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Gulf News; From Bad to Worse
Rob Kall
ey are on. No more bullshit. No more lobbyists getting favors. This is not life or death.
Here's the latest report I just received from my contact inside BP:
Ok, here's the deal.
Size of reservoir - estimated by BP and its partner, Andarko to be between 2.5B and 10B bbl. (that's 100,000,000,000 gallons and 400,000,000,000 gallons.
Yes - all of those numbers are BILLIONS.
BP has admitted in at least 3 interviews that the well casing is compromised (broken). So, when they tried the Top Kill - and then the Junk Shot - the stuff shot out the sides and didn't go much down the hole. A REAL top kill should just take a few hours - or it's not going to ever work.
The casing was undoubtedly broken apart by the natural gas 'explosion' at the bottom of the well, which was the result of methane coming out of solution (ie. the methane hydrates melting and expanding dramatically). Much like when your washer's water line has air in it and you shut off the valve and the line 'hammers', the well 'hammered' when the BOP shut (the guess is 80%), and the dramatic upshot in pressure, as well as the acoustic shockwave, broke the casing.
The Question of the Day is: Did the explosion rupture the casing for its entire length?
If that is so, then a relief well will be unable to plug the hole. TEN relief wells would be unable to plug the hole.
The consensus seems to be, among oil people I've spoken with, that this is exactly the case.
If that's so, then the well will run until Obama nukes it. That is the only thing that could close it.
If they can't plug it via the relief wells, and if they don't nuke it (it can't be conventional explosives, for a few reasons), then about 1/2 of the oil and gas will run out. That would be 50 BILLION to 200 BILLION gallons of oil, over a 10 year period. Although, like the interest you pay on a house note, the biggest part would be up-front.
Another report I discovered yesterday, can't remember where, is that there is so much methane coming out of the gulf gusher that it equals what New York City produces in a day. That methane is 25 to 100 times more deleterious than CO2 as a greenhouse gas aggravating global warming.
We need to start thinking about a black gulf that is dead, that oil and other toxins are leaking to other oceans. What will our world, our nation, the human race, life on this planet look like if all the seas die?
We need to start thinking really hard about re-localization, transition towns-- the kinds of things Bill McKibben, Lester R. Brown and Rob Hopkins have been writing about. Plant a vegetable garden in your back yard, in a local garden, on your balcony. Connect with a local food coop or CSA (community supported agriculture.) The world is going to change.
We need to take a Apollo, moon landing technology approach to what is happening in the gulf. We need big ideas and solutions because there are other deep water wells out there waiting to become catastrophes. Joe Trippi said it well, responding to Obama's speech Tuesday night:
The president could have told the American people that it is clear that we had the technology to drill a hole in the ocean floor 1 mile beneath the surface.Then, he should have leveled with us and said that it is just as unclear, right now, how we can put the technology in place to shut it down quickly after the tragic explosion.
Just as we were able to bring Apollo 13 back to earth safely, we will shut this well down, the president could have assured us.
We need to take a WWII approach to low tech temporary interventions, like building 10,000 skimmers that can be rigged to existing boats. We need to figure out ways to use trawlers to drag booms that absorb oil through those massive curtains of oil, so they can be cleaned up deep in the ocean.
Obama still does not get the immensity of the problem. He needs to imagine 1.25 to 5 BILLION barrels-- 50 billion to 210 billion gallons of oil-- spewing into the gulf rounding the keys, despoiling the Caribbean, riding the Gulf Current up the eastern seaboard, jumping over to Europe....
Forget about Iraq and Afghanistan and the hundreds of other military bases we have. We need to apply all our military resources to the massive disaster we have at home.
Tell the bastards in the military industrial medical complex that there's a new way they're going to have to make money-- healing the gulf, healing the gulf workers, preventing our oil plague from killing the planet.
My source tells me that BP has underground resources of 500 billion barrels of oil-- at $70 a barrel that's $35 Trillion dollars. Other oil companies have similar holdings. We need to start talking about tapping them for a trillion dollar budget, not a piddling $20 billion escrow account. Don't get me wrong. That account was a first step.
But we need Boeing and Raytheon and General Motors and Ford and our biggest most advanced companies focused on what is happening in the gulf. We need to get ideas and suggestions cranked up even more. Humanity has incredible wisdom and creativity. We need to tap it and work it, like never before, fast and furious.
We need-- Obama needs-- to face the reality that fishing and shrimping in the Gulf and probably Florida are over for years to come. Eating ocean fish may soon be over.
Obama needs to call a meeting of world leaders to face this INTERNATIONAL crisis.
Obama needs to, and I've said it before, fire the advisers who let him get this far doing so little, addressing this in so many wrong ways. This IS like a war, but secrecy is not called for, necessary or appropriate. We are all in this together. The enemy is the oil and maybe the corporations, and for them transparency is their enemy.
Obama needs to rise a lot higher and find his higher self and become a true visionary leader. That probably means cutting the tethers held by the political hacks who he has surrounded himself with. We need a great president NOW, not some compromising, making deals with corporations manager. I believe Obama has it in him, but he must throw off the slugs and maggots and reptiles and leeches who are bringing him down. He needs to think of his wife and children and the rest of us, not corporations.
We may need to totally revamp the military. We need people likeLt.Gen. Russel L. Honoré of the Army who was appointed to oversee the Katrina recovery.
The hotter water caused by the black and red coloration will lead to more violent weather and hurricane activity. The release of billions of gallons of methane will speed global warming and exacerbate climate change.
I told a friend about this last night. He said, "so, the house my sister and her husband just bought for $1.2 million on the west coast of Florida might drop in value?"
Ouch. You betcha.
There is talk of the US government taking over BP. Since it's an international company, that may not be possible, but certainly, BP's assets in the US are takable. Surely BP has broken any agreement to operate responsibly.
And then there's that matter of criminality-- 11 dead, millions damaged. Why didn't our hapless incompetent in the justice department AG Eric Holder arrest the BP execs after they left the meeting with Obama. Maybe that would be premature, but it should be in the works.
And let's not forget all those British pensioners who are not going to be getting their dividend checks for the rest of the year. Maybe ALL investors will learn not to invest in criminal, anti life, anti-earth, ant-human corporations anymore.
It is likely that a number of the previously endangered species in the gulf will die off.
The sequellae of this disaster are just beginning to become visible on the horizon. The Christian Right has been praying for the end times. Who knew that the beast would be BP and the American addiction to oil?