Article by: John Schettler

We have really landed in deep water this time. As if the toxic hemorrhaging of derivatives was not enough, now we are slowly witnessing the destruction of the entire Gulf of Mexico, and all life in it. This will have a far more dramatic an damaging effect than many now realize. And this story is only just beginning...

June-July 2010

NEWS ON BP DEEPWATER OIL GUSHER:

7/20 - Two Well Sites at Macondo 252 - No plan for blowout filed. (See below)

Oil From BP Gulf Oil Spill Confirmed In Gulf Stream Up East Coast Of Florida

Concern rises over integrity of sea floor as BOP tilt increases to near 15 degrees.

NASA Satellite Images Show Gulf Oil Spill Size Larger Than Florida

IN DEEP WATER - 2010 Updates by John Schettler

Note:
This article will update weekly or daily with new information as it comes to light.

AUG 29, 2010 - UPDATE - Scientists have discovered a massive 22 mile long oil plume in the deep waters of the gulf refuting BP and government coverup claims to the contrary and confirming reports made here as early as May that these plumes existed.  The late Matt Simmons was again correct in stating this plume existed, and his claim that there was another leak 7 miles from the Deepwater Horizon well was also vindicated when it was determined the plume was coming from the Biloxi Dome, an area surveyed by the research ship Thomas Jefferson. The existence of major seeps there, and this plume, were most likely what Simmons was reporting on.  An even more disturbing find was the absence of any oil eating microbes in the plume, which may now remain stable and toxic for decades according to testimony before congress. It was also revealed that the EPA has not, in fact, tested seafood for the more lethal elements of oil contamination such as arsenic, benzene and other toxins.

As to BPs relief well efforts, the partial collapse of the relief well at nearly 18,000 foot depth has caused a postponement until mid September. Other reports of continuing eruptions of methane and seepage of oil from the vicinity of the well continue to indicate that the reservoir may have a direct path to the subsea surface now. If this seepage continues it could cause another major eruption at some future time.

AUG 12, 2010 - UPDATE - Another oil industry expert has taken up the baton from fallen Matt Simmons. Bob Cavnar has viewed the recent capping and static kill effort in the Gulf with a healthy dose of guarded suspicion. Cavnar believes the pressure from the well, which should have gone to zero, indicates that there is still subsurface leakage, and that the static kill procedure may have made these leaks worse, creating open communication between the reservoir and the sea. And in fact, these leaks are fairly obvious. There have been numerous video sequences of obvious oil and gas eruption from the sea floor, but now that the constant light of the media has dimmed, these get little attention. But Cavnar asks some nagging questions: “Why is the wellhead leaking? To be clear, dead means dead. If it’s leaking oil, that means it’s not dead... I’m sitting here watching oil leaking from a well that is supposedly dead. I’m listening to Admiral Allen saying the well is dead and to Jane Lubchenco and Carol Browner seriously contending that almost 4 million barrels of oil have disappeared. Is it just me, or are we watching the Matrix in real life?” Cavnar also commented on the pressure, reported at 4300psi: “The fact that they’re getting pressure now tells me that they are indeed communicated to the reservoir below, probably obscured by the fact that they now have mud strung through the annulus. If they are indeed communicated, pressure will build on the wellhead, which is exactly what’s happening.”

AUG 9, 2010 - UPDATE - Oil industry expert and investment banker Matt Simmons will not be making any further statements about the BP Gulf disaster. He died this morning at the age of 67, reputedly of a heart attack, and there will now be broad speculation on the fringes of the Internet that his death was too suspiciously convenient. Simmons, a long time advocate of the “Peak Oil” theory, had gained a reputation as an industry maverick when he asserted that the published figures for “proven reserves” in Saudi Arabia and other major producing states were vastly overstated. His most recent contrarian views concerning the BP Gulf disaster garnered much press and created a firestorm of controversy on the Internet. I’ve respected the man for many years, but found many of his claims concerning the Gulf situation failed to hold up in light of the evidence we have seen. Yet his story was consistent, from day one, concerning what he believed had happened in the Gulf. With his industry connections what did he know that prompted him to take such a radically controversial stand? I can imagine that the stress of these events must have contributed to his untimely demise. But like a failing pitcher who gives up too many runs in his final game, we should not dismiss his insight and well reasoned voice when it comes to issues like our urgent energy crisis. Peak oil is no theory. It is simple mathematics. This nation has a long way to go before we realize that a $41,000 Chevy Volt, heavily subsidized by tax dollars to both produce and sell, is the answer to our energy situation. The blow inflicted by the Deepwater Horizon spill was a resounding wake-up call. But now the well is capped and BP no longer shows us any close images of the scene. Soon the ROV cameras will wink off, and we may never learn anything about the “other leak” Simmons kept talking about. BP can now get back to trying to cap its financial losses, and cement its stock value. But a nagging hunch tells me we have not seen or heard the true story of what really happened in the Gulf, and that this crisis may yet evolve into more than we now can fathom. The headlines today: Matt Simmons dies. BR Andarko lead energy rebound as cap stops worst case spill. Hedge funds raise bets on rising oil price to 13 week high.   The beat on the old oil drum goes on...

AUG 6, 2010 - UPDATE - The Well has now been pumped with cement from the top, though leaks and  seeps of oil, gas and methane hydrates continue to increase from the sea floor in the vicinity. My guess would be that the inability to reach 9000psi during the “integrity test” was proof that there was substantial down hole damage and leakage into the surrounding geologic formations. Since the well was capped these leaks have migrated up to the sea bed and are now beginning to emerge. The key question is how much is still leaking, and will it cause fatal erosion in the sub sea formations and allow the reservoir to continue to leak? The government has now ordered BP to proceed with the relief well and pump cement for a “bottom kill.” After this, if oil and gas continue to seep from the sea bed, it would likely mean that the reservoir has found pathways through the geologic formations to the surface, which could be cause for grave concern. But will the ROV cameras remain vigilant and, more importantly, will the live feeds be accessible by the public? I can easily see BP turning these off in the near future to clamp a lid on a lot of Internet news reporting that relies on these video streams. But the truth will out, one way or another. If the oil is going to leak, it will--though after the bottom kill BP can simply claim that any new oil is just a “natural” seep. The only thing that would shake this strategy would be a major eruption near the well that would be obviously related to the crisis we’ve just lived through. In effect, BP has made its best play on this well. Now the ball is in Mother Nature’s court. If the damage is light to moderate, these new “seeps” could just continue for years, unnoticed and unreported after the operation concludes. But if the damage is severe, it could be just a matter of time until we have a major eruption.  We’ll just have to wait and see.

AUG 4, 2010 - UPDATE - The Well is now stable and appears ready for static kill. After 106 days and nearly 5 million barrels of oil in the worst accidental maritime oil leak in world history, BP finally appears to have slain its dragon. The well is now being controlled by the hydrostatic pressure of the mud column being pumped in. For the moment, at least, man and machine seem to have tamed mother nature. Yet there are still disturbing videos of obvious seeps of gas and bubbles from the sea floor in the region around the well. There was obviously a leak down hole that allowed some of oil and gas to escape into the surrounding formation. My guess is that some of this has been slowly migrating up to the sea floor, though not in quantities sufficient to compromise it and cause any of the more radical disaster predictions we have seen floated the last several months.

As to the much publicized speculations of Matt Simmons and others, here is what we now know:

The BOP did NOT fall over of fall into a sink hole.
The well was NOT at massive pressures of 20,000 to 70,000psi...let alone 100,000psi.
The sea floor did NOT erupt with a massive uncontrollable surge of oil. (At least not yet).
There was NO massive “second leak” 5 to 7 to 10 miles from the wellhead spewing 120,000 BPD.
There is NO lake of heavy oil the size of the state of Washington under the water.
There was NOT an undersea volcano spewing oil and methane.
BP did NOT drill into this non-existent volcanic formation.
There was NO massive eruption of methane to sink all BP vessels and trigger an extinction level event.
There were NOT thousands of UN Vehicles lined up on airfields in Virginia, ready to head for the Gulf.
There was NO Canadian military unit on 72 hour notice to head there either.
BP was NOT testing a massive EMP pulse weapon to try and seal off the well.
A nuclear weapon was NOT the only way to control the well.

But what we also now know....

The leak was NOT 1000/BPD as BP reported April 20th
The leak was NOT 5000/BPD as BP reported May 4th.
The leak was NOT 20,000/BPD as BP reported later that same month.
The leak WAS 52,000 to 62,000 BPD, from day 1, and totaled nearly 5 million barrels.
The event spewed more oil than 20 Exxon Valdez disasters.
BP WAS lying to the public and the government or just plain incompetent if they did not know this.
BP also doctored photos, looped ROV video feeds and carefully controlled what the ROVs showed.
BP hired local police to restrict public and press access to soiled beaches or dead wildlife.
BP offered university researchers contracts to work for them in another effort at “damage control.”
BP former CEO and Board members sold off huge amounts of their stock shortly before the blowout.
Multiple oil seeps and gas leaks are still erupting in the Macondo well vicinity.
Corexit-9500 dispersant is NOT 25 times less toxic than dish soap and its maker Nalco reported.
Hundreds of cleanup workers HAVE reported illness, hemorrhaging, nausea, vomiting and more.
Toxicologists HAVE claimed the region will be threatened by toxins from sea water and rain.
The oil DID contaminate beaches from Texas to Florida.
Oil DID pass the Keys and migrate up the eastern coast of Florida, and even reached the Yucotan.
Massive amounts of methane gas, Corexit and dispersed oil ARE still in the gulf
The food chain IS widely contaminated and thousands of fish, birds and sea mammals were killed.
Coastal Fisheries WERE contaminated and will suffer these effects for years.
Oyster beds near the Mississippi Delta WERE largely destroyed.
The Gulf coast economy DID take a major hit.

Now let's celebrate that newly capped and killed well.

AUG 3, 2010 - UPDATE -Static Kill Procedure Underway. Called “static” because the well is presently capped and there is no oil flowing, the procedure now is to first pump oil back down through the kill line on the BOP to try to reverse the flow and force all the oil back down into the underground reservoir. Then heavy mud will be pumped into the well, about 2000 barrels unless more is needed.  So now man and machine will start pushing on mother nature to see if she can be tamed.

AUG 1, 2010 - UPDATE - A portion of the relief well has collapsed, forcing BP to retool that segment before they can be ready for a potential "Bottom Kill." Discussion on a possible "Static Kill" from the top is still being aired. Since the well is not flowing it will be easier to overcome the  pressure. Yet now that the well has been capped, a lot of effort is being made to sweep the story off the news--out of sight, out of mind.

There is still Internet Buzz about those “two wells” I cover in the July 20 sidebar. Another independent researcher has claimed that the ROV GPS coordinates are reporting they are all positioned around Well A, the original well that was abandoned, and not at well B, the well that blew out. These posters are inferring Matt Simmons claim of another leak nearby is actually well B, and Simmons claim that what we have been seeing is an elaborate deception is actually engineering in and around the old well A, where there would have been an intact BOP.  The stubborn presence of the BOP, intact and in place above the well, has been the thorn in the side of all of Simmons assertions. Leave it to the Internet to come up with this scenario.

July 29, 2010 - UPDATE:  Out of Sight - Out of Mind  EPA official Hugh Kaufman blew the whistle on BP and the government on MSNBC claiming that the oil that seems to have disappeared is in fact still hovering in the water column in a widely dispersed plume that is likely to remain in the Gulf for years. The amount of oil that actually reached the surface was only a small fraction of the total volume leaked. 95% or more remains beneath the surface in the vast “lake” of dispersed oil that Matt Simmons has been talking about. His claim that “We have poisoned the Gulf” certainly cannot be argued with, no matter what you may think of his other assertions. The use of Corexit dispersant, which BP rep Dudley claimed was “less toxic than dish soap,” has now caused hemorrhaging among cleanup workers and wildlife. It will remain a highly dangerous toxic element of the Gulf region, contaminating the water and rain for years. Called “we hides it” by oil industry insiders, Corexit was used to prevent oil from rising to the surface where it could be seen and threaten beaches. But this tactic also prevented it from being skimmed by ships and removed from the environment. There is no way to mitigate the remaining oil now that it has been dispersed. And I note BP continued to use Corexit even after being ordered to cease by the government.

Kaufman believes the EPA is suppressing data on the toxicity of Corexit because “the public can’t handle” the information. “We’ve got hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spread out, mixed with 2 million gallons of dispersant,” said Kaufmann. “And so, what we have to do is accurately monitor the air and water and be very careful with the seafood. But we’ve now poisoned thousands of square miles of the Gulf... ” Other scientists are equally blunt on the subject. Toxicologist Dr. Riki Ott has advised that Gulf residents have three difficult choices now: 1) Leave the region as soon as possible, 2) Stay and wear a respirator, or 3) Become painfully ill.

July 27, 2010 - UPDATE: What’s Leaking? Thad Allen claimed the “seeps” found 3km from the BP well were from “another well,” and suggested it was the Texaco Rigel well. But an independent researcher has accurately mapped the sea floor to find that the Rigel well is only 2km from the BP site, and the area was scanned by US research ships weeks ago and found NO evidence of a seep there. According to Alexander Higgens: “Thomas Jefferson traveled directly over the area, created a highly detailed 3D model and did not detect any leaks near the well.”  More here

July 23, 2010 - UPDATE: USF scientists confirm underwater plumes came from BP spill

Scientists at the University of South Florida announced Friday that underwater “plumes” of suspended oil and gas definitely came from the Deepwater Horizon leak. news outlet Tampabay.com reported: "What we have learned completely changes the idea of what an oil spill is," Hollander said in a news release. "It has gone from a two-dimensional disaster to a three-dimensional catastrophe.”

The study confirms consistent reports of underwater plumes, referenced here for many weeks.

July 22, 2010 - UPDATE: Storm Watch

All eyes are on the disturbance now aiming for the central Gulf region. Weather centers and projected storm tracks model it as likely to move through the worst of the oil spill zones. Should this tropical depression strengthen to a hurricane, we will have our first look at what may be another three or four months of oil being forced onshore by winds and tidal surges as the hurricane season progresses. Particles of oil and other contaminants will be driven inland on the wind. Any heavy oil mass could also clog power plant operations along the gulf coast, presenting another problem in the area, already taxed by a sweltering heat index.  Initial preparation to evacuate the BP work zone 50 miles off shore are now in the works. If abandoned due to foul weather, operations could be delayed 10 days to two weeks. Considering these events, BP has been given permission to leave the present well cap on indefinitely. The low well pressure does not appear to pose the threat of further blowout. UPDATE: Bonnie appears to be breaking up and poses no significant threat to the region. Upper level wind shears have prevented it from reorganizing after brushing across the southern tip of Florida. It has mustered a few weak thunderstorms, but not much else, and its greatest impact has been the precautionary abandonment of the well containment operations.

July 21, 2010 - UPDATE: Confirmed: Second leak coming from another well site!

The “two wells” information published July 20 is beginning to gain traction on the net. Apparently the “seep” identified days ago has now been confirmed to be coming from a second well, and not a natural seep, according to the Washington Post: “Seepage two miles from BP's oil cap is coming from another well,” said National Incident Commander Thad Allen. This lays to rest the “natural seep” argument floated by BP in the London Reuters article yesterday. Net speculation is now looking at the position of Scandi Neptune as it monitors the new containment cap and finding it is identical to the published coordinates of well site A, the well abandoned in Feb, 2010...and not the well which blew out and destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig, which was well site B. (See July 20 sidebar). If this is proven to be true, we may have found the “open hole” that Matt Simmons has been talking about for months, though it is much closer than the “ten miles” as Simmons now claims. But a lot rides on that if... Would some enterprising reporter in the MSM please ask the question: is the containment cap currently mounted on well site A or B?  It should be easy enough to prove or disprove this.

Meanwhile, BP is planning to try a “Static Kill” from  the top before proceeding with the relief well “Bottom Kill” operation. This could take place as early as this weekend if approved by the government, and if mother nature cooperates. A potential new tropical depression could delay operations 10 days to two weeks.

And oh yes... CNBC is airing a 30 minute news special, also titled “In Deep Water” tonight. But for the record we published this article June 15, 2010. I guess there is “nothing new  under the sun.”

July 20 2010 - UPDATE: BP Suggests New Leak Not From Deepwater Horizon Well - Experts Disagree. - LONDON July 19 (Reuters) - “Oil giant BP Plc (BP.L) said a seep detected in the Gulf of Mexico may not be related to its blown out Macondo well.”  As the area has many “natural seeps” it was a no-brainer that BP would take this line of argument. But on July 20 the Times-Picayune reported: “Scientists have discovered four gas "seeps" at or near BP's blown-out Macondo well since Saturday ... Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea has very little confidence in what’s been said publicly about the seeps....  because a survey of the seabed conducted before BP drilled its well didn’t indicate anything like that. “There was nothing that indicated the presence of such a seep,” Bea said. “I wonder why we’re just now finding that out?” It was interesting to note that BP’s own application to drill at the site indicated noted no “Shallow Hazards” on the seabed within 1500 feet of the proposed wells. Wouldn’t the presence of natural seeps of gas and oil be noted as a potential hazard?

I find it hard to believe that these seep areas would not have been surveyed before the well was drilled, just as Bea also asserts. If they existed BP should have ample documentation on them. Wouldn’t it be a simple matter to produce these documents to prove their claim? In the absence of such data, can we assume the seeps are the result of downhole leaks that have allowed oil and gas to migrate into the geologic formations in the near vicinity of the well? Time will tell. If BP can kill this well with cement in the next 30 days, these seeps should also vanish if they are in any way related to the Macondo well. We know exactly where the seeps are now. If they kill the well, and these seeps persist, then BPs assertion that they are natural and unrelated will be proved.

It was also revealed today in application documents for the Macondo 252 Well that there were no contingency plans required for blowout, the presence of H2S (Hydrogen Sulfate), gas pockets, spill response or post drilling ROV surveys of the sea floor. (See July 20th Sidebar).

7/19/2010 UPDATE- Out of Sight - Out Of Mind

BPs only concern is with the leaking equipment they have on the sea floor. Fix that, get the cameras and 24 hour per day streaming ROV videos shut down, and no one will see or know much about any further “leaks.” The oil already awash in the Gulf will tend to cover them for weeks and months before they would be noticed again by any independent research, (which they could probably keep far from the site due to “security” reasons.) And if anything was discovered later it would be easy to say “not our problem.”  Yet a knowledgeable poster on the Oil Drum commented: “I find it difficult to believe that there is a seeping shallow heavy oil or gas accumulation near Macondo. At a minimum it should have been mentioned in the MMS permit application as a possible geohazard.” In effect, suggesting this must be a new seep, resulting from the accident, and not one that was present before the well was drilled. If this was a preexisting natural seep, then the question arises with some weight: why was the well permitted here when a known pathway existed from deeper reservoirs to the seabed within a few thousand feet?

Let’s also remember that just after the rig sank we were told there were three leaks: one in the mile long fallen riser pipe that was “plugged,” one we have been watching on TV for the last 87 odd days at the top of the damaged BOP, which was capped. And now the third leak, never discussed by anyone other than Matt Simmons, is making its gradual entry into the mainstream media, carefully explained away as a “natural seep.”  In actuality, it is now two or three seep areas on the sea floor, a few other “suspicious” areas of bubbly concern, and a few “anomalies” around the legacy BOP and new cap. We were told by Thad Allen today that they couldn’t detect the other seeping areas because of the murkiness and “noise” of the leaking well. But now that things have quieted down we’ve suddenly had our “oh, there they are” moment. Not to worry, BP is washing their hands of the other seeping oil and methane gas. It’s someone else’s problem. These new leaks are, in BPs mind, acts of God and nature, and not their responsibility. They grudgingly agreed to monitor them in exchange for government permission to keep their well cap in place at leak #2.

Will BPs new PR spin of the sea floor leak fly? The mainstream media was very quiet about yesterday’s “Breaking” news. Little mention of the new seeps could be found over 30 minutes of morning viewing of all the big news channels on TV. The old maxim “out of sight, out of mind” applies strongly here. Yet as late as July 16, long time oil industry vet Matt Simmons continued to stand by his beleaguered claim that BP was engaged in a coverup of the real problem. While some of Simmons assertions seem to make little sense (see July 15 sidebar), his basic claim that there is another leak appears to be getting some traction, though these seeps, at least as viewed thus far, could not account for the massive oil lake he talks about.

Yet Simmons has been right about one thing. BP has been suppressing news and vastly underrating the magnitude of this event. Simmons stated that the moment he saw the Deepwater rig on fire he knew it had to be one of the most serious blowouts in history and was flabbergasted at BPs initial statement that it was only leaking 1000, BPD. His assertion that BP has been trying to minimize the impact and true nature of the story is, with out a doubt, true. Why? “Once it becomes known that there is no way to fix the leak,” said Simmons. “then people start realizing that you better file a claim right now, and I can easily envision the claims could exceed $100 billion.” Simmons believes BPs coverup is near criminal, and he is amazed they have been allowed to control the media coverage of the event. “The perjury that has gone on has just been astonishing.”  How does Simmons know all this? He claims he has spoken with insider “whistleblowers” who have asked him for help in getting out the real truth of the story. Speaking of perjury, the Feds have rented two whole floors in New Orleans to stage their newly launched criminal investigation of what happened on the doomed Deepwater Horizon rig.

Whether or not the leak can be controlled is one thing, but BP is certainly intent on capping more than the well. They want to control the story itself.  Recent weeks have seen news reports claiming that BP has hired local police and others to control both public and media access to the site and to contaminated beaches stricken by the spill. They also reportedly made offers of $250./ hr contracts to researchers and scientists throughout the region, effectively putting them “on the payroll.” How credible would the results of their finding be if their work was bought and paid for by BP? These stories also claim BP  has worked under cover of darkness to bury oil and remove dead wildlife from public sight. They obviously control all the ROV cameras. According to Representative Markley they have been stonewalling congress on information about the geology of the region and reservoir, and I would suppose there is nothing Admiral Thad Allen knows about the situation that BP doesn’t tell him. I’ll have to side with Matt Simmons on at least one thing--the government should have seized control of the ROV monitoring feeds and surveys at once, so that everything seen in these data streams was under their control. The United States government should not have to be haggling with a foreign corporation, giving them extra time to comply with directives in exchange for their agreement to monitor the sea floor. Independent ROV operators and government authorities should be directing all these cameras, not BP.

July 18, 2010 - UPDATE: It’s Official: AP Reports Oil and Methane Gas is Seeping From Sea Floor Near Well.   Both Associated Press and The LA Times reported: “An administration official familiar with the spill oversight, however, told The Associated Press that a seep and possible methane were found near the busted oil well. The official spoke on condition of anonymity...The official said BP is not complying with the government's demand for more monitoring.”

The National Incident Commander, Adm Thad Allen, sent the following letter to BP’s Chief of Gulf Coast Restoration, Bob Dudley, and I emphasize some key statements therein: “Dear Mr. Dudley, My letter to you on July 16, 2010 extended the Well Integrity Test period contingent upon the completion of seismic surveys, robust monitoring for indications of leakage, and acoustic testing by the NOAA vessel PISCES in the immediate vicinity of the well head. Given the current observations from the test, including the detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head, monitoring of the seabed is of paramount importance during the test period. As a continued condition of the test, you are required to provide as a top priority access and coordination for the monitoring systems, which include seismic and sonar surface ships and subsea ROV and acoustic systems. When seeps are detected, you are directed to marshal resources, quickly investigate, and report findings to the government in no more than four hours. I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed.”

So now we have new “undetermined anomalies and Thad Allen refers directly to  the “detected seep a distance from the well.” On Sunday afternoon, Oly ROV 1 was monitoring what appeared to be a substantial eruption of gaseous oil NW of the BOP. I watched the eruption for some time between 3:00pm and 3:30pm PST. The entire screen was filled with a billowing, upward rising cloud that was definitely not disturbances of silt from the ROV thrusters. The ROV cameras zoomed and panned, clearly showing that its thrusters were nowhere near the scene begin filmed. The flow was substantial, it was continuous, (not intermittent), and it was persistent. I cannot imagine that BP would be filming silt kicked up by ROV jets for over 30 minutes.  Please recall that BP was reportedly trying to seal sea floor cracks near the well site as far back as February. There was trouble even before the blowout occurred.

The confirmation of this new leak lends support to the discussion that the geology of the region is unstable. It further attributes the low pressures at the capped well to be the result of downhole leakage, and not reservoir depletion.  The fact that oil is now migrating up from beneath the sea floor is a strong indicator that the recently capped well is, and has been, leaking oil into the surrounding formations. The LA Times report suggested BP was most interested in keeping that cap on, for obvious PR purposes, but government officials are now concerned that capping the well is increasing seepage to other subsurface cracks and fissures.

The Flex Joint (see below) was also inspected and appears to be leaking small beads of oil as well. Could this be one of the “anomalies” Adm Thad Allen referred to?

July 17, 2010 - UPDATE: The 48 hour test window has expired, and the pressure has achieved only 6,745psi, well short of the minimum 8,000psi that would indicate a fully intact well bore. Discussion on the Oil Drum  forum has suggested the reservoir may be “compartmentalized” and that the well could be tapping into only one segment or compartment, small enough to be affected by the 87 day release of oil. This could account for the lower than hoped for pressures. It sounds reasonable, but it is simple speculation that has not been confirmed. As early as May 23 the San Francisco Chronicle reported: “The oil field the Deepwater Horizon had tapped is said to be the second largest deposit in the world....The oil deposit is so large, it could produce 500,000 barrels of a day for more than a decade.”  This does not sound like 87 days would easily deplete such a reservoir. The low pressure most likely indicates a damaged well beneath the sea floor, and CNN reported that BP was now aware of two weak points in the underground well, one at 7000 feet and one much deeper.

At the moment, the cap remains on and the valves are still shut, though there is now evidence of gas bubbles coming from one of the valves. BP CEO Wells suggested they could be nitrogen or methane, and samples are being collected. (I’m not sure why they are surprised to find methane, as there has been a massive flow of methane in this leak all along.) Elsewhere, video footage has shown what appears to be seepage from a seabed fissure near “the cage” where the ROVs store parts and tools, and new footage emerged on July 17 showing what looked like obvious seepage in another area.

NOAA has sent in a ship rigged with special equipment to detect methane, so that appears to be the most serious concern at this time. They are also actively searching for these possible leaks elsewhere on the sea floor. Note that Matt Simmons has claimed there is indeed a major leak miles from the site gushing “120,000 barrels per day.” It would be impossible not to find a leak of such enormous size, but no evidence of this has yet come to light. Meanwhile, a water sample tested at local area beaches literally exploded in the lab! The methane problem appears very real.

July 16, 2010 - UPDATE: Pressure Builds to 6700psi. BP “Cautiously Optimistic.” All eyes are on the pressure gauges, somewhere in BP HQ, as the readings have steadily increased but have not reached the target hoped for over the last 12 hours. Ken Wells, the new “American” CEO of BP has suggested that the depletion of the reservoir may account for these lower pressure readings, but other experts state this is unlikely given the enormous size of the reservoir.  The well pressure is now officially above the maximum flex joint rating, (See July 15 update), which is why Skandi ROV is constantly monitoring the mudline (sea floor) beneath the BOP stack. Authorities hope to reach a steady pressure of 8,700psi, and they are still 2000psi from that target. The pressure is reportedly increasing at a rate of 2 to 10psi per hour. It would therefore take over 8 days to reach the target pressure, even at the high end of that range. This does not bode well... (No pun intended).

Meanwhile, seismic surveys are scanning regions approximately 10-12 miles from the well borehole, though Oil Drum posters continue to eviscerate Matt Simmons for his assertion that the real leak is indeed some 10 miles away. (See sidebar) Another survey is actively looking for the presence of methane gas, which has comprised about 40% of the leak flow, (while 5% is the norm). Scientists have reported the methane levels in the water are extremely high, and this remains a grave concern.

The relief well operation, temporarily halted while the pressure test was being conducted, has now resumed. It appears that BP will have to eventually restart the oil flow, possibly opening the smaller kill and choke lines on the new cap, and then attempt to  capture oil with the Helix Producer and Q4000 ships above while the relief well makes a “bottom kill” attempt. We will have learned what we thought we already knew last May when the mud from the “top kill” procedure failed to stop the flow because they could not maintain required pressures--the oil is leaking somewhere downhole. The question tonight is: where are those last 2000 pounds of pressure per square inch? Where is the oil going into the undersea formations, and what does this bode for the bottom kill plan?

July 15, 2010 - UPDATE: Well Integrity Test Resumes. All Cap Valves Closed. Oil flow Halted. They will now continue to monitor well pressure at 6 hour intervals over the next 36 to 48 hours, and hope the pressure builds to at least  8,000 - 9.000psi. The media hailed the closure of the well after 87 days, though this is a temporary situation and is no real indication that the problem has been resolved. If the pressure does not build as hoped, it will mean significant downhole damage is allowing oil and gas to leak below the surface of the sea floor. One concern expressed by oil industry expert Robert Cavner is that a “flex joint” in the lower BOP area is not rated to hold the pressure BP hopes to obtain in this test. In fact, the test would subject this flex joint (rated at a 5,000psi maximum) to pressures well beyond its maximum tolerance.  So the whole situation has now entered that breathless stage much akin to watching a boiling tea kettle. We are in “wait and see” mode, and will not really know the outcome of this procedure for some time. But we are much closer to proving or finally disproving the assertions of Matt Simmons and other analysts who claim the well is fatally damaged, and that the sea floor itself is gushing oil elsewhere. (See Sidebar) >

July 14, 2010 - UPDATE: Government Approves BP Well Integrity Test: Officials within the US Government and at BP seem very edgy about the “Well Integrity Test” to check pressures and assess whether the well has sustained downhole damage, but by 6:00pm EST the test was underway. Concerns arose about the condition of the well bore itself, deep below the sea floor. New BP CEO Wells said: “The worst-case scenario is that it could actually broach back to the sea floor." Yet this is nothing new. It dovetails with earlier reports about the integrity of the undersea region during the “Top Kill” event. BP found that mud pumped to try and kill the well from the top was escaping, possibly through downhole cracks or fissures. It would seem to me that downhole damage is a certainty, but the test will proceed nonetheless.

The procedure is to close the valves on the newly installed cap and then measure pressure. If the pressure remains high, in the range of 9,000psi, it would indicate the downhole well was still intact, particularly the vital well casing steel. If, however, the pressure falls off to 6,000psi or lower, it could  indicate oil and gas was simply escaping into the sea floor--the “worst case” scenario that has been circulating on the Internet for some weeks now. Ex Shell President John Hofmeister put it this way: “...There are serious concerns about the integrity of the casing that is the well itself. And that by putting the cap on and doing the stress tests… that the integrity of the steel is insufficient to hold the pressure of the well. If you lose the casing its game over. It’s like having a volcano on the bottom of the sea. If you lose the casing and oil starts coming up on the outside of the casing you cant stop it.”

A seismic run was conducted to get a baseline of what the condition of the sea floor was in the vicinity of the well. This run can be repeated to monitor changes during the test. There have been numerous opinions voiced about the well bore integrity, and none of them cheery. In fact I have heard no convincing argument that the well bore remains fully intact, and a host of arguments that it has sustained serious damage. This test will tell the tale, but a problem with a leaky “Choke Line,” one of three valves on the new cap, delayed the procedure on July 14.
 

MAIN ARTICLE
In Deep Water - The Disaster in the Gulf
By John Schettler

The news of the BP spill is bad enough, but what we are not being told about the disaster in the Gulf is downright scary. Consider that we were originally told the “spill” was only 1000 to 5000 BPD, now we get the revised leak rate at 60,000 BPD, yet BP claims they will bring in enough new shipping to capture 80,000 BPD by mid July! How is that possible if the current leak is only 60,000 BPD? Answer: The current leak is obviously greater than reported, even after these latest upward revisions on June 18. A few days later, June 20, we get an internal BP memo leaked that estimates the flow at 100,000 BPD, or 100 times the flow rate BP originally announced.

In early May I reported that BP would have never invested the millions required to drill such a well if they could not produce upwards of 100,000 BPD, and I still hold that  the real leak rate is much more serious than now reported... And if the speculations of many independent analysts and informed Netizens concerning the seabed are true, this disaster may be beyond our power to stop. A new death zone is being created in the Gulf that could affect all life within 200 miles of the epicenter-- that’s 150 miles inland. Consider what this means to cities and towns all along the Gulf coast.

The Lexus and the Oil Spill

It’s a hot, muggy day on the Louisiana coast, and weary ex-shrimpers and fishermen wind up their day of beach cleaning with a much welcome draft of cold beer. They’ve been raking tar and oil off the sands, and in some cases simply grading it under fresh sand to cover up the spill--out of sight, out of mind--at least for the moment. At night, some crews scour the beaches for dead fish, birds, and other wildlife to remove them before media cameras or other curious can find them. By Day BP has paid for extra shifts by local police to keep people, and especially reporters, away from spill sites. It’s amazing what a little money can buy. Forget the free press. BP doesn’t want us seeing those dead animals and spoiled beaches. Meanwhile, all along the coast people smell the noxious fumes from the worst ocean oil disaster in US history. At places it seems to taint the rainfall now. The tides appear to boil and hiss with an eerie carbonation of methane gas. Thousands report a range of physical symptoms on top of the gut turning fear that their way of life, and livelihood, may be over for good.

Yet turn on the TV. Coverage of the disaster is suddenly broken by a commercial showing luxury cars cruising along pristine empty highways, our continued homage to the automobile as an expression of our freedom, status, and personal power.  Flip the channel to an image of over-muscled race cars making their pointless circle around the NASCAR loops, engines thrumming with the sound of burning oil. The jarring disconnect between the images of the oil-dark seas of the Gulf and the latest offerings from Lexus somehow fail to register on most Americans. Could it be we have simply grown numb to the shock of  this slow motion crisis in the Gulf, a disaster that has only registered its true potential consequences in the wildest circles of the Internet? People are frightened, yet how many will make the leap of thought that connects the Gulf disaster to the cars parked outside their homes, and our insane auto-centric society that consumes 25% of the world’s energy each day, while we have only 5% of the world’s population?

Disaster has come hard and often to the coast of Louisiana. New Orleans is still battling the effects of Hurricane Katrina.  Now the next big storm may bring in something far worse than sea water. Last year it was economic blues coupled with an overblown "threat" of swine flu that got everyone in a tizzy fit and then fizzled when flu season actually arrived later that year. This year we get the return of 200-300 point swings in the Dow and the ongoing slow agony of the Deepwater Horizon spill. And like the Swine Flu scare, this year we have equally dire predictions of what may happen in the Gulf of Mexico. The general air of crisis continues, still gushing, in all the major systems sustaining our "way of life," energy, finance, debt, jobs, housing, Afghanistan, you name it. Talk of "recovery" is about as credible as a BLS unemployment report, or BPs press releases. The oil crisis is just a visible and outward sign of the deeper crisis, no more than an ugly symptom of the choices we have made as a society regarding our energy situation.

The moment that well blew out  in April, I knew it was going to be much more trouble than it first seemed on the surface. None of the "official estimates" of how much oil has gushed into the Gulf have proven to be true. BP's anemic 1000-5000 barrels per day was soon shown to be at least 20,000 barrels per day, and now this estimate has been tripled. New studies in early June reported that the actual flow rate may be at least  56,000 barrels per day, over ten times BPs "official" tally, and one scientist estimates 100,000 barrels per day. Noted oil man Matt Simmons agrees, claiming he believes the leak rate is at least 120,000 BPD. Do the math. We already have millions of barrels sloshing around in the Gulf now, most of it still below the surface of the mile deep sea. BP denies any undersea plumes exist, but two independent university sponsored research studies have confirmed vast undersea oil plumes, widely dispersed, just as I reported in early May. This is most likely the work of millions of gallons of Corexit 9500 dispersant. Oil industry expert Matt Simmons has also stated, live on MSNBC, that the research ship Thomas Jefferson has detected an undersea oil “lake,” several hundred meters deep, that could now be covering 40% of the Gulf  beneath the surface, a disaster of unprecedented proportions if this is true, though this has not been confirmed. Yet Wayne Madsen has reported that he has learned U.S. Navy subs have found and tracked a massive undersea “oil blob” that has migrated at a depth of 3000-4000 feet towards Mobile Bay, and some has made it into the Gulf Loop, deep underwater, where it cannot be seen from above. Perhaps they are talking about the same thing.

Why have the “experts” at BP failed to accurately determine the leak flow, particularly when numerous independent scientific studies have called their estimates into question?  The answer is simple, as it always has been simple when it comes to oil. Each barrel of oil spilled translates directly into money--in this case money lost for BP due to the enormous fines that can be levied. Current environmental laws can fine BP $1100 for each barrel spilled, (and more under certain circumstances, as high as $4000 / barrel.) So BP has every reason, from a financial perspective as well as a public relations one, to minimize the estimate of the leak flow rate, and keep as much oil under the surface of the sea as possible with deadly Corexit 9500 dispersant. Are they just trying to limit their liability?

Echoes of Ixtoc

BP may have taken a page from Pemex in its handling of the crisis. When the Mexican well blew out at “Ixtoc” in June 1979 it spilled over 2.5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico by December. This is a rate of about 15,000/BPD, though US oil workers believed the flow was  higher. Yet even in December of that year, six months after  the blowout, Pemex officials said they estimated the spill rate at no more than 2,000/BPD. Does BP’s early estimate of 1,000 to 5,000/BPD sound familiar? The Ixtoc disaster, which probably spilled 3.5 million barrels over 9 months, was the second largest ocean spill in history, exceeded only by the willful act of Saddam Hussein who unleashed a staggering 10 million barrels into the Persian Gulf that covered 4000 square miles of sea with a four inch thick oil slick. If we add today’s flow rate of 60,000/BPD for the Deepwater blowout, we get a spill that bumps Ixtoc from the #2 spot and has already dumped over 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf in the first 72 days, with a solution still nowhere in sight, no matter how close the relief wells are now. Add it up and we already have ten Exxon Valdez disasters all in one. This will make the Deepwater spill a strong contender for the worst ocean oil spill in world history, particularly if the relief wells fail to stop the flow.

BP’s effort to date is also remarkably similar to that of Pemex, who called in the legendary Red Adair to help with that spill. They tried shooting thousand of steel ball bearings into the well to slow the flow, but much like BPs “Junk Shot” effort, they only caused further damage to the BOP and well casement, and were abandoned. In the end, Pemex decided on lowering a giant funnel shaped containment dome they called “the Sombrero” over the well head, and then just waited it our until the relief wells finally killed the thing--nine months and 3.5 million barrels later.  BP appears to be following a similar plan. Meanwhile, the consequences, to wildlife, environments and people, begin to mount up, along with the embattled company’s financial problems.

The Human Cost

The news is far worse than BP’s liability, however, or even the loss of business revenues and the people’s ‘way of life” along the Gulf coast. We are now looking at threats to all life itself in the region. Wayne Madsen of Oilprice.com reported on June 25 that: “A looming environmental and population displacement disaster is brewing in the Gulf. The oil dispersant used by BP, Corexit 9500, is seen by FEMA sources as mixing with evaporated water from the Gulf and absorbed by rain clouds producing toxic precipitation that threatens to continue killing marine and land animals, plant life, and humans within a 200-mile radius of the Deepwater Horizon disaster site in the Gulf...Plans are being put in place for the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Mandeville, Hammond, Houma, Belle Chase, Chalmette, Slidell, Biloxi, Gulfport, Pensacola, Hattiesburg, Mobile, Bay Minette, Fort Walton Beach, Panama City, Crestview, and Pascagoula. The toxic rain from the Gulf is expected to poison fresh water reservoirs and lakes, streams, and rivers, which will also have a disastrous impact on agriculture and livestock, as well as drinking water, in the affected region.”

Yet local area residents haven’t begun any evacuation on their own, nor have they been asked to do so by any government entity. They still go to the beaches, though reports of tar soiled children and incidents where up to 400 people report sick from nausea, headaches, sinus ailments and other symptoms have become commonplace. One site is logging all these incidents reported by people and it creates a chilling map of the human effects already being experienced. (Note the reports of an oil slick already making its way around the Keys and up the eastern coast of Florida, as far north as Jacksonville where it was spotted offshore.) What’s making people sick?

Aside from the oil itself, the leak is gushing out a host of toxic chemicals. First, 40% of the material leaking is methane gas, which is raising methane levels in the Gulf to what scientists called “astonishingly high levels.” Then add in other chemicals like Benzene, (a confirmed deadly carcinogen that causes leukemia and other ailments), Hydrogen Sulfide (a broad spectrum poison that causes nerve damage and blocks oxygen binding for cellular respiration,) Methylene Chloride, (affects central nervous system, liver, cardiovascular system, respiratory tracts, skin and eyes.) Then throw in Corexit 9500, deemed four times more toxic than all these combined. It was reported that the crew of the research ship Thomas Jefferson had to put into port for hospitalization due to the toxic exposure, though this has not been confirmed in the media blackout now surrounding this event. The toxins will all be precipitating into the air and returning to the region in rainfall. We are already getting reports of sea tides bubbling as if they were carbonated drinks and oil rain falling on coastal towns of Louisiana have appeared in YouTube videos.

Meanwhile, the well is still gushing, like a deep wound in the gut of our flagging nation. One Blog reported that BP “insiders” know the reservoir is enormous and fear it could leak for years. We bleed oil, the very life blood of our economy. Put any number on it you wish, the oil is in the Gulf and will take decades to clean up--if it can be cleaned up at all. Like Pemex at Ixtoc, BP has no further plan to try and kill the well from the top. It can’t be done.

After weeks of low level reporting on the story the media finally woke up to the fact that this was a significant event and began "full team coverage."  Now we get the BP CEO making apologies on TV commercials like a dethroned Japanese Prime Minister and, as anyone could have predicted, the oil is slowly spreading and washing up on coastlines from Louisiana to Florida. Realize that what reaches the surface is probably no more than 5% or 10% of the oil. The rest is hanging in those vast subsurface plumes, killing zones for any living thing that enters them. The killing will go on for years, making a methane petro-soup of one of the world’s richest fisheries.

We've gone from Top Hat, to Top Kill, to Junk Shot, and now Cut & Cap. Each attempt to stop the oil flow has had little real effect. Video simulations are beginning to hit YouTube showing the oil moving into the Atlantic in the weeks and months ahead. Collapse oriented web sites are saying the spill will be the end of life in the US as we know it. Why?  New Orleans is still but a shadow of its former self. Now turn off the $2.1 trillion dollar economies of the Gulf states and add that to our economic picture. At the moment we have fishing industries in limbo, the hotel and tourism industry on the gulf coast holding its breath, literally, as the oil washes ashore just as their peak summer season starts, and you can kiss off the last of coastal housing values in the region as well. How long will it be before people are forced to make a migration away from the area for purely economic reasons? For now, they hang on grimly, taking BP compensation checks and temporary oil cleanup jobs as if this thing will be over in the near future and all will return to normal. But many are beginning to feel things slipping away. They know in their gut that their days on the coast are numbered.

Shipping traffic approaching the Mississippi delta now has to slog through the oil and the big vessels will drag it into the fresh river water as they move upstream. Someone will notice this eventually and what will it do to our big river shipping industry in the region? Yet these are the more mild predictions now being circulated.

Dark Visions

Elsewhere on the web there are far darker assessments of what this leak may lead us to. One article claimed Russian deep sea experts took one of their submersibles down to examine the situation early on and found multiple leaks on the seabed floor. The “report” said the sea floor itself was ruptured, and the writer suggested that the Russians were reporting doom at the highest levels of their government. The Russians reportedly claim that the single site being monitored on live BP feeds is not the only leak source. There are at least 18 more sites leaking from the seabed itself, the largest some 7 miles from the rig site.

The credibility of this report has not been confirmed, and other “experts” point out that oil leaks on the sea floor are common in this region. One study concluded there were “Asphalt Volcanoes” in the region and that BP had drilled into the side of one of these formations. Yet oil industrialist Matthew Simmons made a similar claim that there is a much larger leak on the ocean floor five to 7 miles from the well head.

At present, with all “top kill” methods having failed, BP has opted to accept, and even enhance, the flow rate and to try and capture as much as possible. (For reasons that will be discussed below).They are now pinning their last hopes of stopping the leak on the two relief wells, drilling some 18,000 feet deep to a point just above the actual oil reservoir the Deepwater Horizon well is now tapping into. This is miles below the sea floor and the visible site of the current leak. It is clear that BP wants to get to the bottom of the problem, well below any compromised sections of the original well borehole.  This “bottom kill” method will involve the pumping of mud flows into the original well, which will use the wells natural flow to travel up the well bore to the seabed surface, slowly building a column of heavy mud. Eventually this would be replaced with cement to complete the kill.

There has been a great deal of speculation on the Internet about the pressure of the flow coming from this oil deposit. Some think it may be too great to contain, and the putting a cement cork on this bottle will not be easy at these depths. On July 7 a Dr. Stephen Rinehart published an article claiming BP is building a massive new containment dome using special super strength steel that can withstand extremely high pressure. (See link above). The device, known as a “Capping Stack,” has apparently been under construction since mid April at the Cameron facility in Berwick, LA. On July 8 Reuters reported BP was ready to “switch caps.” While the damaged BOP is removed from the riser, the well would flow at full bore until this new cap is installed, a complex procedure that could take many days.

Rinehart used mathematics to review the width of the walls on this new steel structure, 10 inches thick, and then calculated the pressure this thickness would be rated to contain. The result is as disturbing as it is amazing--over 40,000psi! He also quotes a data sheet that accompanied the engineering documents on this new containment dome, which read: “41,975 psi – interior pressure (max well bore pressure before blowout).”  Would be know-it-alls posting regularly on the Oil Drum have dismissed such pressures as coming from the realm of fantasy land, as they quickly dismissed Rinehart himself. But Rinehart believes these pressures result from a Deepwater Horizon well bore that has pushed perilously close to, if not into, a segment of the earth’s mantle. Under this theory, the oil that is emerging is presumed to be “abiotic” and not produced from decayed organic material as in the “fossil fuel” theory of oil.

Geologists reportedly warned TransOcean and BP that the Deepwater rig was tapping into dangerous ground. They identified a massive methane deposit, 15 by 20 miles in shape, and estimate that it could be pressurized to and astounding 100,000psi. These are pressures far beyond the capacity of human engineering to contain. Scientists measuring the methane levels in the Gulf near the rig have called it “astonishingly high,” up to a million times beyond normal levels. The great fear is that this methane bubble could erupt through the sea floor and create a calamity that would rival the eruption of a major volcano. (More on this below)

Others say that the well casement has been shattered along the whole of the down hole bore and that the relief wells will therefore fail. Matt Simmons believes the two relief wells will not succeed in stopping this leak. Even though one well is very close to the planned intervention site, slowly completing its own casement and getting ready to intersect the original leaking well. It is difficult and time consuming work, so these relief wells may not be ready to make their kill attempt until August. The last time a major Gulf leak was confronted with the technique, in the Ixtoc spill, it took 9 months for the relief wells to finally seal the well that was in only 160 feet of water. At 5,000 feet under water, and a further 18,000 feet beneath the sea floor,  how long will the new relief wells take? One analyst has stated that December is a more realistic time frame, if the relief wells succeed at all. And the media is still well behind the story. Most of this is not being widely reported to the American people or the world. Matt Simmons has been the only voice to breach the mainstream media with these views, and again, the would-be experts on the Oil Drum have wasted lots of text trying to discredit him. But time will tell whether the casement has been damaged, not the opinions of forum posters, no matter how educated they may be.

Hidden Damage?

Why all this talk of damaged well casing? BP is apparently hiding more than oil soaked birds and dead fish with their handling of the crisis. Reporters have been prohibited from entering public waters to film or report on the spill. Private planes have been prohibited from overflying the oil slick at sea. But news has leaked out, along with the oil and methane gas, that there may be more trouble beneath the turbulent waters of the Gulf than has been reported.

Strangely, this snippet from a comment on the oil drum talks about the possible failure of the well casement well below the surface: “Retired Shell Oil President John Hofmeister said that the well casing below the sea floor may have been compromised:

[Question] What are the chances that the well casing below the sea floor has been compromised, and that gas and oil are coming up the outside of the well casing, eroding the surrounding soft rock. Could this lead to a catastrophic geological failure, unstoppable even by the relief wells?

John Hofmeister: This is what some people fear has occurred. It is also why the "top kill" process was halted. If the casing is compromised the well is that much more difficult to shut down, including the risk that the relief wells may not be enough. If the relief wells do not result in stopping the flow, the next and drastic step is to implode the well on top of itself, which carries other risks as well.”

A Washington Post report seemed to confirm this story: “Sources at two companies involved with the well said that BP also discovered new damage inside the well below the sea floor and that, as a result, some of the drilling mud that was successfully forced into the well was going off to the side into rock formations.” This is a strong indication of a blown casement, the cement shielding around the well bore.

It is noteworthy that the leak flow rate increased dramatically after the failure of “Top Kill,” the attempt to seal the well with heavy mud. One analyst, posting on the Oil Drum web site forums, believes the real reason Top Kill Failed is that the well borehole is indeed leaking “down hole,” well beneath the sea floor as the Post article alludes. BP had to relieve the pressure to prevent the well leaking into the sea floor “downhole.” News snippets have circulated suggesting that BP cut corners on the well casement cement, but it is equally likely that the initial blowout that destroyed the rig also did severe damage to the pipe and casement below the sea floor.

Imagine a garden hose you want to shut off. You can screw on a valve to close the end, or you can simply crimp the hose to stop flow. The Blowout preventer was, indeed, designed to crimp the flow or act as a closure valve, but it failed. This is a picture of a well pressure that was simply too great to contain. Now imagine that the hose is also spewing water from several tears down the line. You have a good image of why all the top kill methods were doomed to fail with this well. Pinch the open end of the hose and you only put more stress on the other tears further down the line.  Washington Blog reported: Rob Cavner said that BP must "keep the well flowing to minimize oil and gas going out into the formation on the side." It is clear they know the well casing has failed down hole and that oil is leaking into the surrounding geologic formations. MSNBC reported this as well.

Before Dr. Rinehart’s July 7th article, others have suggested that the pressure of the escaping oil is too great to control, (between 20,000 and 70,000 PSI), which is another reason why Top Kill failed. (How they arrive at that pressure rate is not proven in their articles, and others have dismissed this as impossible). They also state that the oil and gas, riddled with grit and debris, is having a sandblasting effect on the 2” pipe, and slowly wearing it away. (This is most likely true). They predict the pipe will eventually fail, increasing the flow and, if the casement is compromised, the failed blowout preventer that is presently sitting atop the well could be displaced. Could this be why BP is building the new massively thick containment dome, a kind of “super sombrero” to borrow the label from the old Ixtoc spill?

The ROVs working the site have been reported to be using “inclinometers” to measure the verticality of the Blowout Preventer. (BOP)  This massive 450 ton device gets its primary foundation from the drilling pipe itself, buried deep into the sea floor, but it also relies on the sea floor to keep it from shifting laterally. Some analysts think the BOP is beginning to shift and tilt to one side. If so, its massive bulk will certainly bend or even break the pipe itself.

Evidence of a tilted BOP is one more reason some believe the well casement is compromised and leaking below the surface, loosening and weakening the sea floor near the BOP. If this happens, the disaster will compound itself. Oil could then begin emerging from the site of the bore hole and slowly widen this area. BP ROVs have been reported to be making a sonic survey of the seabed, or a “seabed integrity scan.” What are they worried about?

Simply this...If the seabed is fractured we will essentially have an open runaway well in bleed out condition. A huge quantity of oil will surge into the gulf from this hole. (Matt Simmons believes this is happening now, and that the well could leak for 20-30 years. He has publicly stated that only a nuclear device could stop this leak now, and curiously, that same suggestion was in one of the very first posts I encountered when researching this event, made by a reputed oil engineer insider. Industry experts at Los Alamos have stated that they are not involved in any scenario involving nuclear intervention at this time.)

Many people have seen and commented on the video footage shot by the ROV Poseidon that appear to show oil escaping from the floor of the sea bed itself. Some believe that what we are now witnessing, and what the media is slowly awakening to, is the doomsday scenario that many have feared from the very first. Others dismiss the video as simply seabed silt being kicked up by the ROV’s motors.

The Methane Problem

On June 18 the Internet began to buzz with details of the enormous concentrations of methane gas in this particular deposit. Measurements have indicated methane levels of 40% compared to an average of only 5%, concentrations that are deadly to life as they lead to rapid oxygen depletion. By June 23rd articles appeared stating the levels were a hundred thousand, and at places, a million times higher than normal. But the greater fear is that if the sea floor is compromised the deposit could emit a massive methane gas bubble into the sea that would sink all the ships and rigs in its vicinity almost instantaneously.

Terence Aym, writing for the science web site Helium wrote: “According to worried geologists, the first signs that the methane may burst its way through the bottom of the ocean would be fissures or cracks appearing on the ocean floor near the damaged well head. Evidence of fissures opening up on the seabed have been captured by the robotic submersibles working to repair and contain the ruptured well. Smaller, independent plumes have also appeared outside the nearby radius of the bore hole itself.”  We have already seen these early warning signs of a methane eruption, and some scientists believe BP is now racing against the clock.

And this scenario gets worse... The gas eruption could swamp Florida with a massive 100 foot tsunami, inundate the entire state, and devastating the entire Gulf coast. Other Internet speculation claims that even absent this massive methane eruption we could eventually see a similar event if enough oil vents to equalize the pressure between the oil deposit and the sea, then sea water will migrate down into the earth, superheat, expand, and warp the sea floor of the Gulf, perhaps enough to create a tsunami that would pose a grave hazard to all the nearby coastal regions. Consider also what effect this would have on the thousands of other wells that are still drilling into this seabed. Imagine all those operations having to be terminated, or imagine several other wells “compromised.” Consider  what this does to US offshore oil production, the price of oil and gas, to name just a few immediate repercussions.

Another story described a strange new blight beginning to affect crops as far away as Tennessee. It is almost as if they have been sprayed with some toxic chemical, and this story has been linked to others claiming that the dispersant BP used in the Gulf is evaporating up and creating a kind of highly toxic acid rain. And on June 23rd video of oil rain appeared on the internet from a coastal town in Louisiana. Yet another story picks up on the impact of ocean sea life and another suggests birds are beginning to make an untimely, and unnatural, migration to the north, away from the soiled nesting sits along the coast.

These possible scenarios are reported to be speculations being made by “scientists” and anonymous “experts,” but not released to the general public. They continue to echo on the Internet, though many sound like they are still in the realm of science fiction. The post by an anonymous “dougR” on The Oil Drum that had everyone astir has been traced to a site calling itself “God Like Productions,” a hub of conspiracy theorists and UFOlogists. And to be fair, other “experts” on the Oil Drum have dismissed the public statements of Matt Simmons outright as wild speculation.

Only time will tell just how damaging this spill will become, and what the real truths are. BP will either kill the well from below using one of their two relief wells, or they will fail.  It is just a matter of time. If they do fail with the latest “bottom kill” attempts, the implications of this event have not even fully registered. We have yet to see whether the Gulf Loop Current will migrate oil into the Atlantic, and how this will play out on the beaches of Miami, the Carolinas, or Chesapeake Bay. Then add in the fact that the hurricane season is just getting underway. The first storm of the year, Alex, just brushed the spill zone to the west, pushing more oil onto beaches, but not seriously hindering BP operations. What will a few Category 3 or 4 storms in the Gulf do with all this toxic waste, including lethal chemical dispersants that BP continues to use in spite of begin “informed” not to use them by the EPA? On June 11th 22 Senators from Atlantic states reportedly met to consider options if the oil moves to their coastlines.

So you can see why the markets are jittery, not over the prospect that tiny Hungary or Greece might default on their debt and injure a bonus ridden bank's profits (heaven forbid), but over the deeper implication of what this oil spill could mean for us as a nation.

In my novel 9 Days Falling I strangely predicted aspects of this crisis in fiction, writing a year ago when the world was mostly focused on the swine flu. The story was a series of snapshots of crisis points in our modern world, including the financial roller coaster we've been on, and one plot line featured a catastrophic event in the Gulf of Mexico involving British Petroleum, and a concurrent crisis in the oil soaked waters of the Nigerian Delta as well, where we now get a large percentage of our oil from foreign sources.) Few people realize that Nigeria has oil "spills" on this scale all the time, though the mainstream media never moves into "team coverage" mode when it happens over there.

In Deep Water

Each day we use 8.9 million barrels of oil, or 378 million gallons.  Who, then, is really responsible for the disaster in the Gulf? It gets at the question of who is to blame, the drug dealer or the user who buys the stuff. BP is drilling in mile deep waters off our shores because, quite simply, we need the damn oil. And we need the oil because we have built a system that relies almost exclusively on its energy carrying capacity to function. All efforts at finding alternative fuels remain anemic to date, and we will not be running our cars on anything other than gasoline for the foreseeable future, if ever.

But the Deepwater Horizon disaster has shown us just how deep the water is we are standing in now concerning our energy situation. After Katrina struck down the Big Easy, I saw that situation as another apt metaphor for our dilemma, and wrote: “We are a society living below sea level in a rising tide of energy adversity. And the Big Easy, along with the easy American life style, may be gone forever.” Years later, the mainstream media has finally begun to echo the theme. This event is a dagger in the underbelly of America.

Former Shell executive John Hofmeister made a startlingly frank prediction before the World Affairs Council: “Within a decade I predict the energy abyss looks like brownouts, blackouts and gas lines. Our federal government, when it comes to energy and the environment, is dysfunctional, it's broken, and it's unfixable in its current form.” Hofmeister considers himself an optimist, and claims many of his colleagues have far darker views of our energy prospects as a nation. Let’s face it, BP isn’t drilling in mile deep water for the sport or challenge of it. They drill there because it’s the only place we can find any more significant deposits of oil. Power companies in the sweltering southeast are already warning of blackouts this summer, according to the Wall Street Journal. Consider the added agony should the AC s falter and fail in the humid summer heat of the deep south.

It takes something like the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico and a good category 4 hurricane to fling all that oil in our faces before this nation will wake up and realize that "if we keep heading this direction we just might get where we're going." The collapse web sites I visit from time to time are sounding more and more sane these days. The "don't worry, we'll manage" mentality is sounding more and more pathetic. But if this oil catastrophe doesn't shake us from our carbon fuel addiction, what else will but further crisis and collapse? I said long ago, in numerous articles, that I thought the only way we would get real change was to first suffer the painful consequences of our failed systems, be they energy systems polluting our oceans or financial systems gathered in equally dark pools of toxic debt, hidden below the surface of public awareness in "level three" and dispersed by accounting rules changes, all neatly marked to fantasy so the banks will not have to incur any losses and the bonus money can flow unimpeded... like that gushing blown well head.

Congress looks as feeble as BP when they try to regulate and reform the banking industry. Nothing they have tried has worked. The too big to fail banks are bigger than ever, and public money continues to gush to the rescue of any financial institution that so much as whimpers its discontent. Meanwhile, Republican Senators join ranks and filibuster any extension of unemployment benefits, a courtesy that will cut off all remaining income to approximately 1.7 million unemployed Americans by month’s end.

So I am sad to report that nothing has changed since Obama took office. Things have simply gotten worse. These developing crisis lines will have to run their course. We have no solution or real reform to the financial crisis, (in spite of the bill making its way through congress), and no solution to the Deepwater leak other than to wait it out and hope one of the two relief wells can stop the flow. The housing market remains dead. Jobs are not recovering, in spite of how the BLS rigs the statistics. The economy is not recovering in any real sense of the word and the deep south is taking yet another heavy body blow, as is the nation itself. All the gains thus far, including those in jobs, have been bought and paid for by the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Debt continues to pile up, and we have no new energy policy that promises anything in relief of our insatiable thirst for oil.

We are in for another summer of hot uncertainty and crisis, in financial markets and on the shores of the Gulf coast and beyond. What will be left come autumn and winter this year, when the full effects of this ecological catastrophe become impossible for BP media blackouts to hide any longer?

When I wrote my predictions for 2010, this spill was not on my radar screen, except for my treatment of a similar crisis in fiction as I mentioned above. But I did write that this would be the year when all the coverups and attempts to explain away the crisis and pretend all was well would succumb to the harsh light of truth. This all too visible blight in the Gulf of Mexico so keenly exposes the weakness of our energy situation. The question remains--what will we do about it?

- John Schettler, June 2010

July 20 - There were Two Drilling Sites At Macondo 252. Which one is capped?

The BP application to the MMS references two sites for exploration in the same tract, one 50 miles offshore, (Site A) and one 49 miles offshore (Site B).  The bottom lease area block information on both well sites is listed in the documents as:

WELL/A - G32306/MC/252 6943 FNL, 1036 FEL
WELL/B - G32306/MC/252 7066 FNL, 1326 FEL

The larger site A is some distance NE of the current well, along a line of wreckage from the fallen Deepwater Horizon rig. Note: The Transocean Marianas Rig was initially tasked to drill both wells, with well A to begin July 15, 2009 for a 100 day run, and well site B to be drilled a year later on July 15, 2010. Transocean Marianas began late, however. On Oct 7, /2009. On Nov 11, 2009 it was damaged by Hurricane Ida and was replaced by the ill fated Deepwater Horizon, which exploded on April 20, 2010.

Apparently the first well (A) was abandoned when a drilling tool became stuck in the well bore, and cracks emitting methane complicated operations in February of 2010. Bloomberg reported: “The company attempted a “cement squeeze,” which involves pumping cement to seal the fissures, according to a well activity report. Over the following week the company made repeated attempts to plug cracks that were draining expensive drilling fluid, known as “mud,” into the surrounding rocks.” BP reimbursed the maker of the tool for the cost and then moved to site B, the ill fated well that sunk the rig.

Enterprising Netizens have compared coordinates published for Well A to the current location of Skandi Neptune ROV, now monitoring the new containment cap. They claim that Skandi is at well site A, the well abandoned in February of 2010. If this is true then could the “second leak” Matt Simmons keeps talking about be well site B, the blowout that sunk Deepwater Horizon? Is this the far more serious “open hole” he insists cannot be capped, and is the whole show we have been seeing on TV simply operations in and around well site A? Simmons claimed that both the BOP and well casing were gone on the deepwater blowout well (B). He was refuted with obvious evidence that an intact BOP is seen  daily on TV, and the well casing at that location is holding pressures of 6800psi, perhaps compromised but still intact. Simmons claim only makes sense if this is well site A, the well abandoned in February.

One hangup in this speculation: the new seep is reported to be NE of the current capped BOP. In diagrams submitted by BP, well A was NE of well B, and not the inverse. These two wells are within a few hundred feet of one another. But Simmons spoke again on MSNBC July 21st, reiterating that the ”real leak” is “10 miles away.” (Beyond the range of this new leaking well confirmed by WaPo).

Simmons also claimed that what we have been seeing gushing the first 87 days was nothing more than “natural gas leaking from the mile long riser pipe” that once connected to the top of the BOP. “They knew this would eventually deplete,” said Simmons. Yet the riser is now totally disconnected from the BOP and lying on the sea floor, and nothing has been leaking from it for well over 75 days. Has Mr. Simmons watched any of the engineering  that has taken place the last several months? The gushing leak was clearly coming from the top of the BOP where the formerly bent riser pipe was attached, and was then replaced with the new containment cap. The original riser pipe was cut off some time ago--watched by millions but apparently not by Mr. Simmons. And the fact that Simmons can’t recognize the telltale structure of the BOP, still in place and monitored regularly by the ROVs, is amazing for a man of his supposed experience, and seriously tarnishes his credibility...unless, this is the BOP sitting at well site A, and not the blowout from well site B.

Sadly, none of the mainstream reporters were informed enough to ask Simmons appropriate questions and pin him down on these details, and now they will not have the chance again. Simmons died August 8, of an apparent heart attack at the age of 67.
 
NO Contingency for Blowout or H2S Hazard in Macondo Well Plans

Application documents for the initial exploration plan (EP) on the Macondo 252 Deepwater Horizon well apparently did not require any contingency plan in the event of a blowout, or for the presence and management of dangerous H2S. Quoting from section 2.7 of these documents: “2.7 Blowout Scenario - A scenario for a potential blowout of the well from which BP would expect to have the highest volume of liquid hydrocarbons is not required for the operations proposed in this EP.” But look at these estimates of the amount of crude that these wells might release! According to the application, the volume of oil that could be released from an uncontrolled blowout in site A was estimated to be 300,000, BPD crude oil at API Gravity of 28 Degrees,  and 162,000 BPD for site B at API gravity of 33 Degrees. (API Gravity determines the lightness or heaviness of the oil, and this is on the border of “Light” or “Medium” crude oil. )

In Like Manner BP asserted that there was no hazard from H2S in the area...The same H2S that frustrated the initial containment cap operation and is now building up on the new equipment there. From the application: “3.2.1 Concentration - It is not expected that H2S will be encountered during the operations proposed in this plan. 3.2.2 Classification - Pursuant to Title 30 CFR 250.490(c), BP requests a determination that Mississippi Canyon Block 252 is located in an area where the absence of H2S has been confirmed. 3.2.3 H2S Contingency Plan - An H2S Contingency Plan prepared according to 30 CFR 250.4990(f) will not be required for the operations proposed in this plan.”

Furthermore, the risk of encountering pockets of gas was deemed to be "moderate to negligible," and BP stated that no post drilling ROV survey of the area surrounding the well for for the purpose of biological and physical observations was required.

Amazingly, section 7.1.5 of the document states: “7.1.5 Oil spill response discussion - a discussion of response to an oil spill resulting from the activities proposed in this plan is not required for this Exploration Plan”

So there it is folks, a classic example of how these applications get rubber stamped - No contingency plans for blowout required, no expectation or plan for H2S or gas pockets, no emergency spill plan required, no post drilling ROV survey of the seabed required. Your government in action at the MMS.

July 19  - Where is the new Seep?

By watching the BP live ROV video feeds and then checking real time GPS locations of the vessels in the area one can approximate the general location being surveyed.



This graphic shows the position of the well and BOP, and then notes the position of Olympic Challenger (Oly ROV 1) and Boa Subsea, the two ROVs that have been monitoring the “seep” detected yesterday. By this guesstimate, it is somewhere 1000 to 2000 feet NE of the BOP. Video feeds from these two ROVs have consistently shown cloudy and vigorous eruptions in the area they are monitoring. Footage of the Boa Subsea eruptions began to circulate on the web.

Adm. Thad Allen also spoke of a second seep some “three kilometers” from the well and clarified some of the anomalies around the BOP, a small leak at the Flex Joint at the bottom, and another small leak with hydrate formation near the flange at the top. Yet none of these cases have prompted the government to order BP to open the cap and relieve pressure, so they do not appear concerned that they are posing any serious threat.

Hos 2  ROV finds live crab on seabed.

A little comic relief or a positive sign? One of BPs roving ROVs seemed fascinated to find a live crab on the seabed today, and monitored it for some time. It watched the crab crawling about equipment until it hid in a crevasse on the ocean floor. Finding anything alive in that environment is, to say the least, encouraging. Elsewhere, Olympic Challenger ROV 1, conducting “sonar sweeps NE of BOP” continues to see a swirling, uprising brown swill on its camera feeds, infused with small white bubbles.

July 15 - Matt Simmons Maintains Gulf Leak Will Not Be Contained - BP Ignoring Real Problem.

Even as BP finally closed off all valves on the new cap, long time oil and gas man Matthew Simmons continues to stick to his guns about the BP Leak. Speaking to a small audience in Camden, NJ Simmons reiterated his claim that there is another large oil leak some 7 miles from the wellhead where all media attention is presently focused. “What you are seeing on television, what BP is saying about relief wells . . . that’s a total ruse,” said Simmons. The larger leak is an “open hole” according to Simmons, “gushing 120,000 barrels per day and creating a massive oil lake beneath the surface that Simmons claimed is the size of Washington State. This would be a leak twice the size of the wellhead leak! “It’s thick oil, flowing like lava and covering a large part of the Gulf of Mexico and taking the oxygen out,” said Simmons.

These are serious allegations, and for any of them to be true there would have to be a massive coverup and full government complicity. How could an undersea oil plume of that size remain undetected by independent sources? How Simmons knows any of this was not explained. Is he relying solely on his past industry experience, speculating, or is he receiving information from a another source? In spite of being vilified by other industry experts on reputable sites like “The Oil Drum” Simmons has not backed off these assertions, which he has made on National TV since the very beginning of the blowout.
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Concerning the relief well now being drilled to as a final way to kill the leak we all have been watching on TV Simmons said: “It’s a sham. Relief wells only work if there is casing in the hole ,” reiterating his earlier claim that the well casing is fatally compromised. In fact, the relief well has been magnetically ranging in using the casing pipe as a reference. How can Simmons assert it was entirely blown out?

An anonymous poster on the Oil Drum who supported Matt Simmons allegations engaged experienced old salts there in a long thread on July 16th. The basic flaw in Simmons story is that the “real blowout” is 10 miles away (earlier it was 6 to 7 miles). Yet if the real wellhead is 10 miles away, why do current GPS data confirm the site we see on TV is the correct location of the Deepwater borehole. And if Simmons claim that the BOP and well casing pipe were blown off, then what are we looking at in the massive BOP stack we see constantly monitored by the ROVs?

I find it hard to believe that a man of Simmons experience has not looked at the extensive video and recognized the 450 ton Blowout Preventer that was installed atop the well, still there, damaged, but obviously intact, and directly atop the Macondo well site with a new cap that is currently holding pressure of 6700psi and rising. Is he claiming that this is the original BOP blown out and moved ten miles away, (all 450 tons of it). Did it magically land directly atop another well and somehow connect itself to it after the explosion? Or is Simmons claiming this is a dummy well, drilled in a matter of weeks as part of a coverup, and that this BOP is not the original one installed on the Macondo Deepwater well? Simmons assertion that this is all being staged sounds absurd in this light, and the evidence is mounting that his claims are pure speculation, and nothing more.

Simmons often cites researchers from the US Science ship Thomas Jefferson concerning the existence of an oil “lake,” and he uses this to speculate that there must therefore be a much larger flow we are not seeing. He does not believe the small riser pipes from the wellhead can account for the massive oil spilled to date. But the Thomas Jefferson did not, in fact, find an oil “lake.” Their report shows the existence of a thinly diffused oil cloud under the sea, and certainly not oil “thick as lava” as Simmons claims. In fact, even this information from the Thomas Jefferson was fairly inconclusive. (I looked at the 42 page PDF that constituted their final report, and saw no specific reference to anything remotely related to Simmons claims.)

7/12/2010 - New Dome “Cap” to Contain Massive Well Pressure Now Installed on BOP Stack.

There has been a great deal of speculation on the Internet about the pressure of the flow coming from this oil deposit. Some think it may be too great to contain, and the putting a cement cork on this bottle will not be easy at these depths. On July 7 a Dr. Stephen Rinehart published an article claiming BP is building a massive new containment dome using special super strength steel that can withstand extremely high pressure. The device, known as a “Capping Stack,” has apparently been under construction since mid April at the Cameron facility in Berwick, LA. On July 8 Reuters reported BP was ready to “switch caps.” While the old cap was removed from the riser, the well flowed at full bore over the weekend until this new cap was installed, a complex procedure that took many days.

Rinehart used mathematics to review the width of the walls on this new steel structure, 10 inches thick, and then calculated the pressure this thickness would be rated to contain. The result is as disturbing as it is amazing--over 40,000psi, though this well is believed to only be flowing at 11,300psi. He also quotes a data sheet that accompanied the engineering documents on this new containment dome, which read: “41 ,975 psi – interior pressure (max well bore pressure before blowout).”  Would be know-it-alls posting regularly on the Oil Drum have dismissed such pressures as coming from the realm of fantasy land, as they quickly dismissed Rinehart himself. But Rinehart believes these pressures result from a Deepwater Horizon well bore that has pushed perilously close to, if not into, a segment of the earth’s mantle. Under this theory, the oil that is emerging is presumed to be “abiotic” and not produced from decayed organic material as in the “fossil fuel” theory of oil. None of Rinehart’s assertions on the well pressure have been proven true, however. (Nor has the concept of “abiotic oil”, for that matter.)

7/10/2010 - Shameful Deception

BP's chief of Gulf Coast Restoration Bob Dudley spoke on the PBS News Hour recently and was questioned about the use of the highly toxic dispersant Corexit 9500. His answer was outrageous! He said: “Many things have a toxicity level, including dish soap. It’s not far off of the toxicity levels of dish soap, and the lab tests show that.” The “trade off”, in his mind was between allowing the oil to rise to the surface where it could threaten beaches, or dispersing it in the ocean with Corexit 9500, where media cameras could not see it--creating the massive underwater “plumes” BP denies to this day.  And he continued to claim it was “not a high level of toxicity.”

Enterprising NALCO, maker of Corexit, chimed in that their product was “25 times less toxic than dish soap.” Officially Corexit is deemed “toxic” at 2.61 parts per million. By comparison, the oil itself is deemed toxic at 11 parts per million. So Corexit is about four times more toxic than the oil  it is trying to disperse. Now... NALCO wants us to believe that dish soap is 25 times more toxic than Corexit? That would make dish soap toxic at 0.10 (one tenth) part per million, one of the most lethal substances known to mankind! (That’s more toxic than Benzene! The claim is pure baloney. People would be killed in droves daily from dish soap if this were true.)

This is the continued crap, (no other way to say it), that BP and these other corporate paragons continue to spew like gushing oil at our complacent and near somnambulant media. The interviewer on PBS never even batted an eyelash when Dudly claimed Corexit was safer than dish soap! It was just a cuddly “don’t worry, little people” interview aimed at placating the masses, as shameful as it was astounding.  For the record, here’s the latest on the bubbly safe Corexit 9500. 25 times safer than dish soap? Corexit ruptures red blood cells, causes internal bleeding, and both liver and kidney damage. Do you honestly think your dish soap, used in liberal amounts daily, causes this sort of health problems? - JS

Emperors and kings of yesterday would envy the life we’ve lived in the eye of the storm. But the back end of the storm is coming, and it may include a black rain of toxic oil. In light of our current crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, I present a reprise of this June 2007 article, with updates for 2010.

The Eye Of The Storm

A few years ago, (June 2007) I was sitting in the air conditioned sunroom in front of a 46” TV, sipping a gin and tonic and taking in a bit of evening news about the start of the hurricane season. Just off the sunroom, a rack of boneless chicken breasts were marinating as they awaited the grill. Home made potato salad, baked beans and corn on the cob would round out the menu that evening, all foods that made me think of summer days at home when the family would gather for a barbecue. And I thought to myself, what a good life I have had, a simple life by most American standards, but one that would be the envy of thousands of previous generations. While the wealthy and privileged of days yore might boast about their palatial estates, artwork, fancy furniture, and house servants, not one of them could go out and settle into their very own personal automobile, (a vehicle capable of doing the work of over 100 horses), and zip about at the heretofore ungodly speed of 70mph if they had a mind.

The emperors, kings, industrial tycoons of old could not hop on an airline and find themselves delivered to virtually any place on earth in a few hours time. As little as a hundred years ago, they could not pick up a telephone and speak directly to another person 3000 miles away or more. Nor could they watch events unfolding on the globe on a massive telescreen like I was. As little as 20 years ago they could not have Googled up virtually any bit of wit or wisdom humanity was capable of in the Internet . All these things I took for granted, cars, telephones, TVs, computers, the world wide web, would have amazed and delighted generations past. And I could have most of these things at a discount price, or simply obtain them at my whim by producing a plastic card given to me by a bank with a dire urge to offer credit and collect interest.

Yes, it has been a good life, an easy life, with all the food you can eat. I have lived in a kind of protective shell it seems, a world made secure by the tumultuous effort of “the greatest generation,” who suffered through WWI, the Great Depression and the chaos and destruction of WWII, all before I came along. To think of all those horrific events of the early 20th century as the leading edge of great storm, I had the good fortune to be born just as the furious winds of WWII and Korea abated, and a sunlit calm settled over the world. Yes, there were still the last squalls of the Viet Nam War, on the horizon, but that aside, I was born in the eye of the storm, and the whole of my comfortable life has been lived within its deceptively pacific span.

It has been a life of cheap energy, easy access to credit and capital, unheard of freedom of expression and personal movement, an explosion of technology and exponential access to information, a bountiful harvest of food, and a never ending cascade of consumer products, each aimed at making my little world a tad more convenient and comfortable. No matter what might ail you in this country, there is a product or a pill to offer immediate relief.

There is more in the news than a casual warning about the start of this new storm season. Lately, the weatherman in my head has been predicting a new line of storm clouds on the far horizon. The idyllic calm that has sheltered our lives has lately felt the upwelling breeze and rolling waves of discontent. The Gulf War, 9/11, Iraq were but the leading edge of what was to come. Shortly after I wrote this the world began to shake in the rising winds of the back edge of the storm. Financial malfeasance led to enormous graft and corruption, the collapse of the banking system, the re-rigging of all the accounting rules to pretend away the insolvency, and the gushing of trillions in public money so the fat cat bankers would not suffer any losses. Now this latest crisis in the gulf stands as a glaring metaphor for all that ails us as a nation. And I realize that the stability and calm of my life may soon be challenged by the ire and dark fury of that trailing end of the hurricane making its way through our season of history. As the energy that has fueled our society reaches a peak production level and starts to fall off, all of the things that made my life so easy and comfortable are starting to cost more and more. I have seen the price of gasoline run from under fifty cents a gallon to nearly four dollars. The rising winds on that looming, dark horizon to the east promise me it will go higher yet.

In the last few years a host of authors have penned books, each warning of the coming storm. Their titles strike the heart of the crisis now unfolding, Crude Awakening, The Party’s Over, Blood and Oil,  The Coming Economic Collapse, The End Of Oil: On the Edge of A Perilous New World, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Oil Shock and the World Economy… The common theme underlying all our recent foreign policy has been to position the American military in the heart of the last remaining large reserves of oil and natural gas on this earth. Oil , that miraculous mover of SUVs, Diesel trucks and Airbus liners, is getting very hard to find now. The really big discoveries peaked in the 1970s, and each year we consume far more than we find. So the fuel that our very comfortable life has been running on is now getting more and more expensive to produce.

Jeremy Leggett wrote of the problem, generally captured in the phrase “Peak Oil,”  in a long article published in the Independent last January:

“We have allowed oil to become vital to virtually everything we do. Ninety per cent of all our transportation, whether by land, air or sea, is fueled by oil. Ninety-five per cent of all goods in shops involve the use of oil. Ninety-five per cent of all our food products require oil use. Just to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires six barrels of oil, enough to drive a car from New York to Los Angeles. The world consumes more than 80 million barrels of oil a day, 29 billion barrels a year, at the time of writing. This figure is rising fast, as it has done for decades. The almost universal expectation is that it will keep doing so for years to come. The US government assumes that global demand will grow to around 120 million barrels a day, 43 billion barrels a year, by 2025. Few question the feasibility of this requirement, or the oil industry's ability to meet it.

They should, because the oil industry won't come close to producing 120 million barrels a day; nor is there any prospect of the shortfall being taken up by gas. In other words, the most basic of the foundations of our assumptions of future economic well being is rotten. Our society is in a state of collective denial that has no precedent in history, in terms of its scale and implications.”

Not exactly the sort of thing one wants to hear on the TV news as he sips his gin and tonic while the chicken breasts are marinating by the barbecue, eh? And this is why we seldom ever hear anything along the lines of what Mr. Leggett, or others like him, have to say about the back end of this storm bearing down on us. We are so accustomed to this easy life that we simply cannot imagine it ever ending. We cannot really internalize a world where we could not afford to drive or fly anywhere we choose. But the cost of transportation is only one area of our lives that is fueled by oil. Look at the range of other products that rely heavily on petroleum, a brief list I found on the Internet:

Oil Based Products

Typical Household Items: Ballpoint pens, battery cases, bin bags, candles, carpets, curtains, detergents, drinking cups, dyes, enamel, linoleum, paint, brushes and rollers, pillows, refrigerants, refrigerator linings, roofing, safety glass, shower curtains, telephones, toilet seats, water pipes.

Personal Products: Cold cream, hair color, lipstick, shampoo, shaving cream, combs, dentures, denture adhesive, deodorant, glasses, sunglasses, contact lenses, hand lotion, insect repellent, shoes, shoe polish, tights, toothbrushes, toothpaste, vitamin capsules.

Medical products: Anesthetics, antihistamines, antiseptics, artificial limbs, aspirin, bandages, cortisone, hearing aids, heart valves.

Leisure goods: cameras, fishing rods, footballs, golf balls, skis, stereos, tennis rackets, tents.

Agriculture: Fertilizers, insecticides, preservatives. Which means food costs, determined by production and distribution costs, will continue to climb.

Other: Antifreeze, boats, lifejackets, glue, solvents, motorcycle helmets, parachutes, tires.

Here’s a nifty image of things you could drag out of just about any American home--all made with petroleum products. Now think about every one of those items doubling in cost within a relatively short time frame. The price of comfort is going up, and soon. The eye of the storm is giving way now to the looming squalls of war, social turmoil, economic distress.

America suffers from a kind of myopia where its future is concerned. Like folks in the southeast, they get vague snippets of news now and again that a hurricane is brewing off the coast, but never think it applies to them. Their town hasn’t suffered a hit for over 50 years, so while the warning flags go up and some people take heed to board up their waterfront property and lay in a stock of supplies, most just continue their daily affairs, completely oblivious of the impending danger. A time will come, however, when the certainty of the storm path will become too obvious to ignore. Then some will tune in the news and watch the weather reports of the dark swirling clouds bearing down on our coast, again, never thinking their town, their home, their life will ever be affected. Eventually the “news” will finally sink in: that the party is over, the winds are rising, the skyline darkening and the water is getting high. Then we will get a Katrina like series of events, the panic buying, the forced movement of populations away from threatened areas, the frozen tangle of traffic. The rich will motor away to private estates or vacation homes out of harm’s way, the poor will huddle in inner city stadiums hoping for a bus ride to safety that may never come. Eventually it will be uniformed men, the newly federalized “National Guard,” FEMA security, or perhaps hired mercenaries from Blackwater when things start to get bad. The looting we saw in New Orleans is just a taste of what is to come in cities all across this nation when the “news” finally hits home.

Well here’s the news you may have missed: all the world’s great oil fields are now in decline. That’s right, all of them. The big fields in Mexico, the Gulf States, the North Sea, Kuwait, Iran, and yes, even Saudi Arabia, are now declining. The US Fields have been in decline for since the mid 60s, and Russia is also well past their peak. In short, the oil that fuels the world is now getting very expensive to produce. The best of the “Light Sweet Crude” is mostly gone, and now producers pump heavy crude, with more costly refining requirements. Years ago I realized that the rest of my life is going to be like that black heavy crude. The time when I might think to rest in a comfortable retirement, will likely be the most challenging years I live. And for those following behind my Baby Boom generation, the youth of today who have every expectation of living a life remotely close to the comfort I had, there will be great disillusion, disappointment, and a struggle that Americans have not seen since the Great Depression.

The image here shows the span of the eye that has sheltered my life, and the turmoil that may be bearing down on us now. It is interesting that oil production peaks just as the eye gives way to the remainder of the storm. Empires have risen and fallen in the initial swirling arms of this storm. The two world wars and the Great Depression were too much for Great Britain to sustain the power it once projected all across this globe.  Britain stopped being “Great” shortly after WWII, and the American Empire took center stage, an industrial powerhouse thriving on the huge oil finds in the period between 1945 and 1965. By the time the Beatles landed in America for a counterattack, the easy life and consumer culture life style was well established in the US. The engine of our economy continued to grow and grow, fed by cheap oil in the calm eye of the storm. After faltering in Viet Nam, American power faced down Soviet Russia to win the cold war. The Russian economy collapsed into a dark abyss, and the free West just kept lighting up the world with its neon signs. As the century came to a close, George Bush senior proclaimed a new era had come, one where American power, so massively expressed in the Gulf War, would dominate. Yet how quickly that power eclipsed when the reins were handed to his son.

The steady blue line of  “Pax Americana,” preeminent after the defeat of the great powers like Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and eventually Soviet Russia, now wavers into the indigo as we realize we cannot even subdue third or fourth rate nations like Iraq or Afghanistan. Our military might, unquestioned for decades, now seems feeble, its training, equipment and élan frustrated by lightly armed irregular “insurgents” with a determination we have not faced since Marines last fought the Japanese infantry. Men willing to blow themselves up for a cause display a determination and resolve that few Western governments ever muster.

Being more dependent on oil and gas than any other nation on earth, the United States is in grave jeopardy. If we had to rely on resources, north slope and all, that we actually own, we could only run the cars and trucks for about three years. Oh, there is much talk about tar sands and coal, which we have in abundance, but oil from tar sands will not power our fleet of millions of vehicles any time soon. We can keep the electricity running with coal, perhaps indefinitely, but that light sweet crude that has greased the wheels of our comfort is running out. The fact is, we are dependent on foreign resources, particularly oil, to keep our nation lit up and running. That’s why we have created a vast network of military bases all over the world--not for the sake of freedom and democracy, but to keep watch on “American Interests,” which are natural resources that belong to other nations. It is no mystery that most are now clustered in the Middle East, around the last large reserves of oil and gas, and around nations we don’t like there.

We are now seeing the end of US imperial power as the cost of our fuel continues to rise. In just eight years under Bush and Cheney, the US  experienced a staggering diminishment of its power. Our military was over stretched and unable to really secure the peace in Iraq. The Iraqis just decided to stop killing one another. Our industrial base has been largely dismantled and shipped overseas, our trade imbalance continues to rise, along with our national debt, and our nation now requires a flood of cheap consumer goods from Asia to keep the stores open, not to mention the $2 billion dollars we borrow each day from China, Japan, and South Korea so we can service the interest on that debt. The World’s 2nd richest man, Warren Buffet, claimed that the current fiscal imbalances are transferring 1% of our national wealth to foreigners each year. They already own billions in national assets, and within 15 years foreign investors will own American assets equal to the entire value of all our stock markets combined! Nobody seems to notice, because we fixate on absurdities like Paris Hilton, dancing with the stars and other idiotic “entertainment” news. Look at Yahoo’s top searches every day. You will see what is on the minds of most Americans.

All the nations of the earth will soon face the realities of diminishing energy supplies, but like those coastal residents getting news of a storm, there have been tremendous differences in how they are preparing themselves to meet this challenge. While the United States has squandered its national treasure, broken its military, and expended the last of our national credibility in a futile attempt to secure the oil and gas of Iraq, (and check the rising power of Iran), China has been going about the globe booking business and signing lucrative economic deals to secure its future. China has made overtures to Iran, Venezuela, and a host of African nations, all aimed at gaining access to much needed fuel supplies in exchange for easy finance and economic assistance. Wal Mart insists on falling prices, so US merchants look to cheap manufacturing and labor in China to fill their orders. Dollars move from the US to China in droves, and then China lends the money to Nigeria to secure access to oil and gas—all without resort to political blustering, military threats, covert operations, adventurism, or outright war. With four times our annual economic growth in recent years, and four times our population, China is positioning itself to become the world’s next great power—if she can find a way to secure enough oil, gas, and fresh water, to keep all those newly consuming citizens alive in the next century.

I have more sad news for China--they can’t and they won’t. There simply isn’t enough oil and gas in the world for the 900 million Chinese that still live simple agrarian lives. They will not be able to join the 300 billion Chinese who are more well off and now live much like Americans, with their cars, TVs, lavish entertainment shows and all the other trappings of contemporary modern  life, cell phones, computers, and all the rest. What will happen in China when that 900 million realize they do not have an invitation, let alone a ticket, to the party?

Europe has taken another tack, preferring a more realistic and sustainable life style at home, diplomacy in international affairs, and greater reliance on alternative fuels. Fuel prices have been well over $4.50 a gallon in Europe for a decade, and there is a much more mature rail and rapid transit system there, so people drive less. France gets over 70% of its energy from nuclear power. Germany is the world’s leading user of wind power. Britain, once secure with its now declining North Sea oil developments, has decided to hold our coat in the fight for what remains of the oil in the Middle East.

So when I think of it, the greatest years of America have been lived out during the span of my life—all in the eye of the storm. It remains to be seen if we, as individuals and as a nation, can rise to meet the challenges that lie ahead for us now. It doesn’t look like we’ve made much of a start. A lot of hope is placed in “alternative energy” research, but this is not something our nation is really taking seriously. The daily budget for the war in Iraq, for example, (about $300 million /day), exceeded the entire annual budget for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

How will we continue to run all the diesel trucks and cars as the fuel slowly runs out? The very question contains the seed of it’s own undoing, because we can’t continue running all the cars and trucks on our clogged freeways. The will ‘o the wisp of bio diesel, ethanol, battery operated cars, hydrogen fuel cells, will not do anywhere near the energy work now provided by gasoline—at least not with the cars and trucks we use today. But that may change. Volkswagen made an incredible announcement—a car that can achieve between 200 and 300 miles per gallon!

To quote from that link above: “The head of the Volkswagen Group’s supervisory board Ferdinand Piech has hinted that there are plans within VW for a super-economical small car capable of traveling 100 kilometers (62 miles) on just one liter of fuel, the equivalent of an astounding 282.5mpg.” Hear that Ford? Chrysler? GM? When will you get it through your heads that the last thing we need on the road in America is another nifty  SUV?  The best American cars boast a measly 30mpg, with foreign hybrids getting almost twice that--all still well below what is technically possible, if the VW story has merit. Coincidentally, the auto related announcement this same week from the US was the opening of a time capsule the good citizens of Tulsa created in 1957 as a message to us folks here in the 21st century. 50 years later, one of the things unearthed was, a 1957 Plymouth, a monument to the era of cheap oil now rusting away in the muck. 50 years ago cars were big, heavy, ugly, and guzzled gas with extremely inefficient engines--a bit like our 21st century SUVs that still represent about 40% of all vehicles on the road. How little we have learned! As the calm, oil rich eye of the hurricane begins to give way, we’re still building cars like cheap gasoline will always be with us.

Well, the Germans, who recently had the good sense to dump their 50% ownership of Chrysler, are forging ahead with innovation and technology. I have little doubt that the Japanese are also working on similar projects. After all, they make the best cars on the road today in the US, (in my humble opinion). These were the two nations we literally destroyed in WWII, but they seem to have the edge where automotive technology is now concerned.  My last Ford Escort averaged one major repair operation per year over the seven years I drove it. I dumped it for a Honda Civic and drove the next 14 years without a single maintenance problem, to say nothing of the 30% better mileage. The sad fact behind these headlines is that American ingenuity, know-how, innovation, seems to be lapsing into indigo as well. The car companies over here are content to milk the SUV cash-cows they crank out. Don’t expect a 300mpg car from Ford or Chrysler any time soon.

Announcements like VWs welcome bombshell give impetus to the hope that technology will rise to the occasion and save us from the resource crunch ahead. But a problem arises when the interests of one corporation tend to collide with another. It’s going to get very profitable for oil companies when gasoline moves upwards of $5 per gallon. I can’t help but recall a line from Syriana. The fictional oil company Connex execs were meeting, all seated at a pristine table beneath a massive series of maps where colored blocks were overlaid to designate oil field development regions of the world. To them the world was nothing more than these colored blocks, things to be licensed, acquired, exploited for profit, irrespective of the political, social or cultural boundaries that defined nations . The interests of the corporation transcended those boundaries, and the Connex CEO was lamenting that some two-bit Emir, (“What the hell is an Emir, anyway?”) had canceled their contract, forcing them to merge with Kileen, who had just secured lucrative rights to the Tengiz oil fields in Kazakhstan. Later, a legal representative remarks that Connex-Killen is about to become the most profitable corporation in America, “so long as we don’t start running our automobiles on water, and so long as we still have chaos in the Middle East.”

There are two truths implicit in that casual remark: first that the interests of oil and gas companies do not wish to see innovation in our automobiles, or serious investment in any renewable or replacement fuel technology. It undercuts their current business, and while it would be lovely for American drivers and the world’s environment if we could all have hydrogen fuel celled cars, where the only emission was water vapor, it would be positively horrible for companies like Connex…unless they controlled the development of that replacement technology as well. So don’t think that, in our very real world of corporate infighting, Exxon-Mobile looks with any welcome on the design of a car that can get 300mpg. This global oil giant now exceeds the nation of Kuwait itself in annual oil production! With over $280 billion in profits last year, they invested a hefty $37 billion in stock buybacks and shareholder dividends, while investing zero ($0) in alternative fuel development projects. It is clear to see that they plan no change in their business agenda in the foreseeable future. And secondly, the sad truth is that when chaos abounds in the world, corporations tend to seed themselves like weeds to exploit the turf. Just ask Dick Cheney’s old organization, Halliburton.

When Oil industry expert Matthew Simmonds made the startling announcement that he believed Saudi Arabia’s key oil field was in decline, Mother Jones  featured an article where they put the attitude of the connected and wealthy into keen perspective. “... oil tycoon Boone Pickens, chairman of the billion-dollar hedge fund BP Capital Management, is having the time of his life. ("I've never had so much fun?") Over the last five years, he claims, his bet that oil prices would rise has "made him more money... than he earned in the preceding half century hunting for riches in petroleum deposits and companies," and he is predicting that prices will only go higher with much more "pain at the pump." Ah, the good life.” It’s amazing how the wealthy can profit from pain and economic distress as much as they can  in boom times.

Corporations now routinely extend their middle finger to the people they purportedly serve and to the government. Goldman Sachs 5 terabyte data dump on the SEC is a perfect example of the disdain big corporations hold for anyone who attempts to expose their wrongdoing. Of late the malfeasance of the financial institutions has distracted us from the underlying problem of peak oil. But Deepwater Horizon has shown us just how difficult it is to find and manage new oil fields these days. With new discoveries so hard to come by, we jealously stand watch on the last remaining great oil reserves of the world. Geopolitically, our presence in the Middle East and Central Asia is, and always has been, about oil.

So don’t expect your car to be running on water any time soon, and do expect more chaos in the Middle East. Expect the oil to keep slogging ashore in the Gulf of Mexico for years and years now. Expect those gas prices to top $4.00 again soon, and creep ever higher in the years ahead. It will make great kindling for election year debates in 2012.

And don’t worry about those storm clouds on the horizon. Why not lay in a keg of beer and have a hurricane party? Tune in “Dancing with the Stars.” That seems to be the mindset of millions of Americans these days, happily oblivious that they, too, have lived out their lives in the eye of the storm, and the seas are going to get very rough again, much sooner than we think.

Better yet, why don’t we do something about this impending crisis that is practical, growth oriented, transformative and economically viable? At this point let me kick the ball over to James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Long Emergency.” This excellent article just about sums up all the hard, yet productive work we can undertake now to build a new society that will weather the storm ahead. He restates the agenda we must follow here. So let’s get busy! 

Article by: John Schettler – June 2007 - Updated June 2010

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