environmental disaster since the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

He described a "complex operation" involving maintaining the dome in a correct position with the ship, balancing the weight, placing the structure on the seabed and transferring control of the containment system from one ship to another.

con.

http://www.malaysianmirror.com/foreignd ... eign/39179

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Sat May 08, 2010 4:23 pm
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
Methane bubble triggered oil rig blast in Gulf

Methane bubble caused blast in oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gas bubble escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding.
*******************************************************************

Oil leak crews dealt setback by deep-sea crystals
May 8, 2010 4:38pm

(NECN: Robert, La.) - Crews attempting to place a four-story containment dome over a gushing wellhead in in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico were dealt a setback Saturday.

British Petroleum COO Doug Suttles said deep-sea crystals have formed inside the 100-ton steel and concrete dome. Crystals form when gas combines with water, and can plug up the top of the dome, preventing oil from being pumped to a tanker on the water's surface.

The dome was moved by crews to the side of the wellhead, hoping to think up a possible solution.

"We believe that it'll probably take the next two days to look for opportunities to try to overcome this challenge," Suttles said.

Officials said they were looking at heating the dome or adding ethanol, which would dissolve the crystals.

A containment dome has never been used at depths of 5,000 feet, so there are no guarantees the technique will work.

In the meantime, thousands of gallons of crude oil continues to spew out of the leaking well head every day. More than 200,000 gallons of oil has leaked since the rig explosion on April 20th.

http://www.necn.com/05/08/10/Oil-leak-c ... eedID=4215

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Sat May 08, 2010 4:37 pm
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
This is a truly disturbing post if true, so its ok that all Oil Rigs leak oil?
WTF :crazy :flame :rant :shakehead

Bluebonnet wrote:
No, I did not write this. Big ole K&R to Doc Velocity at ATS, though!

Gulf Oil Spill Another Extinction-Level HOAX?

I was born in Texas in 1959 and lived on the Texas Gulf Coast for about 30 years. Waay back in the 1960s, I remember wandering along the beach at Galveston, collecting shells and shark teeth, and often stepping into globs of sticky tar, which would stain my skin brown for days afterwards. When we went swimming in the surf, we'd come back with brown globs on our skin and swim trunks — and that stuff did not wash out of fabric. :clap

When we went crabbing along the Gulf Coast, we'd bring back hundreds of big, male Blue Crabs in our massive cooler, which we filled with seawater to keep the crustaceans alive as long as possible. As the crabs glowered up at us through the water, we could see that they were exhaling thick, brown globs that would rise up and spread out in a rainbow on the surface.

I asked my Dad what the hell this stuff was, and he'd tell me it was crude oil. Pointing out to the horizon, he brought my attention to the various oil rigs that were barely visible in the Gulf of Mexico, and he explained that there were hundreds of those rigs out there, many miles off the Texas and Louisiana coast, and that they leaked crude oil like a sieve.

All the time.

He knew. He had fished the oil rigs, went right out there and tied off to them and watched the oil bubbling up, spreading out in millions of blobs, and creating a rainbow sheen across the surface of the deep blue water.

This was back in the 1960s.

As an adult on the Gulf Coast, I fished the surf and offshore myself, and saw the same exact crude oil slicks, the never-ending tide of brown blobs and the petroleum sheen. This was in the 70s, the 80s and 90s. The leakage was ONGOING, those rigs had been leaking for my entire life.

Check this out:

Image

That's a satellite shot of the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas and Louisiana coast. You're probably looking at an area of 100 miles across, depicting a considerable number of offshore oil rigs (and gas rigs). Each of the dark trails you see stretching for tens of miles across the surface is an oil slick generated by each rig.

That's just normal spillage that occurs every minute of every day, year-in, year-out, for decades. Unchecked and unreported (to the public). But anybody who lives on the Gulf KNOWS the truth of the matter. :wavey

Offshore oil rigs EACH leak HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF GALLONS OF CRUDE OIL into the Gulf of Mexico every year, for as long as I can remember. That's millions of gallons annually. You've been living with it and swimming in it and eating it all your lives.

And that's why it's my firm opinion that this "catastrophic" oil leak in the Gulf is a bunch of hogwash. Another environmental hoax being perpetrated in order to advance the Green Agenda — The Global Warming Hoax has fallen through, it failed to touch the heart of the public, so now they're going to hit you where it hurts — they're going to USE THIS "catastrophic" leak to drive up your gas prices, drive up your seafood prices and everything else.

Gee, I wonder why Obama's FEMA team isn't jumping all over this to head off the "potential catastrophe"? Why haven't they tried burning off the oil slick as they vowed to do several days ago? :hmm

It's because crude oil floating around in the Gulf doesn't burn. If there was any chance of an oil slick in the Gulf catching fire, it would have burned out the offshore oil industry decades ago. Look at the picture above and tell me that wouldn't be a catastrophe IF IT WAS POSSIBLE for a crude oil slick to catch fire. :silly

They're offering bullshît solutions for a bullshît emergency, because the public doesn't know the difference. And Obama's Emergency Management team isn't mobilized because they KNOW there's no emergency. :clap

— Doc Velocity

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread567720/pg1

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Sat May 08, 2010 5:49 pm
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
L2L wrote:
This is a truly disturbing post if true, so its ok that all Oil Rigs leak oil?
WTF :crazy :flame :rant :shakehead

Bluebonnet wrote:
No, I did not write this. Big ole K&R to Doc Velocity at ATS, though!

Gulf Oil Spill Another Extinction-Level HOAX?

I was born in Texas in 1959 and lived on the Texas Gulf Coast for about 30 years. Waay back in the 1960s, I remember wandering along the beach at Galveston, collecting shells and shark teeth, and often stepping into globs of sticky tar, which would stain my skin brown for days afterwards. When we went swimming in the surf, we'd come back with brown globs on our skin and swim trunks — and that stuff did not wash out of fabric. :clap

When we went crabbing along the Gulf Coast, we'd bring back hundreds of big, male Blue Crabs in our massive cooler, which we filled with seawater to keep the crustaceans alive as long as possible. As the crabs glowered up at us through the water, we could see that they were exhaling thick, brown globs that would rise up and spread out in a rainbow on the surface.

I asked my Dad what the hell this stuff was, and he'd tell me it was crude oil. Pointing out to the horizon, he brought my attention to the various oil rigs that were barely visible in the Gulf of Mexico, and he explained that there were hundreds of those rigs out there, many miles off the Texas and Louisiana coast, and that they leaked crude oil like a sieve.

All the time.

He knew. He had fished the oil rigs, went right out there and tied off to them and watched the oil bubbling up, spreading out in millions of blobs, and creating a rainbow sheen across the surface of the deep blue water.

This was back in the 1960s.

As an adult on the Gulf Coast, I fished the surf and offshore myself, and saw the same exact crude oil slicks, the never-ending tide of brown blobs and the petroleum sheen. This was in the 70s, the 80s and 90s. The leakage was ONGOING, those rigs had been leaking for my entire life.

Check this out:

Image

That's a satellite shot of the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas and Louisiana coast. You're probably looking at an area of 100 miles across, depicting a considerable number of offshore oil rigs (and gas rigs). Each of the dark trails you see stretching for tens of miles across the surface is an oil slick generated by each rig.

That's just normal spillage that occurs every minute of every day, year-in, year-out, for decades. Unchecked and unreported (to the public). But anybody who lives on the Gulf KNOWS the truth of the matter. :wavey

Offshore oil rigs EACH leak HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF GALLONS OF CRUDE OIL into the Gulf of Mexico every year, for as long as I can remember. That's millions of gallons annually. You've been living with it and swimming in it and eating it all your lives.

And that's why it's my firm opinion that this "catastrophic" oil leak in the Gulf is a bunch of hogwash. Another environmental hoax being perpetrated in order to advance the Green Agenda — The Global Warming Hoax has fallen through, it failed to touch the heart of the public, so now they're going to hit you where it hurts — they're going to USE THIS "catastrophic" leak to drive up your gas prices, drive up your seafood prices and everything else.

Gee, I wonder why Obama's FEMA team isn't jumping all over this to head off the "potential catastrophe"? Why haven't they tried burning off the oil slick as they vowed to do several days ago? :hmm

It's because crude oil floating around in the Gulf doesn't burn. If there was any chance of an oil slick in the Gulf catching fire, it would have burned out the offshore oil industry decades ago. Look at the picture above and tell me that wouldn't be a catastrophe IF IT WAS POSSIBLE for a crude oil slick to catch fire. :silly

They're offering bullshît solutions for a bullshît emergency, because the public doesn't know the difference. And Obama's Emergency Management team isn't mobilized because they KNOW there's no emergency. :clap

— Doc Velocity

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread567720/pg1


:shock: :flame I have one video about how i feel about this it best describes how i feel it's::


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Sat May 08, 2010 6:03 pm
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
So you would like to Nuke us all back to the Stone Age FS2012?

How about we go back to the old west style and allow public hangings of Thieves, Bankers & Politicians.

I bet the first CEO of Goldman Sachs hung on the White House lawn would instill change World Wide, not only in world wide Government Policy but public percetion as well..

Change the Sheeple Change the Planet!
You can quote me on that one..

I bet we would leave this Global STS attitude and change over to STO in ONE SINGLE Action!

Jut a thought

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Sat May 08, 2010 6:20 pm
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
Question:

If a methane pocket was released and came up the pipe and exploded, would that mean that the well has been releasing methane as well as oil?

Methane is the principal component of natural gas. Methane is highly falmmalble. It is found under the ocean floor, and in abundance in the earth's crust. It is also found in mud volcanoes. Methane is being released in the permafrost of the Arctic, and now apparently in this oil "spill" disaster. It will cause asphyxiation if released in a closed space.

Overexposure to methane may cause: * headaches, ringing in ears, dizziness, drowsiness, unconsciousness, nausea, vomiting, and depression of all the senses.

Under some circumstances of overexposure, death may occur (from asphyxiation).

One of the dangers of methane is that it displaces oxygen, whether in a confined space, or in the air. It remains in the atmosphere for 15 years, after being released. The explosions resulting from ignition of methane are extremely strong and the results can be devastating, as was seen by the explosion of the oil rig.

Is this disaster more serious than they are saying? or is there something else entirely that we aren't being told? Just wondering.............

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Sat May 08, 2010 6:55 pm
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
Quote:
This is a truly disturbing post if true, so its ok that all Oil Rigs leak oil?


Nope, L, it isn't okay but it is the nature of the beast.

We have a choice do we continue to pollute the oceans and the Earth or do we change our ways and seek out alternatives?

Right now - the playahs are betting on the same-ole-same-ole. Gas guzzlers, high electricity rates and go, go go until gone, gone, gone. Does the phrase "drill, baby, drill" ring a bell?

And after it's gone :dunno maybe we won't need nukes to go back to the Stone Age - we'll have accomplished it all on our very own.

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Sat May 08, 2010 6:59 pm
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
I vote for changing our ways but it has been proven that if we do there is NO proffit in re-usable energy so the PTB's (sorry let's call them for what they are, the Asshat theives) are ripping us off everytime we turn around.
Meanwhile they are killing Mother Earth in the Process :headbang

Why do they do this, because they KNOW the population is slowly waking up from the slumber that they put us in.
So until we ACTULLY wake the hell up and toss these elected assholes that stole the elections out of office then we will continue to drill baby drill until they kill this entire planet.

What a great strategy that is eh?

All I know is these asshat PTB have to meet the same maker that I do I just hope they do not go to the same place that I do in the after life :whistle

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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
L2L wrote:
So you would like to Nuke us all back to the Stone Age FS2012?

How about we go back to the old west style and allow public hangings of Thieves, Bankers & Politicians.

I bet the first CEO of Goldman Sachs hung on the White House lawn would instill change World Wide, not only in world wide Government Policy but public percetion as well..

Change the Sheeple Change the Planet!
You can quote me on that one..

I bet we would leave this Global STS attitude and change over to STO in ONE SINGLE Action!

Jut a thought


Not you just the asshat theives and the whining pigs (pigs is what i originally wrote that hacker must have put that filthy word in here) at the white house ha ha ha I hate politicians who doesn't, nice one about the CEO of goldman-sucks what an ass-farmer :flame :rant as for president "SON OF SATAN" BARRACK-OBAMA i've seen more intelect in a six year old!

L2L wrote:
I vote for changing our ways but it has been proven that if we do there is NO proffit in re-usable energy so the PTB's (sorry let's call them for what they are, the Asshat theives) are ripping us off everytime we turn around.
Meanwhile they are killing Mother Earth in the Process :headbang

Why do they do this, because they KNOW the population is slowly waking up from the slumber that they put us in.
So until we ACTULLY wake the hell up and toss these elected assholes that stole the elections out of office then we will continue to drill baby drill until they kill this entire planet.


YUP there idea is oil,oil,oil NOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM *BURP* *OINK OINK SCHREEEEE* (notice in this sentence i type pig noises)

Here is a picture of one of the asshat thieves now :crylaugh
Image

Thanks for alerting me guys i'll download malware and spyware removal programs! on my wickedly slow capped internet :rant

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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
An article from 2004. Makes a go hmmmmm, doesn't it?

Is THIS what BP was doing? Drilling illegally or were they just unlucky?


Energy Saviour? Or Impending Disaster?

by Quinn Eastman
Illustration by Juna Kurihara


IN DECEMBER 2003, an international team of geologists announced that they had successfully tapped a new energy source. Methane hydrate, a solidified form of natural gas bound into ice, lurks under the seafloor along the margins of every continent and under the Arctic permafrost. On the Mackenzie River delta in the Canadian Northwest Territories, engineers drilled hundreds of meters below the permafrost into the hydrate deposits. They punched fractures into the layers of sediment and pumped hot water into the earth, releasing the natural gas from its icy prison.

This first harvest of methane hydrate could mark a new direction for the energy industry. Engineers once assumed that the energy costs of melting the frozen fuel would outweigh the gains. But rising oil and gas prices and creative uses of existing technology, like the recent test in the Canadian Arctic, are beginning to change their minds. The United States Geological Survey estimates that the total amount of natural gas in methane hydrates surpasses all of the known oil, coal, and gas deposits on Earth in energy content, although only a fraction of the frozen fuel will be extractable. The hydrates can form at any latitude on Earth if temperature and pressure conditions are right, and are usually mixed with sediment under the ocean floor.

There is a catch, however. Methane hydrates offer the energy industry dangers as well as opportunities, warns Charlie Paull, a geochemist at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Calif. Deep-sea drilling operations that melt seafloor deposits of the icy fuel might set off an underwater accident under certain circumstances.

The hazard results not just from tapping into hydrates themselves, but from oil companies’ and governments’ drive to explore for petroleum in deeper waters than ever before, Paull says. Propelled by the highest oil prices in a more than a decade, engineers in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea are extracting oil and natural gas in waters more than a kilometer deep — entering the zone where methane hydrate mingles with sediment and rock.

Normally, the pressure of hundreds of meters of water above keeps the frozen methane stable. But heat flowing from oil drilling and pipelines has the potential to slowly destabilize it, with possibly disastrous results: Melting hydrate might trigger underwater landslides as it decomposes. Scientists hypothesize, in fact, that 8,000 years ago, decomposing hydrate helped to generate a gigantic landslide under the North Sea. The resulting tsunami scoured the Norwegian fjords and scattered seafloor sediment across Holland and Scotland. While no one is predicting that drilling could catalyze an event of such catastrophic proportions, an underwater slide in an oil field could cause enormous environmental damage from oil spills that couldn’t be easily stopped.

More controversially, another danger of the frozen hydrates arises from the fact that methane is a potent greenhouse gas. Some geologists have suggested that methane could accelerate global warming if the oceans’ rising temperature eventually released the gas in large-enough amounts. Rapid, methane-driven global warming has occurred before in Earth’s history, causing mass extinctions, they say, and humans could make it happen again if we keep warming up the planet with the exhaust from cars and electricity plants.

In the near future, what experts such as Paull worry about most is the risk from oil drilling. As the energy industry proceeds into deeper waters in search of fresh oil and gas deposits, Paull says, it has neglected the hazard that melting methane hydrates might pose to its own infrastructure A single $1 billion offshore platform can house 100 people and withstand hurricane-force waves and winds, but Paull suspects that with a big enough nudge from below, pipelines could break.

“Those oil platforms are some of the largest and most expensive structures ever constructed by humans,” he says. “The chance of an incident is very small, but can we afford to have just one? The oil industry has not addressed scientists’ questions about seafloor stability to my satisfaction in a public way.”

Paull is closely familiar with the double-edged nature of methane hydrates because he has been studying them for 15 years. In 1996, when he worked at the University of North Carolina, he ran the first drilling trip dedicated to looking at methane hydrates. He and his colleagues demonstrated the presence of methane hydrates on a part of the Atlantic sea floor off the Carolina coast called the Blake Ridge. Hunting for the icy deposits, in the last five years, he and MBARI scientists have taken samples of sea floor sediment from locations around the world.

Recently, he went to the Gulf of Mexico to map the hydrates and assess their risk to the oil industry. And this summer he will travel to the North Sea to investigate the seafloor at the site of the ancient landslide, where energy companies are developing a huge oil field. Each destination tells a different story about the frozen fuel that can help researchers assess whether methane hydrate is an energy boon, or a disaster waiting to happen.


IN ALL THE PLACES Paull has investigated, the same process that generates methane from swamps, and from human intestines after a meal of baked beans, also supplies the main source of the gas for hydrate formation. Bacteria in ocean mud close to continental coastlines feast on organic material in the sediment and belch out their exhaust. Caps of relatively impermeable hydrates sometimes sit above and trap reservoirs of free natural gas.

To make hydrates, water molecules link up in a cage-like structure — resembling ice — with small “guest” molecules such as methane sticking between them. One cubic meter of methane hydrate is packed with the equivalent of over 160 cubic meters of methane. It melts at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. When the water above is deep enough, methane hydrate’s zone of stability extends from the sea floor down to where the internal heat of the Earth starts to warm things up.

Just like natural gas, methane hydrate would burn more cleanly than coal or oil. The DOE forecasted in 2003 that the world’s natural gas consumption will grow the fastest of all energy sources in the next 25 years. Governments expect that with increasing demand, research into techniques for recovering methane hydrates will pay off in a couple decades.

Until recently, the energy industry mainly regarded methane hydrates as a nuisance. Engineers on oil platforms regularly confront the frozen deposits because they form spontaneously from cold water and gases flowing through pipelines, sometimes plugging them for weeks or even causing blowouts. The $12 million that the U.S. Department of Energy has allotted to research on harvesting hydrates since 2001 is small compared with the estimated $100 million U.S. firms spend every year on antifreeze, repairs, and other gas-flow—assuring remedies.

“It’s an interesting flip,” says Richard Charter, a marine conservation specialist at Environmental Defense in Oakland, Calif. “In the past, the oil industry did everything in their power to avoid disturbing hydrate deposits,” says Charter, who calls himself the “token environmentalist” on a federal advisory board on hydrate research. “Now, it’s a potential resource. Oil engineers’ eyes get really big when you start talking about it.”

In 1999, a USGS report estimated that the world’s free natural gas deposits could yield 368 trillion cubic meters of the methane. By comparison, the report approximated that U.S. offshore areas contain over 10,000 trillion cubic meters of gas in hydrate form. Geologists have since adjusted both figures downward, says USGS scientist Timothy Collett, but the more recent figures still give no sense of how much gas could actually be produced from hydrates. The Mallik test itself produced 1500 cubic meters a day, enough energy to serve about a thousand American households, although a small amount compared to nearby natural gas production.

The most promising places to mine hydrates, he says, are sites where deposits are concentrated, like veins of ore — such as in the Arctic. But the Gulf of Mexico is also a hot target. The Gulf already accounts for 30 percent of U.S oil production and the bulk of exploration for new oil reserves. “The crucial thing about the Gulf of Mexico,” Collett says, “is that when we figure out how much methane hydrate there actually is, the infrastructure to take advantage of it already exists.”


CHARLIE PAULL AND A GROUP of MBARI and USGS scientists spent two weeks in 2002 in the Gulf of Mexico on the French research ship Marion Dufresne. They were there to map methane hydrate — and assess the potential for a landslide triggered by oil drilling. “Ten years ago, we asked: Where can we find methane hydrate?” Paull says. “Now, it’s more: How can we figure out where it is not?”

In the Gulf, geologists have found rich hydrate deposits bursting through the seafloor sediment in mounds a few meters wide. Tubeworms and mussels feed on the methane. Some of it comes from bacteria in the mud, but the gas also is constantly seeping up from pressure-cooked organic material deep within the Earth. To protect these rare delicate ecosystems, federal government regulations prohibit drilling near the seafloor mounds.

In the Gulf, drillers and operators have previously avoided areas where hydrates are close to the surface. “There is a geohazard. It’s worth considering and preparing for,” says Tom Williams, an engineer at Noble Corporation in Houston, which operates mobile offshore drilling units for the oil giants. To lessen the risk, companies can use double casings with refrigeration while drilling to make sure the sediment around a pipe doesn’t heat up.

Williams points out that drillers have bored through hydrate-rich sediment many times in the Arctic with little incident. However, he also says there have been oil-well blowouts in Alaska that some geologists have blamed on hydrate.

Charlie Paull says the danger of geological instability is probably less in the Arctic, compared with other places, because there, methane hydrate is encased by hundreds of meters of sediment or sand. In the Gulf, by contrast, hydrates can lie close to the ocean floor.

Geologists and oil engineers agree that more information about where hydrates are located is essential, but taking measurements of the stuff in seafloor sediment is a challenge, as Paull and colleagues found on their 2002 Gulf trip. Oceanographers initially estimate the locations of hydrate deposits by probing with sonar, or the scientists find them by direct observation. The underwater pressure that stabilizes methane hydrates can get in the way of detailed study. Working from the Marion Dufresne, the MBARI-USGS team took piston cores, giant cylinders of seafloor sediment up to 50 meters long and 10 cm wide, from 21 locations around the Gulf. To release pressure from the free gas produced by decomposing hydrate, they poked holes in the cores along the plastic casings. “Mud worms” of grey goo came squirting out. The pressure can blast sediment out of the top of the core barrel, flying in one instance 10 meters into the air before landing in the water. As soon as the concentration of methane gets high enough to be interesting, Paull says, “it fizzes out like Alka-Seltzer — making your measurements meaningless.”

One possible solution is to keep the core pressurized as it is brought up to the surface. But cumbersome machinery limits the number of samples taken this way, and the cores extend only about a meter long. Instead of measuring methane in cores directly, Paull and Ussler have developed a different method to gauge the amount of gas diffusing up from lower deposits. They look for falling concentrations of chemicals such as sulfate, which is consumed by methane-eating bacteria in the sediment. In seafloor mud, the concentration of sulfate and other chemical signatures are proxies for methane below: The less sulfate, the more methane.

The MBARI-USGS team will soon publish the results of their research: At the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, methane hydrate is only present in small amounts away from the ocean ridges. The risk of structural instability on the seafloor mounds still exists, Paull says, but the team’s work can begin to assure everyone that there isn’t a large-scale danger to the coast extending from Florida to the Yucatan.

Meanwhile, the search for deeper deposits in the Gulf of Mexico is slowly revving up. A DOE-funded project to drill for hydrates in the Gulf, headed by oil giant ChevronTexaco, is scheduled to begin in 6 to 12 months. One of the proposed sites for drilling is directly under a region of the seafloor that geologists know to be rich in hydrates.


THE OTHER HOT SPOT for investigating methane hydrate is in the North Sea. This summer, Paull and colleagues from MBARI will travel there to probe the potential of the frozen fuel deposits to generate a monster landslide. They will take cores from the site of the ancient slide that occurred 8,000 years ago, when a cliff off the coast of Norway at a place called Storegga collapsed. The initial slide generated a wall of water 15 meters high and moved an amount of rock comparable to submerging the state of New Jersey.

Geologists disagree about the prominence of methane hydrate’s role in the Storegga slide. According to one theory, the slow warming of the ocean after the end of the last ice age melted hydrates embedded in sediment under the steep part of the cliff. This made the sediment like a plate of Jello, ready to slip away when the right earthquake came along, according to a recent review by U.S Navy marine scientists. But Norwegian scientists say that pressure from layers of sediment settling from above drove the slide, and that the temperature below the North Sea at the time of the slide is uncertain.

At Storegga, Paull and colleagues want to reconstruct the past. Their research, in cooperation with scientists from the University of Wyoming and the University of Tromso in Norway, will try to answer the questions: How much gas escaped from the ancient landslide, and how much methane hydrate still lies below? Methane leaves a particular chemical signature of carbon and sulfur in the mud that the MBARI scientists plan to analyze.

Their investigation touches present-day developments. The Norwegian state energy company Norsk Hydro is planning production from a $9 billion gas field called Ormen Lange, which lies in the middle of where the Storegga slide occurred. Norsk Hydro will begin building the world’s longest subsurface pipeline this year to deliver gas from Ormen Lange; it will climb up the sloping sea bed to Norway and then across the North Sea to the United Kingdom.

Norwegian research predicts there will be only one major slide at a given site for each ice age, says Martin Hovland, a geologist at the Norwegian state oil company Statoil, a partner in developing the Ormen Lange field. Norsk Hydro and Statoil’s internal data suggest that because of the escape of hydrate deposits after the Storegga slide, the sea floor needs a full climate cycle over tens of thousands of years to recharge sediments with methane. “We take the geohazard issue very seriously of course,” Hovland says. “We’ve performed very stringent drilling and sampling over the last six years, and have come to the conclusion we can develop the field without major problems.”

Paull is not convinced. “While I suspect they have a strong case, it is frustrating because much of the data on which that conclusion has been reached is not yet publicly available,” he says, communicating by e-mail.

A Storegga-scale slide could have consequences beyond making big waves. Some geologists think the amount of methane released in the Storegga disaster could have been enough to warm up the earth. Methane is 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. In a 1991 Geophysical Research Letters paper, Paull, Ussler, and USGS geologist Bill Dillon proposed that when glaciers suck up too much water during an ice age, the sea level drops enough to release the pressure on methane hydrates all over the globe. Enough methane could escape into the atmosphere, they hypothesize, to trap the sun’s heat and end the ice age.

The idea that such a release of methane hydrates played a role in mass extinction events in Earth’s history is gaining acceptance. Geochemists at University of California, Santa Cruz, recently reported evidence in Science that methane fuelled a 5 to 10 degree rise in the Earth’s temperature 55 million years ago. About a third of all species of a common marine plankton perished, and the heat drove an exodus of early mammalian species across the continents. Evidence also exists for a similar event 600 million years ago.

James Kennett, a geologist at University of California, Santa Barbara, who discovered evidence of the 55-million-year-old extinction event, warns that the melting and release of methane hydrate on a global scale “is the right mechanism to propel climate change,” he says. “It happens very fast geologically — over a few decades. But the climate fluctuations in the last few thousand years are small compared to the big events 55 million years ago.”

Paull’s collection of data on the fate of methane released in the North Sea landslide at Storegga could provide evidence to help evaluate Kennett’s hypothesis. But scientists such as Roger Sassen, a geochemist at Texas A+M University, are skeptical of the theory. Based on his own observations — taken from submarines — of constant leaks of methane into the Gulf of Mexico, Sassen views methane hydrates as a trap for huge volumes of greenhouse gas and a buffer against climate change. He also says that their harvest poses no climate risk because freshly generated methane is always seeping up from below, and using it will just capture what already leaks into the atmosphere.

Geologists may argue about the feasibility of harvesting methane hydrate and its influence on climate, but Paull and Sassen agree on one thing: that deep-water drilling will require a different kind of thinking from the oil industry. Adequately dealing with the hazards of working in deep water and eventually harvesting and transporting methane hydrate, they both suggest, will require new technology that does not yet exist.

“When drilling, oil engineers usually just roar right through the zone where hydrate is stable,” Paull says. “We really have to develop a new set of tools to even know what’s going on in extremely deep water.”

http://scicom.ucsc.edu/SciNotes/0401/methane/

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Sun May 09, 2010 1:39 pm
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
WOW!! BB, what a find! ***** 5 Gold stars for you!! :clap

Scary as hell, though. I was just thinking about the location of this disaster in the Gulf, and wondering if the release of methane and oil would destabilize that section of the ocean floor. That might lead to a major tsunami, or other coastal disaster. I also wonder if the oil is going to drift UP the Mississippi...... :hmm

If they were trying to mine methane, no wonder they don't want us to know what they were doing. Thus little MSM coverage, and what there is is so watered down that nobody will even blink. :headbang

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Tue May 11, 2010 8:59 am
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
"Why thankee, ma'am" she says curtseying!

I was actually just researching what the heck those methane ice crystals could be (and what they might look like) when I came across this.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up! It was like I heard a cosmic voice say "BINGO!"

Ya know? :mrgreen:

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Tue May 11, 2010 10:28 am
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
Remember this?

Methane release 'looks stronger'
By Michael Fitzpatrick
Science reporter, BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8437703.stm

Frozen depositories are giving up methane to the sea
Scientists have uncovered what appears to be a further dramatic increase in the leakage of methane gas that is seeping from the Arctic seabed.

Methane is about 20 times more potent than CO2 in trapping solar heat.

The findings come from measurements of carbon fluxes around the north of Russia, led by Igor Semiletov from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

"Methane release from the East Siberian Shelf is underway and it looks stronger than it was supposed [to be]," he said.

Professor Semiletov has been studying methane seepage in the region for the last few decades, and leads the International Siberian Shelf Study (ISSS), which has launched multiple expeditions to the Arctic Ocean.

The preliminary findings of ISSS 2009 are now being prepared for publication, he told BBC News.

Methane seepage recorded last summer was already the highest ever measured in the Arctic Ocean.

High seepage

Acting as a giant frozen depository of carbon such as CO2 and methane (often stored as compacted solid gas hydrates), Siberia's shallow shelf areas are increasingly subjected to warming and are now giving up greater amounts of methane to the sea and to the atmosphere than recorded in the past.

METHANE HYDRATES
Methane gas is trapped inside a crystal structure of water-ice
The gas is released when the ice melts, normally at 0C
At higher pressure, ie under the ocean, hydrates are stable at higher temperatures
This undersea permafrost was until recently considered to be stable.

But now scientists think the release of such a powerful greenhouse gas may accelerate global warming.

Higher concentrations of atmospheric methane are contributing to global temperature rise; this in turn is projected to cause further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane in a feedback loop.

A worst-case scenario is one where the feedback passes a tipping point and billions of tonnes of methane are released suddenly, as has occurred at least once in the Earth's past.

Such sudden releases have been linked to rapid increases in global temperatures and could have been a factor in the mass extinction of species.

According to a report by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the springtime air temperature across the region in the period 2000-2007 was an average of 4C higher than during 1970-1999.

That is the fastest temperature rise on the planet, claims the university.

The recent thaw over the last decade means that some of the large reserve of carbon from organic material such as dead animals and plants in sediments is now being released into the sea and into our atmosphere.

Trapped below that is the methane hydrate now warming and leaking through holes in the defrosting sediments.


1. Methane hydrate is stable at high pressure and low temperature
2. Nearer the surface, where water pressure is lower, hydrates break down earlier than at greater depth as temperatures rise
3. Gas rises from the sea-bed in plumes of bubbles - some of it dissolves before it reaches the surface
4. The ISSS team says it has detected methane breaking the ocean surface

Previously it was thought much of this gas was absorbed into the sea.

But according to a recent report that Professor Semiletov and his team compiled for the environmental group WWF, the shallow depth of arctic shelves means that methane is reaching the atmosphere without reacting to become CO2 dissolved in the ocean.

Professor Semiletov's fellow researcher aboard the Russian icebreaker that carries the ISSS team each year is Professor Orjan Gustafsson from Stockholm University in Sweden.

He said that methane measured in the atmosphere around the region is 100 times higher than normal background levels, and in some cases 1,000 times higher.

'No alarm'

Despite the high readings, Professor Gustafsson said that so far there was no cause for alarm, and stressed that further studies were still necessary to determine the exact cause of the methane seepage.

"It is important now to understand how fast it is being released and how much is being released," he said.

However, there is a real fear that global warming may cause Siberia's subsea permafrost to thaw.

Some estimates put the amount of carbon trapped in shelf permafrost at 1,600 billion tonnes - roughly twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere now.

The release of this once captive carbon from destabilised ocean sediments and permafrost would have catastrophic effect on our climate and life on Earth, warn the scientists.

Siam: Now we have two areas releasing Methane?

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Post Oil spil = size of Montana, Congressman says
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum ... 063133/pg1
:huh

He also has some excellent points about gov't regulators' liability vs BP liability. (Video is embedded from the forum databank, it seems, so I can't give an original link -- just the forum page.)

Skip the middle (market news interpolation into the BP spill info). Oil info is in beginning and end.

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Wed May 12, 2010 1:53 pm
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
Shadow Elite: Think BP's The Bad Guy? Think Bigger, Way Bigger

By Linda Keenan and Janine R. Wedel

Coast Guard Captain leading hearings Wednesday: "It's my understanding that [a blowout preventer is] designed to industry standard ... manufactured by the industry, installed by the industry, with no government witnessing or oversight of the construction or installation. Is that correct?"

Regional supervisor, federal regulator MMS: "That is correct..."


That staggering statement of regulatory impotence was characterized this way by Sen. Bill Nelson in the Wall Street Journal: "If MMS wasn't asleep at the wheel, it sure was letting Big Oil do most of the driving." It is tempting to hope that Big Oil's days in the driver's seat are over, now that the Obama administration has ordered that the Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore drilling, be split up, after critics said the agency was too close to the industry and had an inherent conflict of interest. Realists are highly skeptical. And in our view, it is shortsighted to focus public ire on one business and one massive, deadly disaster, even as HuffPost yesterday spoke to another whistle-blower alleging egregious practices.

This story lays bare the far-reaching (and largely unnoticed) emasculation of government regulatory power, as it has succumbed to corporate agendas over the past several decades. Janines examines this, and other disturbing trends, in her book Shadow Elite.

And it's imperative that we dissect the modus operandi of BP, its elite hired guns, assorted patrons, and compromised, enfeebled regulators, to better spot their tactics being used across government, corporate America, and Wall Street. This pernicious M.O. could be detected in both the recent Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, the bank industry collapse and the bailout that followed. So we should ask ourselves not just "how did these catastrophes happen?" but also, "how do we spot the next one waiting to happen?"

There was much finger-pointing during Congressional grillings this week: politicians pointing fingers at executives from the 3 companies involved in the disaster, and the executives pointing fingers at each other. But those politicians, and our entire leadership, should also point a finger at themselves, for allowing private industry to increasingly devour public power, and gut regulatory responsibility.

It traces back at least to the Reagan era, but soon politicians from both parties would seek to redesign governing, including adopting the push for "small government", and often deregulation. Ironically, this drive led them to create a bigger, far less transparent "shadow government" -- by steadily passing government work, cache -- and, crucially, power -- over to business interests. One result: the lines between business and government have blurred, making it hard to figure out who's in charge, or what an agency even is. Case in point: the MMS. Was MMS a government regulator or an arm of the industry? You be the judge of this description, from the Wall Street Journal.

Quote:
It is supposed to be a watchdog that halts drilling when it spots unsafe behavior. But it is also supposed .... to generate government revenue from drilling on government lands.....Of MMS's fiscal 2010 budget of $342 million, nearly half comes from the oil industry....


It's this conflicted mandate the White House is trying to clear up, with the move this week to split those oversight and revenue functions.

Another result of shadow government's rise is the drain of the government's "brain". The expertise a civil servant should possess has been increasingly privatized, and regulatory power is decimated. More to the point, businesses aren't just sidestepping or fighting regulators. Their M.O. is to try to make themselves the de facto regulators of their own self- interested conduct, the result of which is made devastatingly clear in that exchange at the beginning of this post.

More from the Journal:

The agency...
--"doesn't write or implement most safety regulations, having gradually shifted such responsibilities to the oil industry itself for more than a decade."
--said offshore drilling is so complicated that only industry can really regulate itself.
--let the industry devise its own solutions to problems.
--let a trade group take over the role of "telling companies what training was necessary for workers involved in keeping wells from gushing out of control".

In its defense, the agency "pointed to a 1996 law that encouraged federal agencies to 'benefit from the expertise of the private sector' by adopting industry standards." This is a classic case of "reinventing government" gone awry.

With government power gutted, a new breed of power broker has stepped in to help companies like BP push their interests, and, at the same time, flex their own agendas. These are not mere "lobbyists". They have far more access than your garden variety K-Street operator -- and they can be found in both political parties. In Shadow Elite, Janine calls them "flexians", top players who move in and out of government, corporate, and think tank roles, gathering exclusive information at each stop, and using that privileged asset to benefit themselves and their allies.

BP boasts a high-wattage roster of flexians (or near-flexians) who've served on advisory boards and panels. Some were reportedly paid $120,000 a year to ... "advise"? The Washington Post lists former House majority leader Thomas Daschle (D); two former GOP senators, Warren Rudman and Alan Simpson; Bush EPA administrator Christie Whitman; Clinton deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick; Leon Panetta, [before becoming] -- President Obama's CIA director. Newsweek adds George Mitchell, now Obama's Middle East envoy.

These are perhaps the most relevant titles, but a complete accounting of all the roles that these players have held in government, businesses and think tanks would run a good three dozen long. So what does a company get when it hires someone at the level of say, Tom Daschle? The fact is that this kind of influence is incalculable and largely unaccountable.

And what's the effect of these boards,"independent" panels, and advisory councils anyway? They might give BP a way to have power brokers on board without the appearance of actual lobbying. And they also might help make BP look like the model corporate citizen, when the record suggests significant lapses. Newsweek reports that BP took some of their high-powered advisory board members on a helicopter ride out to the Gulf of Mexico to "demonstrate safeguards". Christie Whitman told the magazine: "we got a sense they were really committed to ensuring they got it right.." Having such a repertoire of appearances -- and the ambiguity surrounding these players' activities -- lends cover. This way of doing business is a hallmark of the shadow elite.

This playing with appearances augments an ongoing strategy by BP to rebrand itself as "Beyond Petroleum". For more than a decade, they have been promoting bold marketing campaigns, eco-friendly-seeming logos, and co-opting, critics say, environmental language. It worked -- Mother Jones cites a 2007 survey that found that people thought BP was "more green" than any other oil company. But even though they have indeed plowed money into solar energy, activists say they can't greenwash away their spotty safety record and aggressive exploration efforts.

A few government officials or investigators did try to demand truth -- and consequences from BP. One EPA official a few years back threatened to "debar" BP from government contracts if it didn't submit to tougher regulation. The problem: Newsweek says BP is a top Pentagon fuel supplier for Mideast military operations. This is yet another result of the gutting of government power: the increasing, and quite possibly dangerous reliance on multinational businesses for mission-critical government functions.

Various industries consolidated over the 80's and 90's, and that's left a handful of enormous companies contracting in countless corners of the government, crucial corners. As Newsweek puts it, BP was "the oil-company equivalent of "too big to fail". :censor

And that official was well aware of BP's insider power. She said "'when a major economic and political giant tells you it has direct access to the White House, it's very intimidating.'" She felt powerless, because she assumed no matter what she did, BP would just get a national-security exception to keep selling the oil.

This civil servant and a handful of other standouts lost in their bid to clamp down on BP, hobbled by a system that is so clearly tilted in favor of business, and to unaccountable power brokers. In the era of the shadow elite, they learned an unfortunate truth: that some companies are not just "too big to fail", but also "too untouchable to punish". :gah

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-keenan/emshadow-eliteem-think-bp_b_574606.html

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Thu May 13, 2010 9:01 am
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
Did any one see this coming?

In the fateful hours before the Deepwater Horizon exploded about 50 miles off the Louisiana shore, a safety test was supposedly performed to detect if explosive gas was leaking from the mile-deep well.

While some data were being transmitted to shore for safekeeping right up until the blast, officials from Transocean, the rig owner, told Congress that the last seven hours of its information are missing and that all written logs were lost in the explosion. Earlier tests that suggested explosive gas was leaking were preserved.

The gap poses a mystery for investigators: What decisions were made – and what warnings might have been ignored?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/1 ... 76096.html

and BlueBonnet, don't pack those bags just yet, I was informed unless I am certified I am not wanted to help. I think I will just wait and help the pelicans here , it seems they too will be in need soon.


Fri May 14, 2010 6:18 am
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 Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits
By IAN URBINA
Published: May 13, 2010

WASHINGTON — The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf.

Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day.

The Minerals Management Service, or M.M.S., also routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of certain drilling proposals in the gulf and in Alaska, according to a half-dozen current and former agency scientists.

Those scientists said they were also regularly pressured by agency officials to change the findings of their internal studies if they predicted that an accident was likely to occur or if wildlife might be harmed.

Under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Minerals Management Service is required to get permits to allow drilling where it might harm endangered species or marine mammals.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is partly responsible for protecting endangered species and marine mammals. It has said on repeated occasions that drilling in the gulf affects these animals, but the minerals agency since January 2009 has approved at least three huge lease sales, 103 seismic blasting projects and 346 drilling plans. Agency records also show that permission for those projects and plans was granted without getting the permits required under federal law.

“M.M.S. has given up any pretense of regulating the offshore oil industry,” said Kierán Suckling, director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group in Tucson, which filed notice of intent to sue the agency over its noncompliance with federal law concerning endangered species. “The agency seems to think its mission is to help the oil industry evade environmental laws.”

Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Minerals Management Service, said her agency had full consultations with NOAA about endangered species in the gulf. But she declined to respond to additional questions about whether her agency had obtained the relevant permits.

Federal records indicate that these consultations ended with NOAA instructing the minerals agency that continued drilling in the gulf was harming endangered marine mammals and that the agency needed to get permits to be in compliance with federal law.

Responding to the accusations that agency scientists were being silenced, Ms. Barkoff added, “Under the previous administration, there was a pattern of suppressing science in decisions, and we are working very hard to change the culture and empower scientists in the Department of the Interior.”

On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced plans to reorganize the minerals agency to improve its regulatory role by separating safety oversight from the division that collects royalties from oil and gas companies. But that reorganization is not likely to have any bearing on how and whether the agency seeks required permits from other agencies like NOAA.

Criticism of the minerals agency has grown in recent days as more information has emerged about how it handled drilling in the gulf.

In a letter from September 2009, obtained by The New York Times, NOAA accused the minerals agency of a pattern of understating the likelihood and potential consequences of a major spill in the gulf and understating the frequency of spills that have already occurred there.

The letter accuses the agency of highlighting the safety of offshore oil drilling operations while overlooking more recent evidence to the contrary. The data used by the agency to justify its approval of drilling operations in the gulf play down the fact that spills have been increasing and understate the “risks and impacts of accidental spills,” the letter states. NOAA declined several requests for comment.

The accusation that the minerals agency has ignored risks is also being levied by scientists working for the agency.

Managers at the agency have routinely overruled staff scientists whose findings highlight the environmental risks of drilling, according to a half-dozen current or former agency scientists.

The scientists, none of whom wanted to be quoted by name for fear of reprisals by the agency or by those in the industry, said they had repeatedly had their scientific findings changed to indicate no environmental impact or had their calculations of spill risks downgraded.

“You simply are not allowed to conclude that the drilling will have an impact,” said one scientist who has worked for the minerals agency for more than a decade. “If you find the risks of a spill are high or you conclude that a certain species will be affected, your report gets disappeared in a desk drawer and they find another scientist to redo it or they rewrite it for you.”

Another biologist who left the agency in 2005 after more than five years said that agency officials went out of their way to accommodate the oil and gas industry.

He said, for example, that seismic activity from drilling can have a devastating effect on mammals and fish, but that agency officials rarely enforced the regulations meant to limit those effects.

He also said the agency routinely ceded to the drilling companies the responsibility for monitoring species that live or spawn near the drilling projects.

“What I observed was M.M.S. was trying to undermine the monitoring and mitigation requirements that would be imposed on the industry,” he said.

con.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/us/14agency.html

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Fri May 14, 2010 6:41 am
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
Quote:
While some data were being transmitted to shore for safekeeping right up until the blast, officials from Transocean, the rig owner, told Congress that the last seven hours of its information are missing and that all written logs were lost in the explosion. Earlier tests that suggested explosive gas was leaking were preserved.


Ahhh yes the old "missing data transmissions." Ummm hmmm - yeah! :whistle

Written logs? Seriously, who keeps "written logs" anymore? Yeah like they are using pen and paper in the middle of the ocean? No one had a pen drive or USB? Uh huh!! :roll

Pffffttttt! Pfffttt! Pffffttt!

Thanks for the update on the leaking Methane, Siam! I had completely forgotten about that.

Barb - keep those pelicans safe, ya hear? It makes my heart soar to see them coming back like they have been! :heart

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Fri May 14, 2010 6:45 am
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Post Dick Cheney 'Needs To Testify' About BP Oil Spill
Former Vice President and one-time Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney should be called to testify about the gulf oil spill, according to Chris Matthews.

Matthews argues that because Cheney held secret meetings with big oil to develop the Bush administration's energy policy, it's impossible to know who was responsible for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Matthews elaborates:


You see, in the cozy world of oil and those charged by public oath with regulating it, these are leaks that can be prevented. Halliburton is now saying it`s not to blame for what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. How on Earth are we to know who was responsible for this in this incredibly incestuous little set up?

We have the vice president of our country, fresh from his job as CEO of the oil company, holding secret meetings with oil companies in the White House. From top to bottom, the government President Obama inherited was stocked with Halliburton people, supposedly looking at Halliburton, while the whole thing looks like they were looking out for Halliburton. Don`t you think?


Halliburton, Transocean, and BP are trying to blame one another for the spill. On Thursday, Transocean, the doomed rig's contractor, sought to cap its liability for the spill at $27 million. According to BP, its estimated cleanup costs are now $450 million.

Video at link :clap :clap :clap

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/1 ... 75835.html

Could NOT agree more with Mathews, get that pice of garbage under the lights and if he lies THROW HIM IN JAIL

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Fri May 14, 2010 7:26 am
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
Leave it to a couple of good ole boys to come up with a simple solution....

Who needs the gubment


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Fri May 14, 2010 11:12 am
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
Scuttlebutt has it that all the big wigs on the rig (including the BP guy) left via helicopter a few hours before she blew to attend a party! Yep, a party to celebrate the find and the successful completion of the well.

Oil spill response to be assessed on Capitol Hill

Washington (CNN) -- Almost a month after an oil well ruptured in the Gulf of Mexico, BP says its latest attempt at capping the gushing crude is working, and the Obama administration vows it won't rest until the company cleans up the spill and addresses its impact.

On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and BP America Chairman Lamar McKay will appear before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs to assess the response to what some lawmakers are calling a "catastrophe."

A BP maneuver to siphon oil from the well into a tanker using a tube has been working for more than 24 hours, said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production.

The 4-inch pipe is "producing over 1,000 barrels of oil into the drill ship, so it's good progress," he told CNN's "American Morning" on Monday.

The pipe isn't capturing all the oil gushing into the water, Suttles said, but the company hopes to increase the amount of oil it is siphoning from the site. Crews are trying to avoid mixing water with the oil, which can cause the formation of crystals known as hydrates, he said.

The next step in stopping the oil flow is a so-called "top-kill" procedure, in which a large amount of kill mud -- a heavy fluid used in drilling operations -- is inserted into the well bore, Kent Wells, BP senior vice president, told reporters in a conference call Sunday.

Wells said the mud will be pumped through the bottom of the well's blowout preventer at a maximum rate of 40 barrels (1,680 gallons) a minute.

"So with all of the pumping horsepower we have on the surface, we'll be able to pump far faster than the well can flow, and it's about us outracing the well," he said.

Preparations for the top-kill procedure will take place over the next seven to 10 days, Wells said. :roll

Suttles said the heavy fluids overcome the flow rate and stop it, and then the well can be sealed with cement. Another option, putting debris in the well to stop the flow, may also be utilized, he said.

Asked why the options weren't exercised weeks ago, Suttles said testing and diagnostics had to be done. "We don't want to take any action that could cause the situation to get worse." However, most of that testing has been completed, and equipment is now on site for a permanent solution, he said. :whistle

Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar have expressed caution about the effectiveness of the insertion tube.

"This technique is not a solution to the problem, and it is not yet clear how successful it may be," the two said in a joint statement Sunday. "We are closely monitoring BP's test with the hope that it will contain some of the oil, but at the same time, federal scientists are continuing to provide oversight and expertise to BP as they move forward with other strategies to contain the spill and stop the flow of oil."

"We will not rest until BP permanently seals the wellhead, the spill is cleaned up, and the communities and natural resources of the Gulf Coast are restored and made whole," the statement said.

The underwater gusher began after an April 20 explosion aboard the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon. The explosion and subsequent fire caused the rig to sink two days later, prompting oil to begin spilling from the well.

The amount of oil pouring into the Gulf was estimated at about 210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) per day in late April. BP said the estimate remains the same as of Sunday.

The slick has spread across much of the northern Gulf of Mexico, with bits of oil washing up onto the shores of Louisiana's barrier islands.

CNN's John Roberts asked Suttles on Monday about a "60 Minutes" interview with Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician, who claimed that Transocean -- which owned the rig and was leasing it to BP -- was being pushed by BP to complete the well quickly because it was taking longer than expected.

Suttles said he did not see the program and "I don't know the details of that. I know people are talking about various things that occurred that night on the rig, but I actually haven't seen any of the results of these interviews or investigations. ... I don't actually have any knowledge that that was the case." The truth, he said, will eventually become known.

On Saturday, Suttles said the application of underwater dispersants -- a tactic approved for use Friday -- appears to be working. "The oil in the immediate vicinity of the well and the ships and rigs working in the area is diminished from previous observations," he said after flying over the area.

The Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that the decision to use subsea dispersants is an "important step" aimed at reducing potential damage from the spill, because dispersants can be more effective underwater than on the ocean's surface.

But more recent estimates suggest the actual volume spewing from the pipe could be far higher than the estimated 5,000 barrels per day. And Ray Highsmith, executive director of the University of Mississippi's National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology, told CNN that plumes of oil appear to have settled beneath the surface.

"We're clearly detecting something," Highsmith said. Either oil has settled on the bottom or it has risen to the surface and sank again, as happened in the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

"This is a very different spill than we've ever had before, and we need to learn as much about it as we can," he said.

Asked about the oil plumes, Suttles said Monday that BP is attempting to get that information "and see if that can help us in how we're responding. I can tell you we're holding nothing back, absolutely nothing back, as we try to fight this thing."

CNN's David Mattingly and Eric Marrapodi contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/17/gulf.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=T1

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Mon May 17, 2010 6:27 am
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Post Re: At least 11 missing after blast on oil rig in Gulf
Bird's Eye View: What is BP Hiding?
Jonathan Henderson

GRN (Gulf Restoration Network) has been receiving unconfirmed confidential reports that BP is withholding information about fish kills including that of sperm whales, whale sharks, Blue-fin Tuna and other marine mammals. We are following these leads closely and are attempting to verify theses reports with visual evidence obtained through our independent flyovers and boat excursions but we have not yet been able to confirm. Nevertheless, we think it is important to share the footage that we obtain and hope that others will begin to ask questions of BP and the data they are obtaining. Following up on these leads, recently I flew over the staging areas where the reports allege that BP has been engaged in these secretive operations. What I saw from the air over Shell Beach and Hopedale, Louisiana was what seemed to be military protected staging areas where whales could potentially be brought in from offshore, processed under huge white tents, then carted off in trash trucks owned by a collaborative of oil companies, including BP

GRN is very concerned that BP is not providing honest and fully transparent assessments of the disaster, including the death of endangered marine life. While so far we have not been able to confirm the death of any sperm whales and whale sharks and subsequent transporting to Shell Beach or Hopedale, we intend to keep the pressure on federal agencies and BP to allow for our ongoing independent monitoring and analysis. GRN is deeply concerned that BP has the power to put in place restrictions on our ability to access certain areas of the ever growing BP drilling disaster location and will continue advocating for a change in this policy.

Jonathan Henderson is the Coastal Resiliency Organizer for GRN

http://healthygulf.org/201005171294/blo ... -bp-hiding

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Mon May 17, 2010 7:17 pm
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