The Gulf of Mexico is Dying -revised 2 Dec10 | Phoenix Rising from the Gulf

An excellent article by Dr Tom that should spur the world to act and act fast. But do the govt of the first world countries care? Do the oil companies (other than BP) and the industry really care?

In all honesty and through the countless efforts I have tried to bring up the safety and data fraud issues - first among fellow colleagues, within the geohazards companies, to the consulting QC companies, to the oil companies and lastly to the governments and regulatory bodies in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia and Australia; all efforts have been unsuccessful. Even in the months before the Montara Mega Oil Spill in Australia in August 2009 and Macondo BP’s Mega Oil Spill on 20 April 2010, our warnings of oil-related disasters due to an industry-wide apathy to Health, Safety & Environmental (HSE) issues all fell on deaf ears. This is a risky business with high stakes. But all the companies (from contractors to QC consultants to Oil companies to Regulators) had all been blinded by greed and high oil prices. The higher the oil prices, the less regard to HSE.

In the last 5 months, we have seen a similar reaction by BP, Anadarko, Transocean, Halliburton and the US Govt - APATHY.

That was what we are advocating. Same with using oil, we do not have to stop altogether all at once. Everything in moderation and a slow but surely solution gives time for adjustment and adaptation. A total and immediate ban of anything is detrimental and counter-productive.

Answer in Respond to Tom's remarks on 1 Dec10 4:41 am

This piece started with integrity and devolved into a oil based “Inconvenient Truth.” It ends up no better the Al Gore does with his climate warming gambit. To take what happened in the GOM and conjecture that the same is happening everywhere oil wells exist is the same non-science that AGW people use. ........

I wasn’t really sure where you were heading to in your first comment. I take AGW to be the abbreviation for Al Gore’s Global Warming. If you are wondering or poking for evidence that our work has been funded by some vested AGW interests, be informed that you are just wasting your time. We were all drawn together by our common quest to unearth the truth and our disgust for the unscrupulous profiteering and exploitation of our home planet through covert means disguised as economic development, technical advancement, safety, political stability, poverty eradication and all other good intentions.

It may be hard for those with selfish interests working purely on monetary rewards (be it from oil companies or the global warming syndicate or the CO2-carbon Tax advocates) to understand but there are millions if not hundreds of millions out of the 6 billion people on this planet who care enough not to forsake their integrity, conscience and humanity if they only know whole truth. That is why they (the powers that be, TPTB) are so scared of the truth. See how they panicked on news of the wikileaks because beneath the “powdered and whitewashed” complimentary messages were the raw ugly truths.

As Howard T Lewis and many others had pointed out, decades of indoctrinations by vested interests had kept the population divisive, apart and bickering in order for the “evil few” to pull the puppets strings, to plot political and economic schemes behind the turmoil. Divide and Rule. How many of the “explosive bombs” of racial resentment, social discontentment, political differences and religious sentiments had been initially sparked by those who had to the most to profit?

That’s why whenever a truth movement gets traction, there is so much “dirt and half-truths” dumped on it to prevent it from ever sprouting beyond its infancy. Who is more dangerous? Tony Hayward of BP who was ultimately responsible for the Mass Destruction in the Gulf or Julian Assange of Wikileaks for whistle-blowing? Why was warrant of arrest issued for Julian Assange and not the other?

When I first started to study and analyse the BP’s mega oil disaster, many wrote to me about the conspiracy to bum off the population at the gulf for a sinister reason. I could not believe then that such a grand evil scheme could be conceived much less executed. Now, after 5 months I am not so sure. “Accidental Disaster” could be a new way of getting out of a financial crisis for a company in a tight spot. Arson which had been the conventional favourite is now easily identified by forensic investigation. Financial scams like Madoff, Enron, Countrywide and other fraudulent tricks had been used and dried up. Offshore disasters look like an interesting and attractive option to exploit given the impunity status.

There had been persistent rumors of “empty” survey vessels being sunk for insurance claims. Underwater equipment “deliberately lost” at sea can be another lucrative mode of compensation since the internal components are more valuable than the rusted shells of mal-functioned equipment. “Accidental Disaster” could have been manufactured and there are enough people in the industry blinded by short financial incentives to look the other way. Welcome to the age of “Mass Deception & Robbery in broad daylight”.

“This piece is a condemnation of carbon fuels, not of the oil industry “as it could be” with adequate research and development for safer practices.”

NO this article was not written in support of one industry over another as you (TOM) have tried to insinuate. It is written to bare the truth, to convince people of the unthinkable; that people could be evil enough to cover up their crime of mass destruction and not think of the future disastrous consequence of their actions. Most of us cannot fathom the abyss of immorality we have sunk ourselves into, in the pursuit of insane material wealth, power and position. Our revelations are supposed to wake up the population into taking actions and giving Mother Nature a helping hand in the right direction. Those of us who worked hard on this cause sacrificed more than you can imagine. We give without the expectation of financial returns, rewards or coercion. Nothing is more powerful than that.

More than 100 years of over-dependence on oil has proliferated sufficient viral parasites to control the top management of the oil industry to bring it to the present ZOMBIE state of health; looks good on the outside but rotten to the core. I am speaking from experience here. There are enough regulations, researches and safety procedures for the oil industry to operate safely. But that is not the real problem. It is the enforcement of these regulations, the prostitution of principles and integrity, the self preservation and greed that had permeated industry-wide. If you are in the industry and are still oblivious to all these, then you are like 90% of the oil industry employees – too highly paid and too afraid to lose the material wealth and creature comfort especially in today’s uncertain economic times.

The same corruption, prostitution and parasitic control would also set in at any industry over-depended by the world like oil is. If water is as limited as oil the same would happen to the Water Industry. We need to solve the problems with oil now. We have millions of people all over the world involved in the oil industry. Any transition to a new energy has to be gradual. We are locked up in this desperate over-dependence on oil because of the deliberate delay in transitioning to a new energy. Even as soon as the prospect of a new energy is viable, the price of oil will drop. There is definitely a deliberate and concerted effort to keep Us Hooked On OIL to keep the oil companies hugely profitable and maintain their grip on the economy and people.

“But this is not about where oil should be drilled, it’s about condemning carbon fuels and the impact on the global climate by innuendo.”

The geology, geotechnical circumstances and geohazards do make the difference. The earth is not uniform. So you are definitely wrong here. I do not see any condemnation of carbon fuels by innuendo but the message that BP was criminal in covering up the disaster was loud and clear.

“By his own statements, the best solution for the GOM right now is the same one that BK Lim suggested ages ago – drill a half dozen wells into the reservoir and pump it as fast as can be tapped. Will the floor collapse? Who knows, but the oil will cease seeping if the pressure is reduced.”

I don’t know about “ages ago” since I suggested it only about 3 months ago. Given the uncontrollable seepage, extensive corrosive erosion and eventual destruction of the shallow environment (the genie cannot be put back into the bottle), the alternative of depleting the reservoir as fast as possible seems like an attractive option to me. Would you rather have the oil in the sea and spread it around the world. And in the process release methane that had taken millions of years to accumulate in a few years? Even for non-scientists it is a no-brainer that the world’s climate will go haywire with such an exponential increase in methane in the atmosphere. We cannot extract the oil in an economical manner as in normal production, it has to be done quickly and safely without compromise.

Oil in reservoir exists in the interstitial pore spaces between sand grains. Removing the high pressured oil through properly sealed wells to subsea pumping stations or storage units, does not collapse the reservoir formation. On the other hand, allowing oil, gas and brine fluid gushing uncontrollably through the open well bore does enlarge the vertical conduit to allow greater volume of fluid to escape. Erosion and underground explosion (cavitation) do cause damage and undermine stability of the shelf edges and domes.

So what is the choice?

You gotta see this:

So today I went to the pow wow. It was great. The REALLY wierd thing was in the same place we usually have the pow wow BP had a center for their equipment. The super wierd thing was that ther was acres of natural non- toxic stuff rotting away, while there we 176 empty containers of COREXIT 9527A, with barge and boat dispensers right by them. Weird, huh? I so happened to have a camera, of course.. so here ya go, draw your own conclusions folks... btw, can you say SERENDIPITOUS! All things to the Father.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=264398&id=798269089&fbid=472538264089

• Martin Larnersays:
  December 31, 2010 at 4:37 pm

  Your ‘facts’ are not correct.

  - There is very little evidence that oil is ‘abiotic’ and ‘abiogenic’. See these documentaries for a detailed study of the origins of oil:
  http://www.abc.net.au/science/crude/

  - There is only one example of an oil field ‘refilling’ and this was an anomaly. As with all other oilfields, it then began to decline irreversibly. All Oil fields follow a basic bell shaped graph and eventually deplete to a point where there is neither technically nor financially enough oil left to extract. Where are these ‘many’ wells that have partially or completely replenished? Show me one.

  - This idea that oil is the ‘lifeblood’ of the planet has absolutely no supporting evidence. Oil is however the lifeblood of Industrial Civilisation.

  Ask yourself the following:

  1. If oil wells refill, why has Mexicos Cantarell declined from a peak of 2.4mb/d in 2004 to a little over 400k b/d now? This is why Mexicos economy and society is descending into violence – a massive reduction in oil revenues has left the government powerless.
  2. If Saudi Arabia has ‘limitless oil’ why are they increasingly investing in offshore drilling for deeper, smaller, lower quality and more difficult to exploit reserves?
  3. If Texas oil wells are ‘refilling’ why are wells being abandoned and why is there a push for the Net Energy insane Tar Sands of Alberta and the incredibly difficult and dangerous Gulf of Mexico reserves?
  4. Why has the UK gone from an oil and gas exporter to a Net importer since production peaked in the North Sea in 1999?
  5. Why has US production steadily declined (even in the light of Alaskan Oil coming on line) since 1971 to the point where the US only supplies a third of its own demand?

  I could go on but I don’t see any need. TPTB are not as powerful as you imagine. They do not control the laws of physics, nor can they make a round and finite planet into an infinite one, or force the sudden existence of a substance that took literally 10s of millions of years to form.

BK Lim says:
January 1, 2011 at 6:45 am

“Where are these ‘many’ wells that have partially or completely replenished?” ….Martin

Dear Martin Larner,
I am not sure if you are a geologist by profession but using the above sentence to argue your case is totally out of line irrespective of whether is oil abiogenic or biogenic. You forgot the fundamentals of oil migration and accumulation. Oil do not migrate and accumulate at the same order of pace as oil extraction by the production wells. It takes thousands to millions of years to get where they are; fossil oil or deeper abiotic oil.
For many reservoirs, the geology might have undergone changes or the migration path no longer permeable. Would appreciate if you think first before opening your flanks wide open for attacks.
Do you want me to respond to your other assertions?