Gulf Oil Spill Disaster

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Oil Disaster Will Be End of Life As We Know It | InfoWars

This is it. It’s over. Get ready for the most insane year of your life. 5 years. 10 years. One day you will look back at your life right now and think about how easy it was, how innocent. We are on the cusp of total collapse, right at the precipice.

If you’re like most people you probably have already decided that I am exaggerating without knowing why I am saying this. Well let me make it clear that I also wish I was exaggerating. I don’t sell survival equipment or gold. My job is not recession proof. I have a family. I didn’t wake up today and randomly decide to declare that this is the end of life as we know it. But I do research. I make calls and tune into radio, scouring the internet for news clips and analysis. I make a concerted effort to only quote trustworthy sources. The information that has emerged over the past few days confirms fears that this is actually an “Armageddon” event. I am being completely serious.

The oil, spewing out at 20,000 to 70,000 psi, and the sediment within it has eroded the very walls of the well itself in several areas. This means that this is now an uncontainable gusher that is literally spewing oil up from dozens of sites across the gulf floor. The massive oil pocket tapped under immense pressure is now spewing out into the seabed. Capping the well does nothing.

The oil pocket is tapped, the pipe is eroded and the oil is now spewing up to the ocean floor with intense pressure. Plumes are being generated everywhere. They cannot stop this. Human technology cannot contain a liquid at that pressure, especially at that depth under the ocean. We simply do not have the technology or know-how to fix this. We don’t. The relief wells are essentially useless now because the original well cannot be plugged so oil will always flow out of it regardless of how many other wells they dig.

They needed to get into the pipe, fill the old pipe with mud and cement and then divert the oil into the new well. But because the tapped oil pocket is sand blasting itself routes to the surface that grow each day in diameter due to the eroding walls and passageways, there is no “well” to fill. That is because whats left of the well is already dissolving. And each day that passes until they drill their so-called “relief wells” will only see the oil finding new routes through the escapes it has carved through erosion of the pipes and rock. Thad Allen, the head of the US Coast Guard, has said that the oil isn’t all flowing up the pipe anymore but is now “in communication” with the seabed and the surrounding soft rock formation. It is now blasting its own wells.

Ya, that’s bad, but that isn’t even the scary part. Hydrogen Sulfide, Benzene, Methylene Chloride, and other toxic gases are also spewing out along with the oil. In concentrations hundreds and thousands of times greater than what is considered safe for humans. Lethal levels. When the hurricanes come they will absorb this toxic seawater and drop it as rain. Literally toxic rain. Let me guess, toxic rain doesn’t scare you. The biggest threat is already actualized with the chemicals entering the atmosphere and being carried around by the wind.

“The media coverage of the BP oil disaster to date has focused largely on the threats to wildlife, but the latest evaluation of air monitoring data shows a serious threat to human health from airborne chemicals emitted by the ongoing deepwater gusher,” the Institute for Southern Studies blog reported on May 10.

Any one of these chemicals in these concentrations would be lethal. Mixed together it’s truly unthinkable.

The fragile US economy, in the midst of a feeble attempt at a jobless recovery, overstretched by war and out of control spending is not equipped to handle a disaster of this magnitude. No country in the world could. Remember how well they handled the Katrina thing? This makes Katrina look like a grade school fire drill. Well I wonder how well they will do this time as they prepare to evacuate entire cities and states. See this and this. Once the evacuations begin the markets will tank. Once people are forced to grasp what is happening around them the global economy will come to a screeching halt as it’s engine, the USA, sinks into the throes of the worst environmental disaster in the history of the world. This will cause a dollar confidence crisis. Enraged citizens will riot and loot with no hope of a decent life ahead of them. Martial law will be declared.

They have no way to stop this, only a theory that maybe a nuke would implode the oil pocket. Ya, we’re talking about nuking the earths crust under the ocean. Eventually the oil will make it’s way around the world as the entire oil deposit is unleashed into the ocean.

Are you buying the crap coming from BP? The bogus press releases and the downplayed assessments? They’ve been lying through their teeth, censoring the media and destroying evidence. If you trust them, you have some problems.

Source: InfoWars

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10 Things You Need (But Don’t Want) To Know About the BP Oil Spill | Alternet

It’s been 37 days since BP’s offshore oil rig, Deepwater Horizon, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Since then, crude oil has been hemorrhaging into ocean waters and wreaking unknown havoc on our ecosystem — unknown because there is no accurate estimate of how many barrels of oil are contaminating the Gulf.

Though BP officially admits to only a few thousand barrels spilled each day, expert estimates peg the damage at 60,000 barrels or over 2.5 million gallons daily. (Perhaps we’d know more if BP hadn’t barred independent engineers from inspecting the breach.) Measures to quell the gusher have proved lackluster at best, and unlike the country’s last big oil spill — Exxon-Valdez in 1989 — the oil is coming from the ground, not a tanker, so we have no idea how much more oil could continue to pollute the Gulf’s waters.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster reminds us what can happen — and will continue to happen — when corporate malfeasance and neglect meet governmental regulatory failure.

The corporate media is tracking the disaster with front-page articles and nightly news headlines every day (if it bleeds, or spills, it leads!), but the under-reported aspects to this nightmarish tale paint the most chilling picture of the actors and actions behind the catastrophe. In no particular order, here are 10 things about the BP spill you may not know and may not want to know — but you should.

1. Oil rig owner has made $270 million off the oil leak

Transocean Ltd., the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig leased by BP, has been flying under the radar in the mainstream blame game. The world’s largest offshore drilling contractor, the company is conveniently headquartered in corporate-friendly Switzerland, and it’s no stranger to oil disasters. In 1979, an oil well it was drilling in the very same Gulf of Mexico ignited, sending the drill platform into the sea and causing one of the largest oil spills by the time it was capped… nine months later.

This experience undoubtedly influenced Transocean’s decision to insure the Deepwater Horizon rig for about twice what it was worth. In a conference call to analysts earlier this month, Transocean reported making a $270 million profit from insurance payouts after the disaster. It’s not hard to bet on failure when you know it’s somewhat assured.

2. BP has a terrible safety record

BP has a long record of oil-related disasters in the United States. In 2005, BP’s Texas City refinery exploded, killing 15 workers and injuring another 170. The next year, one of its Alaska pipelines leaked 200,000 gallons of crude oil. According to Public Citizen, BP has paid $550 million in fines. BP seems to particularly enjoy violating the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and has paid the two largest fines in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s history. (Is it any surprise that BP played a central, though greatly under-reported, role in the failure to contain the Exxon-Valdez spill years earlier?)

With Deepwater Horizon, BP didn’t break its dismal trend. In addition to choosing a cheaper — and less safe — casing to outfit the well that eventually burst, the company chose not to equip Deepwater Horizon with an acoustic trigger, a last-resort option that could have shut down the well even if it was damaged badly, and which is required in most developed countries that allow offshore drilling. In fact, BP employs these devices in its rigs located near England, but because the United States recommends rather than requires them, BP had no incentive to buy one — even though they only cost $500,000.

SeizeBP.org estimates that BP makes $500,000 in under eight minutes. Read more…

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Exxon Valdez Anniversary: 20 Years Later, Oil Remains | National Geographic

BY CHRISTINE DELL-AMORE

Two decades after the worst oil spill in U.S. history, huge quantities of oil still coat Alaska‘s shores with a toxic glaze, experts say.

More than 21,000 gallons of crude oil remain of the 11 million gallons of crude oil that bled from the stranded tanker Exxon Valdez on the night of March 23, 1989.

The oil—which has been detected as far as 450 miles (724 kilometers) away from the spill site in Prince William Sound—continues to harm wildlife and the livelihoods of local people, according to conservation groups. (See an Alaska map.)

Dennis Takahashi-Kelso, who was on the ground at the Exxon Valdez disaster as Alaska’s commissioner of environmental conservation, remembers wading through knee-deep pools of bubbling, thick oil. The smell of the pure oil was intense and pungent, he said.

When he returned to the same beaches years later, he found “surprisingly fresh” oil just below the sand. (Related: “Alaska Oil Spill Fuels Concerns Over Arctic Wildlife, Future Drilling”.)

“The damage that [the spill] created is something beyond anyone’s imagination,” said Michel Boufadel, Temple University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering chair, who has just completed research on why the oil persists.

Oil-Munching Bacteria

An 11,000-person crew removed oil from the beaches until 1994, when government officials decided to end the clean up effort. At that time, what was left of the the oil was naturally disintegrating at a high rate, and experts predicted it would be gone within a few years. But they were wrong.

Oil naturally “disappears” through two processes: As the tide rises over an oil patch, the water sloughs off bits of oil, which then disperse into the ocean as tiny, less harmful droplets that can biodegrade easily.

Biodegradation occurs when bacteria or other microorganisms break down oil as part of their life cycle.

But Prince William Sound is what ecologists call a closed system—it’s not exposed to big, pounding waves, so the oil has time to seep into the sand, according to Margaret Williams, who oversees conservation in the Bering Sea for the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Read more…

Source: National Geographic