Further actions of the likes of that from the Obama White House to date or from BP can only lead to the conclusion that some very powerful people want
this debacle to continue
Gulf Oil Spill ‘Could Go Years’ If Not Dealt With
By F. William Engdahl, 10 June 2010
The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to
stop the world’s worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological
catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil
migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive
steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.
In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in
Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill
flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years … many
years.”1
According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum,
“What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which
hydrocarbons generated in the
depth of our planet migrate to the
crust and are accumulated in rocks,
something like Ghawar in Saudi
Arabia.”2 Ghawar, the world’s most
prolific oilfield has been producing
millions of barrels daily for almost
70 years with no end in sight. According
to the abiotic science, Ghawar
like all elephant and giant oil
and gas deposits all over the world,
is located on a migration channel similar
to that in the oil-rich Gulf of
Mexico.
As I wrote at the time of the January
2010 Haiti earthquake disaster3,
Haiti had been identified as having
potentially huge hydrocarbon reserves,
as has neighboring Cuba. Kutcherov
estimates that the entire
Gulf of Mexico is one of the planet’s
most abundant accessible locations
to extract oil and gas, at least before
the Deepwater Horizon event this
April.
“In my view the heads of BP reacted with panic at the scale of the oil spewing out of the
well,” Kutcherov adds. “What is inexplicable at this point is why they are trying one thing,
failing, then trying a second, failing, then a third. Given the scale of the disaster they should
try every conceivable option, even if it is ten, all at once in hope one works. Otherwise, this
oil source could spew oil for years given the volumes coming to the surface already.”4
He stresses, “It is difficult to estimate how big this leakage is. There is no objective information
available.” But taking into consideration information about the last BP ‘giant’ discovery
in the Gulf of Mexico, the Tiber field, some six miles deep, Kutcherov agrees with Ira Leifer
5 Ira Leifer, Scientist: BP Well Could Be Leaking 100,000 Barrels of Oil a Day, June 9, 2010, accessed
here
6 Wayne Madsen, The Coverup: BPs Crude Politics and the Looming Environmental Mega Disaster,
May 6, 2010, accessed here
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara
who says the oil may be gushing out at a rate of more than 100,000 barrels a day.5
What the enormoity of the oil spill does is to also further discredit clearly the oil companies’
myth of “peak oil” which claims that the world is at or near the “peak” of economical oil extraction.
That myth, which has been propagated in recent years by circles close to former
oilman and Bush Vice President, Dick Cheney, has been effectively used by the giant oil majors
to justify far higher oil prices than would be politically possible otherwise, by claiming a
non-existent petroleum scarcity crisis.
Obama & BP Try to Hide
According to a report from Washington investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, “the Obama
White House and British Petroleum are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil
disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP’s liability for damage caused
by what can be called a ‘mega-disaster.’”6 Madsen cites sources within the US Army Corps
of Engineers, FEMA, and Florida Department of Environmental Protection for his assertion.
Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary Salazar, are working
with BP’s chief executive officer Tony Hayward on legislation that would raise the cap on liability
for damage claims from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10 billion.
According to informed estimates cited by Madsen, however, the disaster has a real
potential cost of at least $1,000 billion ($1 trillion). That estimate would support the pessimistic
assessment of Kutcherov that the spill, if not rapidly controlled, “will destroy the entire
coastline of the United States.”
According to the Washington report of Madsen, BP statements that one of the leaks has
been contained, are “pure public relations disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands
for greater action by the Obama administration, according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers
sources.” 7
The White House has been resisting releasing any “damaging information” about the oil disaster.
Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers experts estimate that if the ocean oil geyser is
not stopped within 90 days, there will be irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of
the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond. At best, some Corps of Engineers experts
say it could take two years to cement the chasm on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.8
Only after the magnitude of the disaster became evident did Obama order Homeland Security
Secretary Napolitano to declare the oil disaster a “national security issue.” Although the
Coast Guard and FEMA are part of her department, Napolitano’s actual reasoning for invoking
national security, according to Madsen, was merely to block media coverage of the immensity
of the disaster that is unfolding for the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and their
coastlines.
The Obama administration also conspired with BP to hide the extent of the oil leak, according
to the cited federal and state sources. After the oil rig exploded and sank, the government
stated that 42,000 gallons per day were gushing from the seabed chasm. Five days later,
the federal government upped the leakage to 210,000 gallons a day. However, submersibles
monitoring the escaping oil from the Gulf seabed are viewing television pictures of
what they describe as a “volcanic-like” eruption of oil.
When the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA imagery of the Gulf oil
slick, which is larger than is being reported by the media, it was reportedly denied the access.
By chance, National Geographic managed to obtain satellite imagery shots of the extent
of the disaster and posted them on their web site. Other satellite imagery reportedly
9 Ibid.
10 Tim Findley, Natures’ Landlord, Range Magazine, Spring 2003.
11 Joe Stephens, Nature Conservancy faces potential backlash from ties with BP, Washington Post,
May 24, 2010, accessed here
being withheld by the Obama administration, shows that what lies under the gaping chasm
spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be the size of Mount Everest.
This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it
from the public, according to Madsen’s sources.
The Corps of Engineers and FEMA are reported to be highly critical of the lack of support for
quick action after the oil disaster by the Obama White House and the US Coast Guard. Only
now has the Coast Guard understood the magnitude of the disaster, dispatching nearly 70
vessels to the affected area. Under the loose regulatory measures implemented by the
Bush-Cheney Administration, the US Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service
became a simple “rubber stamp,” approving whatever the oil companies wanted in terms of
safety precautions that could have averted such a disaster. Madsen describes a state of “criminal
collusion” between Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton, and the Interior Department’s
MMS, and that the potential for similar disasters exists with the other 30,000 off-shore rigs
that use the same shut-off valves. 9
Silence from Eco groups?... Follow the money
Without doubt at this point we are in the midst of what could be the greatest ecological catastrophe
in history. The oil platform explosion took place almost within the current loop
where the Gulf Stream originates. This has huge ecological and climatological consequences.
A cursory look at a map of the Gulf Stream shows that the oil is not just going to cover the
beaches in the Gulf, it will spread to the Atlantic coasts up through North Carolina then on
to the North Sea and Iceland. And beyond the damage to the beaches, sea life and water
supplies, the Gulf stream has a very distinct chemistry, composition (marine organisms),
density, temperature. What happens if the oil and the dispersants and all the toxic compounds
they create actually change the nature of the Gulf Stream? No one can rule out
potential changes including changes in the path of the Gulf Stream, and even small changes
could have huge impacts. Europe, including England, is not an icy wasteland due to the warming
from the Gulf Stream.
Yet there is a deafening silence from the very environmental organizations which ought to
be at the barricades demanding that BP, the US Government and others act decisively.
That deafening silence of leading green or ecology organizations such as Greenpeace, Nature
Conservancy, Sierra Club and others may well be tied to a money trail that leads right
back to the oil industry, notably to BP. Leading environmental organizations have gotten significant
financial payoffs in recent years from BP in order that the oil company could remake
itself with an “environment-friendly face,” as in “beyond petroleum” the company’s new
branding.
The Nature Conservancy, described as “the world’s most powerful environmental group,”10
has awarded BP a seat on its International Leadership Council after the oil company gave
the organization more than $10 million in recent years.11
Until recently, the Conservancy and other environmental groups worked with BP in a coalition
that lobbied Congress on climate-change issues. An employee of BP Exploration serves
as an unpaid Conservancy trustee in Alaska. In addition, according to a recent report published
by the Washington Post, Conservation International, another environmental group, has
accepted $2 million in donations from BP and worked with the company on a number of projects,
including one examining oil-extraction methods. From 2000 to 2006, John Browne,
then BP's chief executive, sat on the CI board.
12 Ibid.
Further, The Environmental Defense Fund, another influential ecologist organization, joined
with BP, Shell and other major corporations to form a Partnership for Climate Action, to promote
‘market-based mechanisms’ (sic) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmental non-profit groups that have accepted donations from or joined in projects
with BP include Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, Environmental Defense
Fund, Sierra Club and Audubon. That could explain why the political outcry to date for decisive
action in the Gulf has been so muted.12
Of course those organizations are not going to be the ones to solve this catastrophe. The
central point at this point is who is prepared to put the urgently demanded federal and
international scientific resources into solving this crisis. Further actions of the likes of that
from the Obama White House to date or from BP can only lead to the conclusion that some
very powerful people want this debacle to continue. The next weeks will be critical to that
assessment.
Gulf Oil Spill ‘Could Go Years’ If Not Dealt With
By F. William Engdahl, 10 June 2010
The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to
stop the world’s worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological
catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil
migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive
steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.
In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in
Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill
flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years … many
years.”1
According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum,
“What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which
hydrocarbons generated in the
depth of our planet migrate to the
crust and are accumulated in rocks,
something like Ghawar in Saudi
Arabia.”2 Ghawar, the world’s most
prolific oilfield has been producing
millions of barrels daily for almost
70 years with no end in sight. According
to the abiotic science, Ghawar
like all elephant and giant oil
and gas deposits all over the world,
is located on a migration channel similar
to that in the oil-rich Gulf of
Mexico.
As I wrote at the time of the January
2010 Haiti earthquake disaster3,
Haiti had been identified as having
potentially huge hydrocarbon reserves,
as has neighboring Cuba. Kutcherov
estimates that the entire
Gulf of Mexico is one of the planet’s
most abundant accessible locations
to extract oil and gas, at least before
the Deepwater Horizon event this
April.
“In my view the heads of BP reacted with panic at the scale of the oil spewing out of the
well,” Kutcherov adds. “What is inexplicable at this point is why they are trying one thing,
failing, then trying a second, failing, then a third. Given the scale of the disaster they should
try every conceivable option, even if it is ten, all at once in hope one works. Otherwise, this
oil source could spew oil for years given the volumes coming to the surface already.”4
He stresses, “It is difficult to estimate how big this leakage is. There is no objective information
available.” But taking into consideration information about the last BP ‘giant’ discovery
in the Gulf of Mexico, the Tiber field, some six miles deep, Kutcherov agrees with Ira Leifer
5 Ira Leifer, Scientist: BP Well Could Be Leaking 100,000 Barrels of Oil a Day, June 9, 2010, accessed
here
6 Wayne Madsen, The Coverup: BPs Crude Politics and the Looming Environmental Mega Disaster,
May 6, 2010, accessed here
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara
who says the oil may be gushing out at a rate of more than 100,000 barrels a day.5
What the enormoity of the oil spill does is to also further discredit clearly the oil companies’
myth of “peak oil” which claims that the world is at or near the “peak” of economical oil extraction.
That myth, which has been propagated in recent years by circles close to former
oilman and Bush Vice President, Dick Cheney, has been effectively used by the giant oil majors
to justify far higher oil prices than would be politically possible otherwise, by claiming a
non-existent petroleum scarcity crisis.
Obama & BP Try to Hide
According to a report from Washington investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, “the Obama
White House and British Petroleum are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil
disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP’s liability for damage caused
by what can be called a ‘mega-disaster.’”6 Madsen cites sources within the US Army Corps
of Engineers, FEMA, and Florida Department of Environmental Protection for his assertion.
Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary Salazar, are working
with BP’s chief executive officer Tony Hayward on legislation that would raise the cap on liability
for damage claims from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10 billion.
According to informed estimates cited by Madsen, however, the disaster has a real
potential cost of at least $1,000 billion ($1 trillion). That estimate would support the pessimistic
assessment of Kutcherov that the spill, if not rapidly controlled, “will destroy the entire
coastline of the United States.”
According to the Washington report of Madsen, BP statements that one of the leaks has
been contained, are “pure public relations disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands
for greater action by the Obama administration, according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers
sources.” 7
The White House has been resisting releasing any “damaging information” about the oil disaster.
Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers experts estimate that if the ocean oil geyser is
not stopped within 90 days, there will be irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of
the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond. At best, some Corps of Engineers experts
say it could take two years to cement the chasm on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.8
Only after the magnitude of the disaster became evident did Obama order Homeland Security
Secretary Napolitano to declare the oil disaster a “national security issue.” Although the
Coast Guard and FEMA are part of her department, Napolitano’s actual reasoning for invoking
national security, according to Madsen, was merely to block media coverage of the immensity
of the disaster that is unfolding for the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and their
coastlines.
The Obama administration also conspired with BP to hide the extent of the oil leak, according
to the cited federal and state sources. After the oil rig exploded and sank, the government
stated that 42,000 gallons per day were gushing from the seabed chasm. Five days later,
the federal government upped the leakage to 210,000 gallons a day. However, submersibles
monitoring the escaping oil from the Gulf seabed are viewing television pictures of
what they describe as a “volcanic-like” eruption of oil.
When the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA imagery of the Gulf oil
slick, which is larger than is being reported by the media, it was reportedly denied the access.
By chance, National Geographic managed to obtain satellite imagery shots of the extent
of the disaster and posted them on their web site. Other satellite imagery reportedly
9 Ibid.
10 Tim Findley, Natures’ Landlord, Range Magazine, Spring 2003.
11 Joe Stephens, Nature Conservancy faces potential backlash from ties with BP, Washington Post,
May 24, 2010, accessed here
being withheld by the Obama administration, shows that what lies under the gaping chasm
spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be the size of Mount Everest.
This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it
from the public, according to Madsen’s sources.
The Corps of Engineers and FEMA are reported to be highly critical of the lack of support for
quick action after the oil disaster by the Obama White House and the US Coast Guard. Only
now has the Coast Guard understood the magnitude of the disaster, dispatching nearly 70
vessels to the affected area. Under the loose regulatory measures implemented by the
Bush-Cheney Administration, the US Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service
became a simple “rubber stamp,” approving whatever the oil companies wanted in terms of
safety precautions that could have averted such a disaster. Madsen describes a state of “criminal
collusion” between Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton, and the Interior Department’s
MMS, and that the potential for similar disasters exists with the other 30,000 off-shore rigs
that use the same shut-off valves. 9
Silence from Eco groups?... Follow the money
Without doubt at this point we are in the midst of what could be the greatest ecological catastrophe
in history. The oil platform explosion took place almost within the current loop
where the Gulf Stream originates. This has huge ecological and climatological consequences.
A cursory look at a map of the Gulf Stream shows that the oil is not just going to cover the
beaches in the Gulf, it will spread to the Atlantic coasts up through North Carolina then on
to the North Sea and Iceland. And beyond the damage to the beaches, sea life and water
supplies, the Gulf stream has a very distinct chemistry, composition (marine organisms),
density, temperature. What happens if the oil and the dispersants and all the toxic compounds
they create actually change the nature of the Gulf Stream? No one can rule out
potential changes including changes in the path of the Gulf Stream, and even small changes
could have huge impacts. Europe, including England, is not an icy wasteland due to the warming
from the Gulf Stream.
Yet there is a deafening silence from the very environmental organizations which ought to
be at the barricades demanding that BP, the US Government and others act decisively.
That deafening silence of leading green or ecology organizations such as Greenpeace, Nature
Conservancy, Sierra Club and others may well be tied to a money trail that leads right
back to the oil industry, notably to BP. Leading environmental organizations have gotten significant
financial payoffs in recent years from BP in order that the oil company could remake
itself with an “environment-friendly face,” as in “beyond petroleum” the company’s new
branding.
The Nature Conservancy, described as “the world’s most powerful environmental group,”10
has awarded BP a seat on its International Leadership Council after the oil company gave
the organization more than $10 million in recent years.11
Until recently, the Conservancy and other environmental groups worked with BP in a coalition
that lobbied Congress on climate-change issues. An employee of BP Exploration serves
as an unpaid Conservancy trustee in Alaska. In addition, according to a recent report published
by the Washington Post, Conservation International, another environmental group, has
accepted $2 million in donations from BP and worked with the company on a number of projects,
including one examining oil-extraction methods. From 2000 to 2006, John Browne,
then BP's chief executive, sat on the CI board.
12 Ibid.
Further, The Environmental Defense Fund, another influential ecologist organization, joined
with BP, Shell and other major corporations to form a Partnership for Climate Action, to promote
‘market-based mechanisms’ (sic) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmental non-profit groups that have accepted donations from or joined in projects
with BP include Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, Environmental Defense
Fund, Sierra Club and Audubon. That could explain why the political outcry to date for decisive
action in the Gulf has been so muted.12
Of course those organizations are not going to be the ones to solve this catastrophe. The
central point at this point is who is prepared to put the urgently demanded federal and
international scientific resources into solving this crisis. Further actions of the likes of that
from the Obama White House to date or from BP can only lead to the conclusion that some
very powerful people want this debacle to continue. The next weeks will be critical to that
assessment.
