See this MSNBC interview with the late Matt Simmons:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG0CqD5MHOo&feature=player_embedded

Important points to note:

1. all the oil coming out that killed th Gulf of Mexico ... as opposed to the open holes several miles away .... that is still spilling 120,000 barrels of oil per day ..

2. enough is eough... time for the Govt ....to stop BP's advertisment ...stop deceiving the people...

3. ..send a submarine down there to find the open hole....

4. ... sonar images of the BOP finally located and the pieces of the casing that appear to .. 5 stories ...

5. ... I am not sure why they have not made that public .....may be they were just confused ...and alarm people

6. ...BP is so certain it all is coming from the drilling riser...

7... oil coming out of this 6 or 7 inch annular could not cover the gulf of mexico with 400-500 ft of this toxic oil at the top...

8... re the open hole several miles away .....if they acknowledge it they go to jail..and their fortune will be over, so they can't, so they lie..

9...are you suggesting the government is complicit in facilitating a lie ......not intentionally, I think they were basically confused

http://bklim.newsvine.com/_news/2010/11/09/5438040-has-the-post-disaster-recovery-program-become-a-profitable-scam-part-iiic-of-root-causes

As we have seen in many cases, disasters can be highly profitable for those who know in advance or "privileged few in the know" (PFitK). This is very clear from the pattern of massive selling by BP's directors and Goldman Sachs before the advent of an impending disaster. See A pattern of massive shares sell-off by BP directors prior to expected disasters.

Though hard to believe, there are many who would profit without hesitation upon the miseries of others. A mega-disaster like the BP's Oil Spill is one of those. Sometimes it is hard to say if a prescribed cure is supposed to make you feel better or improve the bottom line of the one prescribing it. Time will always tell, as it is revealing in the case of the BP Gulf Oil disaster.

Biloxi - Scientists have confirmed the discovery of oil on dead dolphins that have been appearing along the US Gulf coast recently, with oil on some of the dead dolphins linked to the BP oil spill, according to a government agency.
In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that of the 406 dolphins that have washed ashore in the last 14 months, 15 of them had oil on their bodies. Of that number, eight have been linked to oil from the BP catastrophe last year in the Gulf of Mexico.
The discovery raises new concerns over the true impact the oil disaster is having on the Gulf's food web.

• (12 March 2011)

Thad Daly, I took a little trip down memory lane and guess what? Within an hour, I found so many discrepancies and flip-flops in your comments I just have to write an article about your fictitious internet identity. You might also be pleasantly surprised with what I had dug up on your little naughty games with Merita Debbie Marble Blanchet, Deborah Dupre and Ian Crane. Wow a foursome. There are more involved but I haven't got time to check them out yet. Since you have been so impatient during my absence, I thought I get yours out of the way first.

But first a little check on your biodata. You boasted on 26 Aug and again on 7 Sept 2010, you had worked 50 years on the rig, retired 2 years ago and lived well. Then on 2 Feb 2011, you said you were a Mechanical Engineer – Drilling Fluid Engineer 40+ years in the oil field. Sounds impressive until you put in a little mathematics. They don't add up. You mentioned you first went to work on the rig the summer of 1959. Assuming you graduated as a young engineer out of university at the age of 23, then your year of birth should be 1936. But your stated birthday was 30 May 1942; 6 years short isn't it? Your University of Pacific in Peru was established in 1962; 4 years after you started work as a drilling engineer.

So assuming the year your father took you to the rig and your stated birth date were right (1959), then you must have started work when you were just 17 years old. Even back then I do not think you can graduate as an engineer at such a tender age of 17. So it is most probable you worked as a deckhand not an engineer. But then again you claimed that you worked the rig for 50 years. So that means you must have retired in 2009. But 2010 to 2009 is only 1 year. So you could not have retired for 2 years, 1 year maybe.

Oh I forgot. How many years did you serve with the US Navy/VAP 61 during the Nam wars? I don't believe the Navy was also operating a drilling rig in the Nam Wars. So if you serve a minimum of 2 years in Photo Intelligence, you could not have worked for 50 years on the rig itself. So it is either 48 years or you will retire only in 2011. So which is which? So you lied a little on 26 Aug and 7 Sept 2010 and when you set up your facebook page. That is 3 counts of lying. Tsk, Tsk!

So if you started work at 17 and did not take time off to study for your engineering degree, how did you qualify as a mechanical engineer or fluid engineer? Each course would have taken 4 years to complete. So either you took 8 years off to study for your degrees or you just bought them off the shelves in Bangkok during your recuperation leave from the Navy. No wonder you and Merita were so obsessed with or jealous of Dr Tom's degrees. More of that in my next article.

Without a college degree, you probably started as a trainee deckhand and slowly worked your way up to be a driller. But a rig operator is no mechanical engineer, or fluid engineer or drilling engineer as you claimed to be. It is like a bus driver claiming to be an auto engineer. An auto-engineer can choose to work as a bus driver but not the other way round unless the bus driver goes back to college to get his degrees.

Then you claimed to have worked in 40 countries in addition to US. Most rig workers are not permanent employees especially those who worked in so many countries as you. If you are a roughneck, you do not work when you are off the rig. An engineer, manager, geologist, geophysicist etc can still be working when they are off the rig or vessel. But a rig worker works with the tools and machinery on the rig. Once off the rig, you do not work. Local rig workers are permanently employed with 6 weeks on-2 weeks off or 1 month on – 1 month off schedules. They can still be considered gainfully employed. But if you are working in 40 countries plus US, it tells me you are a freelance rig worker. On lean times, you might not be working for months at a time. Most offshore regulations do not allow you to work more than 6 weeks in a stretch. So when you said you work 50 years, you must be lying. Total effective work time is probably 2/3 of 50 years = approx 30 to 35 years. That my friend is your effective work experience. So 50 years experience is pure Bull$h!t, right?

Your University of Pacific is also a suspect. The links at your facebook takes me to a university of the same name in Peru. That was why I asked whether you were a Peruvian, once. If you had really graduated from the Pacific University in California, I am sure you would have been proud to say so. No wonder you kept harping on me being as fictitious as you. Safety in numbers? Sorry I am not you. I have got my principles which of course get me into collision with the likes of you in the oil industry. Everyone trying to prove how big their butts are instead of the brains. Sorry there are more prostitutes than professionals in the oil industry.

Are we having fun yet? To earn your keep, there must be a daily quota of trashing anti-BP or anti-Haliburton bloggers. So come back to your obsession with MIHOP – a term coined by Dr Tom to mean Make It Happen On Purpose. Without analysing the data, I thought (as with everybody) it was accidental. As soon as I analysed the data, it became apparent to me that it was negligence, recklessness or just a disaster waiting to happen. When Dr Tom first suggested MIHOP, it sounded incredible but when you look at the evidences carefully, it was just that; MIHOP.

Thad Daly came out very strongly against this MIHOP thing in Jan 2011. The arguments for it were clearly laid out in my articles. So it was indeed puzzling why Thad Daly could not understand. It was only after I did the calculation on his Biodata that I realised he did not pass his degree exams. So now we have to excuse his limited comprehension on technical aspects. No wonder he came out with words like “conspiracy theories be DISPROVEN” ~ Thad Daly 03/12/11. I would personally prefer the phrase; conspiracy theories be PROVEN false.

On 7 Sept 2010, Thad Daly did propose a conspiracy that “ultra-hazardous oilfield are being spread by BP to deflect attention from their actions”. I do not quite understand what Thad meant but I am sure the word “conspiracy” was clearly spelled out. Maybe at that time BP had not yet recruited him to “trash BK yet”. Coincidentally he invited me to be his friend on Facebook on 25 Jan 2011 (or around that date, have to check it up).

Before that I supposed he was contracted to trash BP and those who wrote against Halliburton. Why? You have to excuse his lack of grammar. I am quoting phrases so as not to be out of context. See figure 147-1 for the full comments.

On August 25, 2010 at 7:40pm; Thad Daly commented “ this was NOT an accident.” ….”And even more reason for criminal charges so no other is so arrogant, so stupid.”

August 26, 2010 at 3:28pm Thad Daly commented “Why would they NOT drill and complete a multi million dollar wel in the surest, safest manner? There are rules, regulations and safety standards that were violated. Have you seen any of the testimony on CSpan? Halliburton warned BP BEFORE the cement job in writing. And the equipment to do the job right was on the rig, just take 10 hrs to install 15 more centralizer while RIH with the liner”

September 6, 2010 at 7:49am Thad Daly commented “If all of the drlg industry safe operating standards been followed there would have been no blow. Do you truely believe other companies will not followed the proper safety standards especial as the world is watching.”

September 6, 2010 at 6:51pm Thad Daly “Mac, either you can't read or chose to ignore the truth. Not rig, production platform. No explosion, no blow out, limited fire, no fatalities, all safety worked and no oil on the water.”

September 7, 2010 at 6:14am Thad Daly “Do not lose sight that the events on DWH WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT. It was due to intentional actions by BP. How many times does that need to be said? Saying it was an accident just apologises for BP, excusing them. Use y our "WEBSTER" look up accident, look up intentional. People harping on oilfield safety are chasing a wild hare. You want a conspiracy ? Here one, the gossip and rumors of the "ultrahazardous"oilfield are being spread by BP to deflect attention from their actions.”

Looking at all these, I am thoroughly convinced that Thad Daly was saying it was INTENTIONAL. If it was not ACCIDENTAL then it has to be planned (intentional). Doesn't “Make It Happen On Purpose” = INTENTIONAL?

So did Thad Daly have a different paymaster in 2010? Was he recruited to hound me with a different agenda and a new paymaster? So like a prostitute, he sings whatever tune the Client wishes. His skin is so thick, no nail can be hammered in. So do not waste my time. I have got better things to do. Watch out for the next article why the Deborah Dupre's article on 7 Feb 2011 was a setup.

Oh I forgot, working in the Navy Photo Intelligence does not equate to ROV interpretation. Reading a few aerial recon photos does not make one an expert in geomorphology and geohazards analysis. To understand what those ROV video means, you need to know the basics of sedimentation, geology, kinetics, oceanography and other fundamentals of science. Yeah a rigger could read aerial recon photos – big deal. No wonder he could not make out the rov images and evidences presented in my articles. To date, no one has dared to challenge me on these evidences. Only a dumb Ass rigger who knows nuts dared to open his mouth without thinking. I feel awful trashing anyone this bad but he kept asking for it …..sigh!

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Above is a letter which I have written to two US Congressmen/Chairmen regarding some geohazard/seafloor developments at the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, the location of last year's BP Oil Spill.

I have posted many articles on the internet on the geohazardous conditions at the Macondo site (see http://bklim.newsvine.com and http://phoenixrisingfromthegulf.wordpress.com). Those of us working in the Oil and Gas Industry know how dangerous oil exploration can be and the disastrous consequences of any blowout, especially those that had reached their targeted reservoirs. The number of near disasters and oil spill disasters in recent years is not, and can never be, good for our industry. The safety of our working colleagues and the future of the oil industry are dependent on improving, not deteriorating safety standards and compromising preventive pre-drill planning, management and geohazards assessment.

We must also prove to the world our sincerity, our responsibility and our accountability towards preserving the global environment and leaving the world in a better place for our children. To those who know me or have worked with me in the past, I would deeply appreciate your support in emailing some words of verification that I (BK Lim) am a real person (not virtual) and a professional geohazards specialist working in the offshore Oil and Gas Industry. If appropriate, you might want to address any similar issues or incidents that would validate a pattern of conduct which led to the Macondo Blowout, as well as many similar situations that have occurred throughout the history of offshore oil and gas drilling.

To those who have not met me in person, but have come across my past work and contribution to the industry, please spare some time to write to:

Dr. Tom Termotto, National Coordinator

Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference

Tallahassee, FL

"Oil Spill Solution"

We greatly need the world's support in the remediation of the BP Oil Spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Who would be better to lend support to this international community endeavor than those whose livelihoods depend on the Gulf's future, and those who understand the true state of affairs wherever oil and gas drilling are conducted in the oceans of the world.

Kind regards,

BK Lim

Links to video mentioned in the letter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aDI2X5hMOo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF5pWTvu5L4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_DgHYF8rKg&feature=related

It is with deep regret that we file this report. We do not take this responsibility lightly, as the consequences of the following observations are of such great import and have such far-reaching ramifications for the entire planet. Truly, the fate of the oceans of the world hangs in the balance, as does the future of humankind.

It's not a pretty picture.

The various pictures, photos and diagrams that fill the many articles at the aforementioned website represent photo-evidence about the true state of affairs on the seafloor surrounding the Macondo Prospect in the Mississippi Canyon which is located in the Central Planning Area of the northern Gulf of Mexico. The very dynamics of the dramatic changes and continuous evolution of the seafloor have been captured in ways that very few have ever seen. These snapshots have given us a window of understanding into the true state of the underlying geological formations around the various wells drilled in the Macondo Prospect.

The biggest deception in the BP’s Mega Oil Spill disaster has been the existence of the third well (S20BC); the only well that actually reached BP’s targeted reservoir at 18,300 ft below mudline (bml). A gushing well drilled deep into the highly faulted fragile Gulf-Salt Geology would be difficult to kill even under the best of conditions. Of the 3 wells drilled, the shallowest and easiest well to kill (Well A) was chosen to be the star of the greatest magic show on earth; a multibillion “state of the art” Mass Deception Production that needed the full cooperation of the world’s most powerful government and main stream media to produce.

But the featured magic stunt was proving difficult to perform with an unwilling and unpredictable star well. Although drilled only 5000ft (13,000ft short of BP’s targeted oil reservoir), Well A is located in the vicinity of the intersection of a shallow E-W normal shallow fault and the major NW-SE strike-slip fault zone. Well B which was drilled deeper (13,300 ft bml) intercepted this E-W fault and the Rigel Gas reservoir. Therefore Well A is well-supplied with gas and oil from both faults as its last 1000ft (from 4000 – 5000ft bml) was never cased. Does this explain why Well A is so difficult to “kill”, especially with a >3,000 ft drill-string stuck at the bottom of the open well?

Does the short and open bottom well explain the many mysteries of the leaking well? In particular, the low capped well pressure which maxed out at 6900 psi; far short of the expected pressure range of 8000-9000 psi. Or the mysterious 40% cement loss when 500 barrels of cement were pumped in for the top static kill on 3 Aug? All the unexplainable observations at Well A made no sense simply because it was not the 18,300ft well that reached the targeted reservoir. BP’s managers who knew the truth, must have laughed out their asses at the pro-BP Schills leading intricate expert discussions on how to kill the star well that never quite reach the reservoir. Now does that make sense?

Understandably Well A which was unceremoniously laid to rest on 8 Nov 2010, will not lay dead for long. A steady stream of gas bubbles, deep gashes around the wellhead, black clouds of oil seeping through the fault crevices and a couple of bulging mounds waiting to explode are reminders that the Zombie Well will spring back to life.

Meanwhile the real gusher well at S20BC marked by a giant solitary piled tombstone lays eerily silent in a middle of a devastated seafloor. Devoid of life, the wasted seabed scarred by trenches, scattered pieces of wrecks, potholes, craters and an artificial turf of cement-drilling mud mixture, is reminiscent of a bombed out battlefield. But is the gusher well really dead or has it morphed into a “multiple-headed hydra” deep beneath the seafloor that is even more difficult to kill.

BP’s simplistic and geologically unrealistic aim of plugging a single tubular hole in a solid mass of rocks is as unreal and unstable as a “sand castle on the beach”. After months of spewing a corrosive mix of gas, oil and brine into the fragile faulted Gulf Salt-Geology, even the most optimistic geologists would come to the grim conclusion that the 18,300 ft well is no longer the only vertical conduit out of the reservoir. In all probability, a complex multi-pathway monster (more akin to the mythical multi-headed Hydra that Heracles tried to slay) has developed in its place. As said many times before, there is simply no way to plug the genie back into the bottle.

BP’s failure to stop oil and gas escaping from the reservoirs is confirmed by increased (not decreased) work activities at the Macondo site. Officially BP declared they were winding down and packing up after their purported successful permanent bottom kill by the relief well on 19 Sept. Their “victory cry” rang hollow when an additional drilling rig (West Sirius) arrived without notice at the Macondo Site in mid October.

Why would 4 very expensive rigs, each costing more than 1 million USD/day, be milling around in the Macondo prospect after the MC252 Well was long declared dead? Why should dozens of expensive vessels still be working with multi-million dollar ROVs scanning the dead seabed for signs of life, months after well A was capped and top-killed?

Is such extravaganza on a dead well warranted? See the contradictions? Why spend tens of millions of dollars per day grouting, combing the seafloor just to observe a couple of eels, spraying chemicals (presumably dispersants) if the oil-gas leaks from the reservoirs had been successfully sealed? Why idle 4 expensive rigs (which were presumably not drilling) around a supposedly dead well?

BP had repeatedly said they would make it right. Yes, right by whom? On the other hand, you have millions of unpaid bills, thousands of unemployed gulf victims waiting in vain for their miserable compensation from BP’s 20 billion dollar fund and thousands of miles of abandoned oiled coastlines waiting for rehabilitation. Does this sound right? The script of this disaster movie is getting more and more absurd by the day.

Shouldn’t the “main stream media” at least ask what the hell is going on at the Gulf? Their silence on the grieving Gulf is indeed deafening! There are abundant contentions for investigative journalism. But where are the big boys?

Perhaps the script writer of this Disaster Movie got the script mixed up with the Cinderella Story? Lock up the Cinderella Gulf victims on the coast while the Evil BP Sisters vine and dine on the luxurious drilling rigs at sea. Or did the Marie Antoinette of BP Palace say “let them eat cakes”? Whatever it is, the dead corpses are beginning to stink. The script writers were running out of “spinning story lines” to explain the “rotting smell” coming out of the closet.

The nightmare tale of “BP’s Three Wishing Wells” is one of mega extremes. Plagued with massive cost over-runs, the ill-conceived B-rated movie production was forced to change its script each time Mother Nature refused to play ball. It is truly a mega-disaster movie of epic proportions, one with a predictably bad and sad ending for the victims of the gulf and Mother Nature as the impotent corrupted regulators watched helplessly on the side stage.

In the original script, the movie was supposed to have ended soon after the carnage of the disaster was exposed and the villains brought to justice. But the script changed to protect the villains when the hawks won over the boardroom. Instead of genuine recovery and containment efforts, the emphasis switched to covering up BP’s criminality and limiting their financial liabilities.

Why else would BP so readily declare that the relief wells would take more than 3 months to drill when 2 months would be more than sufficient? Although BP publicly displayed full confidence in killing the gushing well with their relief well efforts; privately they had reservations. The discrepancy between Publicly Displayed Confidence and Private Reservation is apparent from several angles. Would they have bought the additional buffer time so secretly if they were so confident of success, operation wise? An open heart surgery in full view of a live world audience would prove BP’s confidence and do wonders for BP’s stocks. On the other hand, unexplained covert relief well efforts with many reversals would make BP look BAD; a total mockery of BP’s professed guaranteed success.

But why would BP want to publicly flaunt the confidence they did not have?

Most independent experts rated the Relief Well Kill efforts to have less than 30% chance of success. Why would there be such a large disparity in predicted success rate? Previous relief well efforts in past disasters achieved their objectives of controlling and killing the wild wells after several failed attempts spanning several months.

So either BP was very naïve or the “race had been rigged” to produce the predicted winner. With little evidence of naivety, it was more likely the polls had been rigged to provide the right winning number. The evidence for this can be deciphered from the many discrepancies between BP’s mass destruction at site and “Bogus Good Intentions” made by BP.

Public confidence is an essential ingredient in any scam. Nobody had expected BP to be perfect in dealing with a mega disaster never experienced before. A 50% chance of success would have been perfectly acceptable. In trying to project 100% false confidence in an uncertain circumstance BP had only itself to blame for its relief well failures.

Many chapters of BP’s Art of Mass Deception manual had been heavily borrowed from the world’s financial bubbles guidebooks. Less than 2 months into the disaster, many independent observers were puzzled by BP’s inconsistent recovery efforts. BP’s capping and relief wells efforts were seen by many, as distractive magic shows. The deliberate efforts to cloud the situation with misinformation were clearly parts of BP’s scheme of Mass Deception.

Why Is Bps Macondo Blowout So Disastrous Beyond Patch Up …29 July 2010

This could also mean that BP was getting less and less confident that the relief wells would work. The relief wells were held up as the last Trump card. If it fails in full (ROV) view of the concerned public throughout the world, BP’s shares would drop like a stone. There are good geological reasons why the chances of the relief wells’ success are less than 30%. But that would be in the next posting.

So instead “of going on a public stage with a final trump card of 30% chance of success” and risking everything BP stands for, a magic show will be set up so that what ever happens, it will be a success. How?

Deception is however a double edge sword. Coded errors are genetic finger-prints which provide valuable clues of bad intentions. Measured against standard professional practices, unethical misconducts stand out like sore thumbs beneath the charade.

The disconnect between the promulgated bogus “good intentions” and the actual mass destruction at ground zero (seafloor 5000ft below) is clearly documented by the ROV videos. Although adulterated, valuable information can still be deciphered from the video footages. By why adulterate the videos in the first place? It only meant that BP had a lot to hide.

To prevent uncensored versions and information from getting out, BP had to impose stringent security measures and heavy clampdown of “dissidents”. Unadulterated insiders’ videos had to be smuggled out using innovative means. If this is not an “Independent Police State” operating within the United States, then authoritarian states like North Korea and other of the world must be Freedom Paradises. What a paradox? The world’s foremost champion of freedom of information sanctioning pockets of “communist regimes” within her sovereign borders?

What are the chances of 3 accidental deaths of 3 prominent figures closely associated with the disaster in the last 3 months? The late Matt Simmons died in a hot water bath on 8 Aug; Ex-Senator Stevens in a plane crash in Alaska on 10 Aug and Jim Black, a BP incident commander for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill response team in a plane crash in Florida on 24 Nov 2010. No doubt more deaths will follow.

Perhaps crime does pay but only for those at the very top. The top engineers of the disaster have until today remained free and have gotten their luxurious yachting life back but not the millions who had been sentenced to a life of the walking dead. Thousands are thrown off their normal livelihood with no means of getting them back. But for the perpetrators of the crime of the century, they were amply rewarded with golden parachutes. Heck, this is more rewarding than big time bank robberies. So watch out for more “block buster” mega disasters in the near future. Which unscrupulous criminal wouldn’t? “State-sponsored” crimes of mass destruction carried out with impunity.

Of course these crimes of mass destruction could not have materialized if the internal check and balance had not been compromised; if not for lapses of judgment, compromised principles and integrity, corruptions and expediency at every level of planning and operation within the industry. Industrial safety standards would not have deteriorated to this low level if only the general population had been more concerned and better informed. Oil companies like BP should not be left to their own devices. Like financial bubbles, these white collar crimes of mass destruction will “bubble and burst” if they are allowed to proliferate with impunity. The most favorite excuse of all time: no concrete evidence of wrong doing.

Well how concrete do you want the evidence to be? We have already seen video images of the giant solitary piled (concrete) tombstone for the third missing well (S20BC). We have already presented images of large scale mass destruction at the Macondo site. Concrete evidences of increased work activities like grouting were recorded long after the Macondo well was declared dead. This was contrary to BP’s own declared intention of winding down the “killing works” after the reportedly “successful top static kill” on 2 Aug. The forensic analyses of the Deepwater Horizon wreckage, BP’s Macondo bathymetry chart and geohazards assessment showed that all the irregularities and inconsistencies could not have been accidental mistakes. Nobody especially a technological giant with thousands of technical experts could be that STUPID. The trail of premeditated, cleverly disguised “mistakes” can only lead to one conclusion; willful negligence and greed.

If the tens of pages of documented evidence are too tedious to read, just consider the most recent blatant lie by BP. Main stream media all over the world reported BP’s press statement that the relief well finally intercepted the rogue well on 15 Sept after months of waiting just 10 feet from the well. With that, BP declared the crisis to be finally over and the world rewarded BP with a price hike in BP’s stock.

Now for what obvious reason would BP need to lie about the relief well intercept? Although we have long suspected the relief well fiasco much earlier in July, there was a need to keep “radio silence” for obvious reasons. We could only start releasing the concrete ROV evidence in The Hole Truth Nothing But The Truth On The 3rd Hole from 15 Nov 2010 onwards, after BP had clearly shown their “cards”.

Recent insiders’ information also confirmed that Relief Well C had indeed intercepted the rogue well in the first week of July 2010.

Figure 139-1 shows the smoking gun of the third well (S20BC). Were the relief well efforts to kill the rogue well unsuccessful as predicted by independent experts in the first week of July? BP obviously could not show the “casing removal operation” video dated 29 July, as that would confirm the existence of the third missing well BP has denied since day 1. If the relief well had managed to stop the flow (as evident in the video), surely it would have been advantageous for BP to announce it. That was precisely the problem BP faced with the magic show at well A. BP cannot “show the oil leak from the reservoir has been licked” while enormous amount of oil clouds was still spewing uncontrollably through the crevices in the fault zones.

See segment 3:38-5:50 of the 10:33 mins video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0u9bT7VbK0.The incriminating video segment had to be embedded between the publicly broadcasted video to escape detection.

BP realised then, their bottom kill by the relief wells would not work as many had earlier feared. Was their silence on the relief well efforts a tacit admission of defeat? Two and a half (2 ½ months) is a long delay by any standard.

Was the sudden announcement that “the well was finally intercepted and permanently killed” on 19 Sept compelled by political pressure before the mid-term election? Given BP’s admission that the bottom Kill operation required weeks of logistic preparation and analytical calculations, wasn’t the surprised 19 Sept Announcement a “prepack virtual instant kill”; only to be microwaved for serving at a moment notice. That surprised announcement of success took the wind out of BP’s fans who had been waiting anxiously for months to see the exciting grand finale. Suddenly they were told the final match was over. Many felt cheated and disappointed as was Thad Allen who had announced a week earlier, the grand finale postponement. So much for BP’s promise of transparency and accountability. Obviously Thad Allen was not the one calling the shot. Who would want his own credibility shot to pieces, by announcing the week before that the permanent kill via the relief well intercept would not happen until mid October due to “undisclosed problems”?

Was the fanatic extensive grouting effort during the 2 ½ months before the final announcement on 19 Sept anything to do with the extensive oil spewing out of the crevices in the fault zones?

The evidence seems to suggest this was indeed the case. Five days after the 29 July “Well Casing Removal OPS”, the rogue 3^rd well was actively spewing coloured fluid again on 3 Aug. What happened on 2 Aug? What triggered the shallow Mag 3 Earthquake at Louisiana on 2 Aug? Coincidentally BP started pumping in cement to “static top kill” Well A on 3 Aug. Does this confirm the fault connection between Well A and the third well at S20BC?

With all the mysteries and coincidental fantasies, this disaster movie is as credible as “Alice in Wonderland”. With all these discrepancies and outright lies, can we ever trust BP or any other oil company again?

No crime is ever committed without motives. Disasters do not occur out of the blue without the seeds of destruction being sowed first. Half-baked and blinded investigation in the BP’s mega oil spill disaster will just sow the seeds for future disasters. Unfortunately both the BP’s official and the Presidential Investigations seem to be just that; a blinded and half-baked investigative show to absolve BP of criminality and limit BP’s financial liability. Both investigation reports never mentioned the 2^nd or 3^rd wells despite the overwhelming evidences. Any investigation which does not address the obvious damage to the well casing seen in figure 139-1 would be as trustworthy as a fox guarding the chicken coop. Would it be any surprise the main stream media are just as loudly silent on the injustices done to the Gulf Victims and Mother Nature?

- dedicated to Borehead, Fishwarrior and others fighting for the oppressed “small people” fishing businesses.

A crime is not a crime unless you are caught with your pants down. Yet you wonder why the “big people” don’t go to jail for perjury, for insider trading, murder and other crimes even when caught red-handed. On the other hand, the lesser people or “small people” as BP chairman referred to were punished disproportionally. See the many articles highlighting the high-handed punishments meted out to poor fishermen for failing to observe NOAA’s stringent catch quota and NOAA/NMFS’s unfair treatment of fishermen and the Federal Government’s takeover and redistribution of marine resources at Bore-head007 and fishwarrior columns at Newsvine.com

Nowhere is the disparity in double standards more evident than in the regulators’ kid glove treatment of BP’s gross violations and repeated misconducts. See ex-EPA attorney’s 12 years wrestle to disqualify BP from receiving billions of dollars in government contracts and other benefits for repeated misconducts. Yet despite the high risk of offshore exploration drilling especially in the delicate deep water shelf edge zone, MMS (Minerals Management Services, the federal agency previously in charge of regulating offshore drilling activities) gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf. See US said to allow Drilling without needed permits.

One would have thought NOAA should be more concerned with BP’s gross negligence and misconduct as any disaster like the DeepWater Horizon blowout would have financial, environmental and social impacts far greater than any accidents involving the small fishing businesses. Drilling into a major strike-slip fault zone and an active mud-volcano would be inviting trouble yet BP was never charged for gross negligence. Drilling into the worst possible high risk geohazardous location must be willful negligence of the highest order. Yet BP was never punished. On the other hand, “excessive fines are normal" said Gloucester-based fisheries attorney Stephen Ouellette. "Regulatory compliance is less important to NOAA than collecting money for their expenses." NOAA Attorney Charles Juliand’s cash demand draws ethic fire.

Would BP a technological multinational giant, admit to not knowing the existence of the NW-SE strike-slip fault and mud-volcano it was drilling into? That would be an admission of gross incompetence since the broken geology, faults and mud-volcanoes are clearly evident even on the basis of publicly available information. It is doubtful BP would publicly challenge the forensic and technical analyses given in bklim.newsvine.com.

BP has long denied ever drilling more than 1 well at the Macondo 252 prospect. That is a complete lie. Images of 2 different well-heads were published on 11 Nov 2010 to prove this. More images captured by BP’s ROVs are given here to provide the conclusive proof that the third and deepest well (S20BC) did exist. That well was the only well (out of the three) to have reached the oil reservoir at 18,300 ft bml. Images to prove that BP had not ceased chemical spraying despite public denials were published on 13 Nov 2010.

So when Tony Hayward swore to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth before Congress, was he not guilty of perjury. If NOAA is toothless in prosecuting BP for their crimes of perjury and mass destruction, then NOAA should also lay off persecuting the “small people” fishing businesses.

The following video-footages and images, establish the fact that the third well (S20BC) exists. Further if the dates on the ROVs’ video are correct then the relief wells must have intercepted the rogue well much earlier than 15 Sept. For BP to be working on the casing of the blown well, the gushing well needed to be bullheaded first by the relief wells. In all probability at least one of the 2 relief wells must have intercepted the rogue well in the first week of July. And while the relief well was bullheading and trying to kill the rogue well, BP was performing a “dog & pony show” on the shallowest well (Well A) which was drilled down to only 5,000ft bml. The whole truth of the 3^rd well is reminiscent of “The Emperor Wore No Clothes” story.

Businessweek - 2010-07-02 Bp’s Gulf Well Ahead Of Schedule To Intercept Leak

The target date for intercepting the leaking well and pumping in mud and cement to permanently seal it is still mid- August, U.S. National Incident Commander Thad Allen said today on a conference call with reporters. The well is within 600 feet (182 meters) of intercepting the leak, he said.

“They are ahead of schedule at this point,” Allen said. “I am reluctant to tell you that it will happen before the middle of August because I think that everything associated with this spill and response recovery suggests that we should under- promise and over-deliver.”

Huffingtonpost - 2010/06/28 BP relief well within 20 ft of Gusher, On schedule

HOUSTON -- BP says the rig drilling the relief well that's the best hope of stopping the Gulf oil spill has made it within about 20 feet horizontally of the blown-out well that's gushing crude. BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said Monday that the rig is going to drill an additional 900 feet down before crews cut in sideways and start pumping in heavy mud to try to stop the flow from the damaged well. It's currently about 16,770 feet down.

Wells says BP is moving extremely cautiously to make sure everything is lined up correctly and the relief well is still on target to be finished by early August. A second well is being drilled as a backup. Wells says the company has a high degree of confidence in the relief wells.

~~~~~end of quote ~~~~~~~

A normal well takes 3 to 4 weeks to drill. A relief well with an inclined trajectory will probably take 6 weeks. So Relief Well C should have reached the 3rd rogue well at 18,000ft bml by the first week of July as suspected. BP was just playing for time and was not sure if the relief wells could successfully kill the well from below even though publicly they still maintained that the Relief Wells were the surest and most reliable way of plugging the leaks. But BP soon found out the hard way what many independent geologists had been expecting of the broken geology; that it was impossible to put the Genie back into the bottle.

From the first week of July till mid September, BP was lying to the anxious world that the Relief Well C was still waiting to intercept (even though it was less than 20 feet horizontally from the rogue well) when it already had and had been trying to bottom kill it without success. Did Thad Allen “lie (knowingly or unknowingly)” to the shocked world in early Sept that the Relief Well Intercept would not happen until mid October. Then suddenly on 19 Sept BP released an official press statement that the Macondo 252 well “had been successfully cemented” which started unannounced on 15 Sept. All were taken by surprise including the BP’s goons at TOD who had spent months discussing and at times arguing intensely on the intricate details of intercepting the wild well. BP sure fooled the world. Was the 19 Sept press statement prompted by political consideration when nothing had changed with respect to permanently killing of the well or rather the leaks from the reservoir? Now that the truth of the 3^rd Well is blown open wide, NOAA should have no more excuses in prosecuting BP. Not to do so will be an obvious dereliction of NOAA’s duty.

The following videos show the rare footage of the third well (courtesy of BeePeeOildisaster) and its vicinity:

Figure 138-1 - Undated video with no rov information at all. The video is inverted (shown upside down) to confuse.

10 July 2010 (date of video posting) http://www.youtube.com/user/BeePeeOilDisaster#p/u/282/Qq83rFsVzvc

Figure 138-2 – Shows a casing dipping about 10º into the seafloor, next to a turbulent gas column.

5 July 2010 http://www.youtube.com/user/BeePeeOilDisaster#p/u/266/iOE8SjWzP-A

13 Nov 2010 – BK Lim

The MC 252 well has been officially shut since 15 July (BP’s press release and website announcement). As late as Sept 2010, the world was still publicly assured that the bottom kill by the relief wells was the surest and most reliable way of killing (permanently) the oil leak from the reservoir. BP and Thad Alan publicly declared the rogue well was “successfully and permanently” cemented at 18,000 ft below mudline (bml) by the relief wells that started unannounced on 15 Sept 2010. Are these just empty rhetoric and part of BP’s elaborate Mass Deception Act?

First of all, please be informed that the oil leak from the reservoir was never killed and could never be killed. The late Matt Simmons paid with his life to bring us that message. And the world repaid him with words of ridicule in technical blogs around the world.

~~~~~~~quote~~~~~~

Peak oiler, energy blogger, and chemical engineer Robert Rapier has published a series of critical evaluations of Simmons' work, the most recent of which was published -- of all places (!) -- inThe Oil Drum website. The TOD article takes a close look at some of Simmons' recent statements about the oil spill in the Gulf. A careful reader will come away with the clear conclusion that Simmons' credibility is in tatters, blowing in the breeze. Only the truest of Simmons true believers in TOD comments persists in defending the recent incredible and fantastic statements that Simmons had made to the press.

Matt-Simmons-has-had-quite-ride

~~~~end of quote ~~~~~~

We have been lied to, thru and thru. It is very obvious why the activities (besides ramming up the recovery costs to capitalize on the idling rigs) did not decrease after the official “shut down date of 15 July”. The gas-oil spill continues unabated till this day. The capping of well A was just a “dog & pony show” to fool the world. There is a constant need to spray chemicals to disperse and to coagulate the oil and methane leaking into the gulf, to cover up the magnitude of the disaster.

The deception is obvious when BP had to disguise the chemical spraying operations as “Cement OPS” and “Rig Move”; inspection of the grouted seafloor as “biological survey” and intended explosion operations as “gooseneck ops” just to name a few. Any worker can tell that these ROV videos are not recording what the label says. Why is the US government still in denial and the main media completely silent? The official spin is that we do not need anymore bad news to derail the financial recovery. This is just as bad as Burma’s Generals with their chests full of fake medals. (See Burma Bummer – by Dean Johns). Would a few more disasters spur the economy?

Admittedly one crow does not make a new sun rise. But tens of concrete evidences of criminality and still no prosecution? People of the humane First World were shocked by the immense sufferings and atrocities committed by the authoritarian regimes of Burma, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Somalia and many other 3^rd world countries. Powerful first world countries are unwilling to act for various political and economic reasons. But genocide being carried by a multinational corporate right in the backyard of the world’s most powerful nation and blatantly ignored by the world’s main media? What the hell is going on? Does the world not care a single bit on the mass destruction of the marine life and condemnation of millions to a life of the walking dead? And we call ourselves civilized? Hilter would pale in comparison.

Capping the well and bottom-killing it with relief wells were the wrong moves. See The High Risk Of Capping BP’s Gushing Well. Despite sending them all the emails and copies of my articles, BP and those in control never responded and never listened. Now we are living out a mega disaster with urgency as the worst is yet to come.

The evidences at hand clearly debunk that hollow premature victory cry on 19 Sept10. Would BP admit defeat at the hands of Mother Nature? No. Keeping with the same reckless spirit that drove the Macondo Wells to destruction and disaster, BP is now speeding the world into an irreversible ecological catastrophe; one that will start us on the express highway to the eventual destruction of world civilization. Not the planet itself as Mother Earth is more resilient than the human beings renting the living accommodation on its land surface.

The images of mass destruction and deception in the Gulf are brought to you by concerned citizens of the world. See for yourself, the future of this planet flashing before your eyes in the comfort of your living room. You have been forewarned. In generations to come, you have to answer to your children why nothing had been done to avert their untold miseries.

(Pictures are updated from time to time in no particular order …last update 13 Nov 2010).

9 Nov10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utmcsJ5CDKg

9 Nov10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVQZr1OQcEQ

9 Nov 10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgje868NAUs

10Nov10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaa6wy55aA8

10Nov10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8D_aEc1ti0

10Nov10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF5pWTvu5L4

05Nov10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8ftMwI4Y9w

05Nov10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZytL6IZFqM

21Oct10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7twypJ0QRCQ&feature=related

12 Nov 2010.

On the 204^th day of the continuing BP’s Oil Spill disaster, BP quietly informed through a teleconference on 10 Nov that the “plug and abandonment of the Macondo 152 well” was completed on 2 days ago. This was reported by the Voice of America (VoAnews.com) with the title “BP abandons Damaged Gulf of Mexico Oil Well”.

BP restorethegulf.gov/release/2010/11/10/transcript-operational-update-fosc-rear-adm-paul-zukunft

Paul Zukunft: Good morning. This is Admiral Paul Zukunft. This is the 204th day of the Deepwater Horizon response. One milestone that probably most people were not aware of this week – two days ago, the plug and abandonment of the Macondo 252 well was complete. And in fact, when it was completed, the cap that went over it has 11 stars on it to memorialize the 11 lives lost during that tragic explosion on April 20.

But what was most interesting was the picture they chose to display for the article. See figure 136-1.

Not only was the still image of the “well” outdated by more than 157 days (8 June 2010) it is also the wrong image of the well. On 8 June 2010, oil and gas were still gushing out of the first LRMP cap on top of the BOP after the riser had just been cut. See CNN video dated 8 Jun 2010 BP-releases-new-hd-video-of-leaking-oil-well.

Voice of America might not be aware that the date on the Oceaneering ROV is on dd-mm-yy British not American format. Thus 08-06-10 is 8 June 2010 and not 6 August 2010. One must wonder why was this particular image chosen?

There are so many ROV images of the capped well (well A) right up to 10 Nov 2010, the day the news of the “capped well finally laid to rest” was announced. See Is The Last Rite For The Macondo Well For Real published on 8 Nov 2010. So why choose this particular wrong image of the well? To start off with, it is not even close to the capped well. This is the image of the “smaller container dome” that was supposed to be used to contain the oil spill. The idea was abandoned without even being tried. See The Mystery Of The April 20 Blowout Revealed Answers To Questions Raised 001.

~~~~~~start of quote from previous article~~~~~~~~

Mysteriously, these sincere efforts appeared to diminish as the full financial implication and magnitude of the oil gushes at several reported locations set in. In the 10 May BP’s statement, the giant containment dome parked at the seabed near the spill area was never used at all. One has to wonder why BP would spend all that expenses to build and transport these containment domes and never even try them on before declaring they could not be used. At the same time, BP appeared to be backing off the containment option and preferring the “TOP KILL” option.

BP's Update on GOM Spill Response - 10 May

The containment dome that was deployed last week has been parked away from the spill area on the sea bed. Efforts to place it over the main leak point were suspended at the weekend as a build up of hydrates prevented a successful placement of the dome over the spill area.

A second, smaller containment dome is being readied to lower over the main leak point. The small dome will be connected by drill pipe and riser lines to a drill ship on the surface to collect and treat oil. It is designed to mitigate the formation of large hydrate volumes. This operation has never been done before in 5,000 feet of water. In addition, further work on the blow-out-preventer has positioned us to attempt a “top kill” option aimed at stopping the flow of oil from the well. This option will be pursued in parallel with the smaller containment dome over the next two weeks.

How could the hydrates have built-up at the dome which was not even placed over the gas leak? Was this a Freudian slip? Why were the BOP and the “Top Kill” option mentioned only 20 days after the blowout? Surely BP is no novice to containing a disaster situation? Did the hawks win over the doves in the battle of Evil Self-Interest & Mass Deception Vs Admitted Liability & Sincere Containment?

~~~~end of quote~~~~~~~~~

The reasons are obvious why the actual still images of the capped well cannot be used. The situation at site is now much worse than it was shown before. BP has spent so much time and effort to erase the magnitude of the disaster from public memory. With carefully orchestrated Mass deception moves, the world at large has been hypnotized to think that the Macondo Well has been peacefully laid to rest. Not much sense in waking up public concern with disturbing images of turbulent oil and gas columns, blown craters and other evidences of the failed attempts to contain the oil spill. See the sad evidences shown in figures 136-2 and 136-3.

This is why Voice of America could not use any of the later ROV images of the capped well. The images just would not fit the serene funeral service to “memorialize the 11 lives lost during that tragic explosion on April 20”.

See reports at

http://gozounlimited.newsvine.com/_news/2010/11/12/5455115-bp-oil-slams-florida

http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/heartbreaking-discovery-fl-border-massive-amounts-submerged-surface-oil-beaches

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/11/bp-oil-slams-florida.html

11 Nov 2010 – dedicated to Sharyn Burley & Gary Simmons for their efforts to spread the truth.

There have been consistent rumors since the disaster broke out that BP had drilled two wells. Figure 135-1 shows 2 different well heads placed side by side. Lately we have also seen the corrosive effects of the “potent mixture” that is pouring out not only from the broken wells but also through the crevices in the seafloor. Naturally the vessels working the longest would suffer the most corrosion. See the many you-tube video postings on the “rumors” of hull corrosion. The difference in the “age” of the two wells is most telling if you examine in close up view the yellow marker band. Test your observation and investigative skills on the number of differences between these two well heads.

Naturally 2 well heads means 2 well locations which also mean at least 2 wells were drilled, right? However, it might be difficult for some to grasp this obvious logic. See figure 135-2 on the official email reply from BP Press office in UK.

“There was only ever one well drilled on the MC252 lease”….. BP Press Office, London

In case there are doubts the “newer and less corroded” well head at well B location is real, figure 135-3 gives the full details of the well location complete with the signature deceptive movement of the well head. If these videos are fakes or video of other well heads in other parts of the world (not from the Macondo Lease itself as asserted by BP) then the many people who recorded and posted these videos independently on the you-tube, must have been robotically controlled and synchronized within seconds to come out with amazingly identical adulteration.

Just as in genetic decoding in DNA analyses, all mutations leave a pattern of coding errors; a distinct departure from any random errors. We have seen the “flying ROVs”, “time-travel drilling rigs” and many wonderful “time-space magic” technology introduced by BP and company. But can you actually transport a well-head embedded in the seabed through 557ft in less than 16 seconds? We must ask BP to reveal this important technology. If the world is going to be destroyed by all these senseless mass destructive activities, we may need to transport the White House to a safer location. Or we may need to transport ourselves out of this world to another planet. So BP please help, in the name of HUMANITY!

01-Aug-10..….Well A Inspection, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEKyWhPDmwQ

03-Sep-10...……..BOP Recovery, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hnR16azv0Q

02-Nov-10.Well Head Inspection, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2It7vcsQg7s

26-Oct-10……Well A Inspection, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cJZyO7NzWY

29-Oct-10……Well A Inspection, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtS0dh_Y1M4

Figure 134-1 shows the satellite image with the location of the four drilling rigs at the Macondo Site. West Sirius moved out on the morning of 2 Nov 2010 to park at the edge of the Mississippi Canyon, south of Grande Isle. But the position track for the last 1 week, after our articles on the mysteries of the “flying drilling rigs” were out, had been anomalous. West Sirius has been flying all over the place as shown in figure 134-2. The position has been obtained from www.marinetraffic.com. Perhaps the website which receives the vessel update information from BP are not aware of the position discrepancies.

So just as the BP’s ROVs can perform magic by flying all over the places from Macondo site to Atlantis site (240 km distance), BP has also came out with the “same advanced technology” of transporting the massive drilling rigs weighing over 20,000 tons over thousands of km within seconds. BP is truly beyond petroleum. This travel and transport at the speed of light would be necessary for Human next space adventure. This is yet another evidence of mass deception.

So now, we have to take the position of the “flying drilling rigs” with a pinch of salt. Occasionally, we are able to get some reasonable position. How do we verify the rig position? Well, we are not telling at the moment but let just say there are enough people with conscience to feed us.

The updates on 10 Nov 2010 tell us a scary picture. BP appears to have abandoned the triple wells location (Well A, Well B and S20BC) completely. Discoverer Enterprise (DE) is still working at a location it was sitting on for the last 2 months. Notice the red line passing thru this location to the triple well location. That is the deep major NW-SE strike-slip fault we had been talking about for the last 3 months or so.

Development Driller 2 (DD2) has moved from Well A location, after removing the expensive BOP and replacing it with a memorial cap; in memory of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) and the 11 personnel killed there. This is a new location after DD2 had flown thousands of miles (twice) to the South Pacific. Simply amazing this new transport technology BP has. We do not know what DD2 is doing or even if this location is accurate. We just have to take BP’s word for it (tongue in cheek).

DD3 is still around the location it was sitting since moving from Relief Well C in mid Sept.

It is scary to note that all the three rigs positions are 6.3 miles (DD3), 7.4 miles (DE) and 8.8 miles (DD2) from well A. DD3 and DE are both at the toe of the shelf slope (escarpment) while DD2 is on the mid-slope. So was the late Matt Simmons right about the massive leaks 7 miles from the blown out well on 20 April 2010? It would not be surprising to have oil and gas leaking out here at the toe of these huge escarpments which are many times larger than the escarpment at the Macondo well location. Is the 22 Mile River of Oil 5-7 Miles Sw Of Well A as reported by WHOI associated with the leak from BP’s broken oil reservoir?

~~~~~~quote~~~~~~~~

Scientists from WHOI, along with the Coast Guard and other institutions, used an array of high-tech gadgets — including an autonomous unmanned vehicle (AUV) named the Sentry—along with mass spectrometers, to find and track the plume.

Dr. Richard Camilli of WHOI had this to say: “We’ve shown conclusively not only that a plume exists, but also defined its origin and near-field structure.”

That certainly runs counter to most of the reports we’ve seen so far.

Dr.Samantha Joye a marine science professor at the University of Georgia, told The New York Times: “The idea that 75% of the oil is gone and is of no further concern to the environment is just incorrect.”

For now, we don’t know if more plumes are lurking out there. The ocean currents at these depths are still somewhat of a mystery, even to scientists who study them for a living.

~~~end of quote ~~~~~~~

Many bloggers had reported that skimmer-vessels had been busy there in the last few months and the coast guards had noted in their logs that an Orange Spill was noted on 22 April 2010 on the day of the second explosion which brought the DWH down. It is even scarier if you follow the fault line 56 miles NW from well A and the “giant gas bubble” noted by the coast guard on their return (to base) hours after the 22 April 2^nd explosion. Follow the adjacent NW-SE fault line another 158 miles 316º NW you get to the epicentre of the 2 Aug earthquake, magnitude 3 on the Richter scale. See figure 134-3.

Are all these “oil events” and the earthquake connected to the Macondo broken reservoir unleashed by the 20 and 22 April 2010 blowouts? Looking at figure 134-4 it would be hard to dismiss the connection. These ancient deep seated faults beneath the Quaternary Sediment are believed to have been formed when the Gulf of Mexico was tectonically active. The fractured underlying geology as confirmed by Dr Bea in his Interview With The Georgewashington2.Blogspot.Com could be the main reason why BP’s broken Macondo reservoir was so difficult to patch up.

Fisher described the soft and hard coral they found seven miles southwest of the well as an underwater graveyard. He said oil probably passed over the coral and killed it.
The coral has "been dying for months," he said. "What we are looking at is a combination of dead gooey tissues and sediment. Gunk is a good word for what it is."
The researchers found the evidence at a site 4,600 feet deep.
"Ninety percent of 40 large corals were heavily affected and showed dead and dying parts and discoloration," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement. NOAA sponsored the cruise. "Another site 400 meters (1,200 feet) away had a colony of stony coral similarly affected and partially covered with a similar brown substance."

While BP is Largest Spill in U.S., Chevron's Ecuador Disaster is Largest in World. Chevron Admits Dumping at Least 16 Billion Gallons of Toxic Waste into Rainforest.

As the nation remains riveted on the tragic BP spill unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, Chevron still holds the record for creating the world's largest oil-related contamination and it happened deliberately in the populated Amazon rainforest in an even more sensitive ecosystem than the marshes of Louisiana.

Chevron's illegal oil-related dumping is at the root of a class action lawsuit in Ecuador where the oil giant now faces more than $27 billion in damages for poisoning an area the size of Rhode Island with 18.5 billion gallons of toxic "produced water," or more than 474 times the amount of contamination estimated to have been spilled in the Gulf of Mexico tragedy, according to calculations made by representatives of the plaintiffs.

Three days after posting the “A New Drilling Rig At Macondo Site” on 31 Oct 2010, the West Sirius moved out of the Macondo Site on the morning of 2 Nov 2010. See figure 131-a. West Sirius is currently sitting at location Lon/Lat: -90.022827 / 28.582331 on 11/5/2010 3:07:39 AM (UTC). Why would BP move the West Sirius to the Macondo site in late October only to move out a week later to a location 165 km away? This is not normal. A multimillion dollar rig does not just drop by at the site just to say “hello” to the DD2.

Even stranger, DD3 is no longer in existence. Three days ago, you can still search for DD3’s location http://www.marinetraffic.com but not any more. DD3’s position seems to have gone “under cover”. However, it seems that DD3 has gone back to Relief Well C position.

As at 4th Nov 2010, DD2 is at Well A with the Hos Iron Horse nearby. Discoverer Enterprise is still at the foothill of the shelf edge, 7 miles NW of well A where DD3 was working since leaving Relief Well C in late Sept.

So what is going on at the Macondo’s site?

In a press statement released on 19 Sept 2010, BP confirmed that “the well kill operations on the MC252 well in the Gulf of Mexico are now complete with both the casing and annulus of the well sealed by cement”.

This was BP’s 19 Sept Press statement

BP will now proceed to complete the abandonment of the MC252 well, which includes removing portions of the casing and setting cement plugs. A similar plugging and abandonment of both relief wells will occur as well.

BP will also now begin the process of dismantling and recovering containment equipment and decontaminating vessels that were in position at the wellsite.

~~~~~~~~~~end of quote~~~~~~

After that press statement, one would have thought the activities at the Macondo site would have started to wind down and the expensive drilling rigs demobilized from site as soon as possible.

This was again confirmed by BP’s 1 Oct Press statement

Since the Macondo well was finally confirmed sealed on September 19, BP has been completing the process of plugging and abandoning the well. This includes removing portions of the casing and setting cement plugs.

BP has also started the process of dismantling and recovering containment equipment and decontaminating the vessels that were in position at the wellsite. The cost of the response to September 29 amounts to approximately $11.2 billion, including the cost of the spill response, containment, relief well drilling, static kill and cementing, grants to the Gulf states, claims paid and federal costs.

~~~~~~~~~~end of quote~~~~~~

Contrary to BP’s press statements, the site activities did not die down. The number of vessels working in the area seems to have increased in recent times. Now forty-seven (47) days after the rogue well was supposedly “bottom killed permanently at 18000ft bml on 15 Sept 2010”, a new drilling rig (West Sirius) arrived at the Macondo site. Figure 130-1 shows the location of West Sirius at the Macondo Site. Figure 130-2 gives the location details of West Sirius which had been at location since 27 Oct 2010. If the West Sirius was meant to replace either one of the two earlier rigs, why are DD2 and DD3 still on site?

Both DD2 and DD3, commissioned to drill relief wells C and D respectively had been at location since May this year. With each drilling rig costing between 0.5 to 1 Million USD per day, why would BP want to have 3 rigs at site? It does not add up especially when there has been no official news of drilling new wells at the Macondo site. Would you need 3 expensive rigs just to drill a new well?

Both DD2 and DD3 should have demobilized from site weeks ago since they were not needed after abandoning the relief wells. DD2 reportedly did better than anticipated; reaching within tens of feet of its intercept target weeks ahead of schedule. But just when victory was finally within arm’s length, the”Bottom Kill from relief well C stalled”. It seems like eternity when Thad Allen announced in early Sept that the Final Kill had to be postponed again to mid October. No reasons were given. Just when the audience had given up hope and left the “theatre”, BP suddenly announced the well was permanently killed and cemented on 15 Sept 2010.

What gives? Why the sudden flip-flops when it is common knowledge every well operation had to be carefully planned weeks ahead? Sudden reversals are bad signs. Evidence of BP carrying out massive pressure grouting of the seafloor added more mystery to the story. Why would BP spend millions of dollars grouting the seabed if the Relief Well Kill from the bottom was going to be a “certain success”? Why had the activities increased instead of winding down after the permanent kill on 15 Sept?

There seems to be more questions than answers. What is DD3 doing so close to the foothills of the Whiting Dome, approx 5 n.miles 320º of Well A where DD2 is currently sitting? DD3 had been there since Sept together with Hos Explorer, Discovery Enterprise, Jean Pierre Lab and other vessels. And why is DD2 still sitting at Well A with Hos Iron Horse and Kobe Chouest? Well A had been capped since 15 July and “top cemented” since August. No drilling activities had been reported. So why waste money on expensive rigs hanging around?

Come to think of it very little was reported of DD3 at Relief Well D location. Located at the mid slope of the escarpment DD3 would have encountered similar problems as Well A and Well B. It would not be surprising for DD3’s inclined trajectory towards S20BC to be stopped dead before or around 13,000ft. This was the depth Well B had a previous out-of-well-control situation and was forced to abandon well. The “plug and abandon” permission was approved by MMS; as clearly recorded in the emails submitted for the congressional enquiry. That is why there was not much news on DD3 relief well effort. The less said the better.

So if Well A was abandoned around 13 Feb after the drill-string was jammed at 5000ft bml and Well B abandoned around 14 March after drilling 13,100ft bml, where could they have drilled the 3^rd well? They definitely cannot go back to redrill well A for the third time. Thus they had to drill from a third seabed local which is 720 ft NW of Well A (S20BC). Simple as that and the shoes fit perfectly.

Relief well C was located on the flat valley, 0.12 miles south of the foot hill of the escarpment. This means DD2 would not have the same problems with the pesky shallow E-W fault. But it would have encountered the major NE-SW fault at a much deeper depth. If the rogue well (S20BC) had intersected this NE-SW fault just before entering the reservoir (as I had suspected much earlier) then DD2 would have even more trouble when the RW C trajectory closed in to S20BC. That is why DD2 waited from mid August till mid Sept. Actually BP had no solution in sight when they announced the postponement of the bottom kill till at least mid Oct.

But with the mid-term election fast approaching, BP was forced to hastily declare Premature Victory. The world was still hypnotized with the magic spell cast on capping the wrong well (Well A). Well A was leaking oil and gas coming from the EW fault which intersects the main NE-SW fault and Well B which had pierced the same gas reservoir as Texaco’s Rigel well. So even before Well A was capped, gas was already pluming at the foothills of the escarpment (see reported gas plumes 25 May, 31 July, 22 Apr and others). The top cap at well A only made it worse. With all these dynamics in play, no wonder the well pressure at well A never behaved and reached the pressure curves predicted for a Sealed Well.

So the plan was to grout and hold the ground (so to speak) until after the mid-term election is over. However, Mother Nature probably refused to play ball. Recent Rov videos (in late October) showed the grouted seafloor cracking up again. See Mother-Natures-Sos-Distress-Signals and Gas Oil Plume next to Well A. They probably could not postpone the mobilization of West Sirius any further. This could only mean very serious and urgent trouble.

But why not use DD2 and DD3 which are already at site? Why do they need three drilling rigs? I do not have the firm answers yet. Hopefully I do by the next posting. By my analyses, the present West Sirius location is a very hazardous location to drill from. If the intended trajectory is heading towards S20BC, the open well bore would be intercepting the NE-SW fault at a very low angle at the downthrown side of the fault. It would also have to bear the full brunt of the formation collapse forced in by the high pressured gas and oil. They would have the additional geotechnical problems of sealing the well to seabed level. Due to high permeability (from open fractures) and the presence of hazardous Gas-saturated Weak Sub-formation (GWSF) zone, the well annulus can never be effectively cemented and sealed. It will be another disaster in waiting. S20BC never had a chance with the gas influx from the hazardous GWSF zone above the 6000 ft bml. level. After months of sub-seabed erosion and cavitations, it will be worse than before.

Site-specific shallow hazards assessment is mandatory prior to any well drilling so that disasters like BP’s mega oil spill can be averted. Even without examining the 2009 survey report by C&C Technologies (C&C), it is abundantly clear there had been serious fundamental flaws in the hazards assessment. C&C should have alerted BP of the following hazardous geological conditions:

1. The high risk of encountering shallow gas hazards within the first 5000 ft bml.
2. Shallow faults evident within this depth interval (from seabed level down to 5000 ft bml).
3. The well is located in the mid slope of a large escarpment with a gradient exceeding 3º.
4. The well is located at the convex section of the escarpment which is the worst possible area to drill into with regard to shallow gas hazards and geotechnical problems of cementing and sealing the well.
5. The whole L-shaped rectangular escarpment is a raised landform measuring approximately 12 km by 5.5 km, faulted at the edge foot-hill. The circular gentle cone formed at the southern half of the raised landform is probably an ancient lava / asphalt / mud volcano or a combination of the 3 forms.
6. Irrespective of the form of volcano, the possibility of high fractures, high permeability vents extruding fluids is very high - posing unacceptably high drilling risks.
7. Under such geohazardous conditions, the geohazards assessment should have recommended shifting the well location away from the raised landform altogether. The recommended shift would be about 2 km south, away from the foothills of the structure.
8. BP should be able to reach the targeted reservoir location, although the deviated well would be more expensive than a vertical well. Was this a major cost consideration?

Any reasonably well-trained geohazards specialist would have arrived at the above conclusions and recommendations by examining the publicly available bathymetry and satellite images. Even though BP had not publicly released the high resolution seismic data, there is a high degree of confidence (>90%) the unreleased data would corroborate the above within acceptable tolerance limits.

BP should be held criminally liable for willful negligence for proceeding ahead blindly without heeding the sound geohazards assessment. Alternatively, if C&C had not foreseen and forewarn such high drilling risks in their reports, then C&C should be jointly charged with BP. The data fraud evident in the bathymetric data and irresponsible “watered down” assessment given in figure 129-1, could not have escaped the attention of an experienced exploration oil company like BP. BP must have given their tacit approval since all preliminary draft charts and reports had to be vetted and approved by BP’s technical experts. In all probability, the “boilerplate” assessment must have been “cut and pasted” like BP’s useless 852-pages of emergency response in the event of an offshore oil spill.

Annals of outrage ~~~

BP's emergency "plan" for the Gulf discusses impact on "seals, sea otters and walruses" -18 May 2010

BP's 582-page emergency-response never anticipated an oil spill as large as the one now gushing on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico; a closer reading shows the document was not much than a boilerplate, cut-and-paste job used by BP from region to region; in a section titled "Sensitive Biological & Human-Use Resources," the emergency plan lists "seals, sea otters and walruses" as animals that could be impacted by a Gulf of Mexico spill -- even though no such animals live in the Gulf; the plan was approved in July by the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS), a toothless agency accused by lawmakers of being in the pocket of the oil industry

http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/bps-emergency-plan-gulf-discusses-impact-seals-sea-otters-and-walruses

~~~~~~~~~~end of quote~~~~~~~

The many “mistakes” contained in the bathymetric information and hazards assessment could not have been “accidental or due to mere incompetence”. They were the obvious results of data massaging and fraud. Both BP and C&C should be criminally liable for their active involvement in the cut corners, data fraud and cover-ups. The disastrous blow out on 20 Apr 2010 would not have happened had the devious fuse to the disaster been nipped in the bud. A summary of the Forensic Analysis Of BP’s Bathymetric Chart are listed here.

1. The bathymetric data submitted to MMS (Sheet 1 of 6 and Plate 6) had been inaccurate and misrepresented.
2. The shallow hazards assessment should not have been carried out using BP’s exploration personnel and BP’s 3D exploration seismic data. Exploration geologists are not specifically trained to assess shallow hazards and 3D exploration seismic data have time, angular and spatial resolution limitations at shallow zones as confirmed by the fundamental errors contained in the BP’s shallow hazards assessment (conclusion at page 10).
3. The water depth cannot be accurate to 1 ft as depicted by 4992 ft. The estimated accuracy from a surface echo sounder operating at 33 kHz 5000ft is +/- 10ft.
4. Similarly the spatial accuracy is estimated to be 30ft. Thus the 5ft contour interval is misleading.
5. There are many seafloor features. So the phrase “the only seafloor feature” is incorrect and misleading.
6. “The low-relief escarpment approx 1000ft / 950ft south of the “A” / “B” location” is both incorrect and misleading. Both A and B locations are in the mid-slope of the escarpment and not 950ft or 1000ft. The escarpment is not low-relief but at least 250ft.
7. The conclusion “The proposed well bore will not intersect any faults between the seafloor and the depth limit of this investigation at Horizon 6 or 5292 ft bml” is irresponsible, inaccurate and fundamentally flawed.
8. The “risk of encountering shallow gas is ranked as … Moderate… Low ….Negligible” is without basis and illogical even on the basis of the bathymetric data and general geology of the site.

Geohazards assessments like pre-surgical medical diagnoses are critical to the success of the surgical operation. BP’s erroneous hazards assessment is not the first nor will it be the last. Just as proper medical diagnoses require due diligence, hard work, specialised training, skills and experience, geohazards assessments cannot be carried out irresponsibly and indifferently by exploration geologists who are more concern with hitting the target reservoir. All over the world, junior geophysicists without proper training, skills and experience are being tasked to churn out inadequate assessment reports just like BP’s. To be fair, there are concerned industry workers. They are however, the minority and in no position to make demands for change. The demands for change have to come from outside. Not industry leaders like Fugro and RPS who are more concerned with their bottom-line. Oil companies care even less.

So we continue to play Russian Roulette. Even when the documented evidences clearly implicate BP of wrong-doings the regulators are too impotent and beholden to the oil companies to do anything else but to play along the deception game. Mother Nature and the victims suffer in silence because it is convenient for the world to turn a blind eye, just as the QC consultants did on BP’s survey vessel in January 2009. The pesky little problems that coalesced and blew into one gigantic disaster on 20 April 2010, could have been stopped at their tracks with diligent geohazards contractors and dedicated QC consultants. But the regulators, oil companies, QC consultants and contractors prefer their cozy relationship with each other than to really try to nip the problems in the bud. They are all in cahoots with their pretentious stringent offshore regulations, HSE standards and safety first policies. Disasters are expediently perceived to be accidental so that the crooks responsible for lighting the fuses in the first place, can be free to cook up another windfall disaster.

Safety Fraud is one perfect crime of mass destruction. No one complaints or is aggrieved when the easy profits roll in. When disaster eventually strikes, the privileged few collect the windfall. Yes, BP’s shareholders suffered together with millions affected by the Gulf Oil Spill. Did the privileged few responsible for the disaster really suffer? The golden parachute for Tony Hayward says it all.

Every disaster is an opportunity to put things right. If we don’t the next one could be even more devastating.

As the blame game continues and the truth trickle out little by little, many will be left wondering how the disaster will play out and the imminent threats of future disasters. It is blatantly clear beneath the dog and pony shows, such mega disaster could not have happened if the checks and balances in place had been functioning as they should. It is fortuitous that all of them should expediently fail one after another. More likely, the checks and balances had long been subverted and broken. It is an industry speeding down the highway with its driver drunk with greed and power. If the “drunken speedster” is not stopped in time, the result can only be a big bang when the road runs out.

The answer to the second question is dependent on how the perpetrators of this crime of mass destruction are handled. This disaster was no “unexpected accident”. Anyone who is not blinded by corruption can see that. At the very least BP’s exploration managers knew trouble was brewing and did nothing to avert it. They should be prosecuted for willful negligence.

At worst, with prior knowledge that such environmental disasters are inevitable, BP invested heavily into researching “deplorable means” of harvesting windfalls from such “accidental natural disasters”. Connect the dots behind The-Gulf-Blue-Plague.

Is it morally right to invest millions into searching for a “profitable” cure when a tiny fraction could have been better spent in advancing prevention techniques? Is prevention not better than cure? Although less environmentally friendly and more devastating; the Cure is preferable for its profit potential and numerous windfall opportunities for the privileged few. Prevention on the other hand offers no such windfall opportunities.

Most dirty tricks of insiders’ trading have already been tried out, exposed and prosecuted. As disasters are still perceived to be accidental, no one will be prosecuted for insider’s trading, even though the massive shares sellout by BP’s directors, Goldman Sachs and several more insiders, were unmistakably linked to the privileged few. See A Pattern Of Massive Shares Sell Off By BP Directors Prior To Expected Disasters. The fact that SEC is still sitting on the matter shows how untouchable they are.

Unbelievable it may seem, the reported safety lapses and violations, system malfunctions and cost-cutting corners are only a tip of the Safety & Data Fraud Iceberg. Unscrupulous profiteering, corruption, data frauds, falsified calibration, inspection and installation certification are widespread and not only confined to third world countries. The Safety Farce Iceberg has completely engulfed the oil exploration industry. Even professional regulatory bodies and heads of governments dare not stymied their growing power and influence. The BP’s mega oil spill disaster is that arrogant display of corruptive power of giant multinational corporations.

At the end of the day, it is about the corrupted business strangle-hold that is going to tilt the world into an Environmental Armageddon. It is already happening. The recent Toxic Dam Spill in Hungary and BP’s Mega Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico are Crimes of Mass Destruction propagated by unscrupulously greedy multinational corporations. It is about the struggle between Good and Evil. It is about the brave few struggling to bring out the truth behind all these mega disasters that is destroying Mother Earth.

Does the world care? Are we fooling ourselves with half measures and deceptions that are meaningless to the survival of this planet? Even after more than 6 months, the world has still not awoken from BP’s hypnotizing deception of capping the wrong well. The capped well (Well A) was drilled down to only 5000ft bml; 13000 ft short of the targeted reservoir. While the world was mesmerized with the pony and dog shows at the wrong well, the actual well (S20BC, 720ft NW of well A) was openly gushing more than 50,000 barrels of oil per day into the gulf. Is the world awake yet?

Sadly, BP is not the only guilty multinational corporation and US is not the only first world country plagued with this problem. Documented evidence of criminally liable unethical practices ranging from falsified calibration reports and certificates, fraudulent authorization of globally banned environmental-hazardous installations to pure data frauds, will be presented to press home the point that the safety violations, defective critical fail-safe equipments, willful negligence and ignorance which surfaced recently in the investigation of BP’s disaster are industry-wide; not the exceptions.

How can oil exploration be safe when international insurance companies, international accreditation organizations and government regulatory authorities in so many countries simply turned a blind eye to such improprieties? Have this safety lapse problem proliferated to the extent that it is already too big to solve. How did these multinationals managed to have such powerful strangleholds on these regulatory authorities? Why must the tail wag the dog?

Contrary to popular beliefs, more regulations do not translate into safer exploration. Being the most heavily regulated industry with stringent HSE standards, does not make it any safer unless enforcement is effective. More regulations mean higher costs, more corruption and cost-cutting opportunities to circumvent difficult to comply regulations. As witnessed in the BP’s disaster, compliance in form but not in spirit is meaningless. The increase in oil exploration costs also means insanely high wages for the industry workers. To avoid being caught in the severe cyclic oil crashes of the mid eighties professionals were taken off permanent employment and offered lucrative short term contracts. These freelance professionals can command from 500 to 5000 USD/day in various field positions. With such lucrative remunerations, it is difficult to go against oil companies or contractor’s vested interests. Safety and environmental considerations were the first to be thrown out the windows.

The high freelance wages also caused an aberration in the remuneration scheme where short-term contract field personnel earn many times more than their long term colleagues doing the same job offshore. As soon as new recruits can learn to walk, they move out of the contractors’ permanent employment to become freelance. Permanent salaried employees like the logistics, operation and technical managers (without their offshore allowances) earned a mere fraction of their freelance employees under their control. For example a senior professional with permanent employment contract in Australia earning AUD100 000 per year, can easily earn that amount in less than 3 months; offshore without tax. In the peak exploration years with oil prices above 50 USD/barrel, most freelancers had no problems finding work in excess of 200 days a year.

After the mid-eighties oil crash, most capable professionals opt to work offshore with the less capable or inexperienced filling in the office managerial positions. In the insane rat race, the price tag becomes the badge of honour. The common joke was; “you must have screwed up to be cooked up in the office”. Smart contractors’ managers formed “close alliances” with their oil companies’ counterparts. It is no secret that many in the oil companies receive lucrative pay-offs from “Body Shops” peddling “offshore professionals”. Some even secretly hold shares under their spouses’ name. With 30 to 60% cut on the daily chargeable rates to the oil companies, it was the sellers’ market especially when oil prices shot beyond 100 USD/day (courtesy of the Peak Oil theory). Greedy offshore professionals were no better than prostitutes, selling themselves directly or through body shops to the highest bidder. Naturally, body shops did their best to sell inexperienced or incompetent professionals since they make the best margins on these unmovable products. The active third world exploration countries (Asia, Africa & Middle East) was choked with incompetent or inexperienced professionals who could not enter the exploration workforce in their own countries for lack of credentials. UK was the biggest exporter of such offshore professionals. Experience, unethical practices and improper training gained from the “rough and tumble” exploration of the wild and poorly regulated third world countries, might not be the best. But it is the numbers and years that count, not the quality.Worse, these unethical practices get transferred back to the first world countries in a process called “Reversed Technology Transfer”.

This unhealthy development is one of the many fundamental reasons for the reckless and aggressive competition among exploration and contractors’ managers in a volatile cyclic industry. It is not surprising short term gains and interests override long term sound and safe judgment. In the dog-eat-dog competition, true professionals who refused to yield their professional integrity were quickly edged out by those who would.

Disasters do not occur on a daily basis not because cut-corners and imprudence are not practiced widely but because more than 80% of the exploration locations are in no immediate danger of any geohazards. In the remaining 20% with some geohazards risks, geohazards disasters might not have ripened for explosion yet. As in the BP’s Macondo blowout, the timing is important rather than the luck. Most however, would not wake up to this realty.

If only special safety attentions are focused on these 20% high geohazards risk areas, it would be almost impossible for any major disaster to be blown out of control from any accidental human errors. This is where independent geohazards assessments can contribute significantly. In the next posting, we will examine how this first line of defence against geohazards disasters had been seriously compromised and monopolized by the world’s largest geohazards survey contractor, Fugro.

(dedicated to those at ATS who worked hard to keep the BP-live discussion on ROV thread alive especially StealthyKat , Ektar and Kno22 who sourced the ROV videos).

(Reuters) – By Kristen Hays HOUSTON | Sun Sep 19, 2010 3:58pm EDT

With a final shot of cement, BP Plc permanently "killed" its deep-sea well in the Gulf of Mexico that ruptured in April and unleashed the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the top U.S. spill official said on Sunday.

Some 153 days after the Macondo well ruptured, the U.S. government confirmed that BP had succeeded in drilling a relief well nearly 18,000 feet below the ocean surface and permanently sealing the well with cement.

"The Macondo 252 well is effectively dead," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who has overseen the U.S. government's response, said in a statement. "We can now state, definitively, that the Macondo well poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico."

President Barack Obama, whose public approval ratings were hurt by public discontent over the U.S. government's initial response to the spill, welcomed the long-awaited development as an "important milestone."

Obama said his administration was now focused on making sure the Gulf Coast "recovers fully from this disaster."

http://www.reuters.com/(News+/+US+/+Top+News)

BP Confirms Successful Completion of Well Kill Operations in Gulf of Mexico

http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=40&contentId=7061813

Release date: 19 September 2010

HOUSTON - BP today confirmed that well kill operations on the MC252 well in the Gulf of Mexico are now complete, with both the casing and annulus of the well sealed by cement.

The MC252 well has been shut-in since July 15 and cementing operations in August, following the static kill, provided an effective cement plug in the well’s casing. The relief well drilled by the DDIII drilling rig intercepted the annulus of the MC252 well on September 15, followed by pumping of cement into the annulus on September 17. BP, the federal government scientific team and the National Incident Commander have now concluded that these operations have also successfully sealed the annulus of the MC252 well.

“This is a significant milestone in the response to the Deepwater Horizon tragedy and is the final step in a complex and unprecedented subsea operation – finally confirming that this well no longer presents a threat to the Gulf of Mexico,” said Tony Hayward, BP group chief executive. “However, there is still more to be done. BP’s commitment to complete our work and restore the damage done to the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf coast and the livelihoods of the people across the region remains unchanged.”

BP will now proceed to complete the abandonment of the MC252 well, which includes removing portions of the casing and setting cement plugs. A similar plugging and abandonment of both relief wells will occur as well.

BP will also now begin the process of dismantling and recovering containment equipment and decontaminating vessels that were in position at the wellsite.

But is the well really dead? Recent Rov evidences in late October, more than a month after the “well” was supposedly permanently killed and officially declared dead, there are signs that the “dead well” is coming back to life. Our recent postings; Our Worst Fears Of Vaporising Hydrates and the recently detected Gas Oil Plume Next To Well A, point to some of these evidences from Rov videos recorded from 20 -23 Oct 2010.

In this posting, we present evidence of increasing methane concentration and new oil spots on the seafloor. These are conclusive evidences that BP had capped the wrong well and by grouting the faults, they are spreading the oil far and wide with even more disastrous consequences. It is Mother Nature’s SOS distress signal to us for help.

Figure 127-1 is extracted from youtube.com (hydrate floaters) while figure 127-2 is extracted from youtube (hydrate mole hill).

Although both are recrystallised hydrates, their formation and sources are different. The former is explained in detailed on the figure caption while the second hydrate type was formed when the hot/warm gaseous methane is chilled on contact with the cold water. Both processes are inter-related.

Fig 127-3 to 127-5 show oil seeping out of the seafloor in various modes; obviously affected recently by the intense grouting activities. I shall not go into details but the fact that previous videos did not show oil in these forms suggests that BP had achieved what they had set out to do. By spreading the oil far and wide, it is hoped that these could be argued as natural seeps.

But fig 127-6 takes the cake. The supposedly “dead well” is not only alive, but kicking as well. To blow a crater of that size and depth, the built-up in pressure much be substantial. It could only mean that the grout blocking the escape pathway failed in a violent and sudden manner. If BP’s grout cannot contain the escaping force of the “awaken Genie” which had spread far and wide (over several km radius) from 18,000 ft below, what makes you think BP’s relief well could do the magic just tens of feet from source?

The pictures from the air tell a different story (2010/10/oil_slick_in_gulf_of_mexiso) from the hollow victory speech given on 15 Sept 2010 that the “dragon from the deep” had been slain. It reminds us of the typical folklore fairy tale where the Pretender-Hero claimed to have slain the dragon terrorizing the kingdom in order to claim the throne and marry the princess. But like all lies, the truth will come back to roost one day, sooner or later.

~~~quote from Florida Oil Spill law~~~

It’s Back: “Orange oil” for miles, “a signature image of the spill” returns — BP, Coast Guard not responding say captains (PHOTOS) - OCTOBER 23, 2010 at 08:21 Am.

Massive stretches of weathered oil spotted in Gulf of Mexico, The Times-Picayune, October 22, 2010 at 11:30 p.m. EDT:

… Louisiana fishers Friday found miles-long strings of weathered oil floating toward fragile marshes on the Mississippi River delta. …

Boat captains working the BP clean-up effort said they have been reporting large areas of surface oil off the delta for more than a week but have seen little response from BP or the Coast Guard…

Read more at … www.floridaoilspilllaw.com website.

~~~end of quote ~~~~~~~~

So is the “dragon from the deep” really dead? Judge for yourself the reported oil and gas (separated) plumes next to Well A, 42 days after BP had declared the well to be killed, sealed and delivered (top and bottom). See the new gas-oil leak beside well A seen on 22 Oct 2010.

Figure 125-1 Pimpled seafloor with shallow smooth depressions are features indicative of continuous vaporisation of hydrates from superficial clayey hydrate layer. The moving Rov video (recorded 18 Oct 2010) shows the general seafloor condition over a large area. Unfortunately the video did not display the coordinates.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVdnkMxocl0&feature=player_embedded.

Figure 125-2 Methane vaporising from the seafloor at well A Youtube.Com/Watch?V=5ylz4cfjg5y&Feature=Related. This stationary Rov video (recorded on 3^rd Sept 2010) like many, shows the seafloor in the vicinity of Well A. The rising diffused gaseous mist is well enhanced by the lighted background.

~~~~ Quote from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate)~~~~~~~

Methane clathrate, also called methane hydrate, hydromethane, methane ice or "fire ice" is a solid clathrate compound (more specifically, a clathrate hydrate) in which a large amount of methane is trapped within a crystal structure of water, forming a solid similar to ice.[1] Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the Solar System where temperatures are low and water ice is common, significant deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of Earth.[2]

Methane clathrates are common constituents of the shallow marine geosphere, and they occur both in deep sedimentary structures, and as outcrops on the ocean floor. Methane hydrates are believed to form by migration of gas from depth along geological faults, followed by precipitation, or crystallization, on contact of the rising gas stream with cold sea water. Methane clathrates are also present in deep Antarctic ice cores, and record a history of atmospheric methane concentrations, dating to 800,000 years ago.[3] The ice-core methane clathrate record is a primary source of data for global warming research, along with oxygen and carbon dioxide.

The average methane clathrate hydrate composition is 1 mole of methane for every 5.75 moles of water, though this is dependent on how many methane molecules "fit" into the various cage structures of the water lattice. The observed density is around 0.9 g/cm3.[4] One litre of methane clathrate solid would therefore contain, on average, 168 litres of methane gas (at STP).[nb 1]

Methane forms a structure I hydrate with two dodecahedral (12 vertices, thus 12 water molecules) and six tetradecahedral (14 water molecules) water cages per unit cell. This compares with a hydration number of 20 for methane in aqueous solution.[5] A methane clathrate MAS NMR spectrum recorded at 275 K and 3.1 MPa shows a peak for each cage type and a separate peak for gas phase methane.[citation needed] Recently, a clay-methane hydrate intercalate was synthesized in which a methane hydrate complex was introduced at the interlayer of a sodium-rich montmorillonite clay. The upper temperature stability of this phase is similar to that of structure I hydrate.[6]

~~~~~~~end of quote~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The methane – hydrate phase diagram is shown in figure 125-3 (from wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons).

Our early fears that hot oil and gases from the deep reservoir brought up to the shallower soil strata (above the hydrate stabilization level) through the gushing rouge well (S20BC) and the eroded permeable fault zones, seem confirmed by these Rov videos. See The-Diagrammatic-Illustration-That-Says-It-All.

The later videos recorded after the well was supposedly killed, confirm that we cannot “put the genie back into the bottle”. There is no point in fooling ourselves the well can be “capped, killed, sealed and delivered”. Instead there should be concerted efforts to alleviate the problem of escaping and corrosive fluids (salt water in combination with high pressured gases especially H₂S) from the reservoir and getting into the upper fragile formation and Quaternary soil sequence where the environmental damages are “beyond patch-up”.

There has been disturbing news of BP’s indifference to safety concerns raised at BP’s Atlantis production platform, 240 km SW of the BP’s Macondo Oil spill disaster site. See figure 124-1 above. See the full report dated 9 June 2010 at by Len Cannon at Khou.com.

The Gulf of Mexico 2006 earthquake near BP’s Atlantis site still remains a mystery. See the DailyBite’s Blog dated 28 July 2010.

So when recent Rov videos supposedly recorded at the BP’s Macondo Oil spill disaster site, jumped within a split second to BP’s Atlantis production platform, 240 km away, keen BP Rov observers started to wonder whether BP had invented some kind of a tele-transporter to move and share expensive sub-sea equipment between exploration and production sites. Many also wondered whether this advanced tele-transporter technology had given BP an unfair competitive advantage. To make BP’s guessing game more interesting, the Rov coordinates are no longer displayed on the video footage.

The results of the investigation on one recent ROV video dated 21 Oct 2010 are summarized in Figure 124-2.

The study subject was a horizontal pipe with a lever tap valve at the centre. A copy of the video with discussion is given at Above Top Secret.Com/Forum/Thread619957/Pg13. The length of the pipe in the video is 8.2 times the diameter of the pipe which is 5.6 times the diameter of a vertically hanging cable / pipe (?). So if the diameter of the pipe is 16 inches, the length of the pipe on the rov screen capture must be at least 11 feet long.

The current BOP at well A does not appear to have anything of that length sticking out horizontally, clear of the BOP stack structures. If well A is already dead, what function would the lever tap valve serve? There is no active flow of oil/gas to control. In the video, the reflection halos around the “leaking valve” seem to be pulsating with gas bubbles floating around. The accumulated hydrates around the valve also confirm some leakage, although the valve does not seem to be totally shut.

Besides the obvious change from Atlantis to MC252#1, the altitude of the Rov also changed from 25ft to just 2ft above the seabed while the angle of the camera, lighting, heading and orientation of the pipe all remained exactly the same.

There are three possible answers to solve BP’s riddle.

1. This horizontal pipe & valve is part of the permanent seabed installation at Atlantis production platform and the video was recorded during a Rov inspection. If this is the case, was “Atlantis” trying to send a “coded SOS” public message for help?
2. The “subject pipe” was just a decoy held up by the rov arms and the camera recording being looped to confuse the Rov observers. The change in the site location label was to add further confusion.
3. BP had invented a tele-transporter that could move equipment within a split of a second over hundreds of miles.

Happy guessing.

(dedicated to the brave souls who had been tormented by their conscience but cannot tell)

For months we have all suspected that BP had not been truthful at all about the oil spill disaster. What does it take to prove that BP is lying all this while? Understandably, BP would lie on the amount of oil spilled to minimize the financial repercussion. But why would BP even lie when there is no necessity to lie at all.

Table 123-1 shows the listing of ROV details on 10 Jun 2010 during a ROV inspection of the tilting BOP. For most of the 2 minute video, the position of the BOP at Well A was “erroneously” displayed at E1 203 000, N 10 430 792. Then at the last 10 seconds, it suddenly jumped to E 1 202 779 N 10 431 600, a distance of 820 ft in less than one second (900 km /hour). Chart 123-2 shows the graphic display of the respective positions with respect to Well A and Well B.

Figures 123-3a to f, show the images captured from the video footage obtained from Alex Higgins’ blog at http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/06/11/confirmed-gulf-oil-spill-bop-leaning-1440/.

The ROV was inspecting the tilting BOP at well A. So why was the position of the ROV deliberately offset 850 ft SSE of Well A. Towards the last 10 seconds (from 22:40:13) the position jumped instantaneously to just 30 ft West of Well A. But with the same heading 290º to 325º and the camera looking ahead at the tilting BOP, the ROV should have been east of Well A and not 30 ft WEST of well A.

You might ask why this is important. Relative positioning is important for the ROV operator sitting 5000ft above to control and navigate the ROV. Both camera screen (showing the direct ahead vision) and the position screen must show consistent and accurate information. The position screen would be similar to the chart shown in chart 123-2. The chances of bumping and losing the multimillion ROV are very high if the position screen tells you the seabed is clear of the well head (being west of it) but the camera screen is showing BOP just 10ft ahead. It is like flying a fighter jet with your altimeter and GPS position out by 800 ft. Even the most capable ROV operator would have crashed the ROVs.

Thus, by all reasoning the ROV coordinates (from acoustic positioning system), gyro heading, depth and altimeter sensors must have all been functioning accurately. The information on the “live video feeds” was however distorted.

We all know where Well A is and the BOP at Well A should have been (well logically) be on top of Well A’s positon. So why would BP have to even lie on this. In fact, if the ROV working on the BOP at Well A did not have the same promulgated position as Well A, it would definitely arouse suspicion.

It is the same story with the apparently Censored Gulf News that reported Human Body Parts were washed up but workers had been told to keep silent. The last thing the perpetrators of a crime would do is to attract attention to another crime, like ordering the workers to keep silent, when it is criminal to do so. Obstruction of police investigations, hiding or destroying evidence and obstructing justice are crimes punishable by law in many civilized countries of the world. Maybe, it is not applicable in the US. The origin of the body parts does not incriminate BP at all. But to obstruct justice and a police investigation is.

On the other hand, with so many of these tell-tale incidences it is hard to dismiss the “clear message being sent”. It is reminiscent of the many kidnapping, spy or blackmail cases where the victims cannot tell (for fear of repercussions) openly for they had been ordered not to. Thus without openly defying the orders from above to keep silent, the inconsistencies in the actions, the information and even scenes of seafloor that were not supposed to be seen, were sent out almost daily. After months of deciphering so many different data sources, the coded message is unmistakably clear. BP’s top management lied and bullied their way through from day 1 of the disaster and the majority of the workers want no part of it. The only problem is they cannot tell but the inconsistencies are invariably crystal clear. Please remove the masterminds of this Crime of the Century and set us free from all this mental jailhouse which is 100 times more tormenting than Guantanamo Bay.

The man from BP stood at the lectern Tuesday morning, telling the crowd packing the Tampa Convention Center ballroom about all his company had done to deal with the Deepwater Horizon disaster — the $11 billion spent so far, the 48,000 people deployed. Utsler, who will now be the chief operating officer of BP's gulf coast restoration organization, strongly defended his company and the entire Deepwater Horizon containment and cleanup effort, even controversial moves such as spraying chemical dispersants a mile beneath the ocean — something no one had ever tried before.
"This is an important tool in our toolbox when used right, and we used them right," he told the standing-room-only crowd.
Finally, Billy Nungesser had had enough. Sweating, the Plaquemines Parish, La., council president got up and headed for the exit.
"I had to leave because of my high blood pressure," Nungesser said. Of those thousands of people BP and the Coast Guard dispatched to deal with the disaster, he said, "how many did anything at all to clean up the oil? And how many stopped us from cleaning up the oil?"

An hour after BP workers were told they had to shift from Destin, Florida to another location and to not discuss anything with anybody, human body parts washed up where they had been working.

Gregg Hall reports that a former BP worker contacted him under agreed anonymity because the contractor wanted to ease his conscience. The interview is below.

"I want it understood I'm doing this because there are some things that need to be told, need to be said. I'm not doing this for publicity. I don't want publicity," the worker told Hall.

- 9 Oct 2010 hydrocomgeo@gmail.com

1. Periodic gas and oil seepages through cracks in the heavily cemented seafloor.

Figures 122-1a and 1b show 2 ROV images captured from the video clip posted by rocksiphone on 18 July 2010 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30WLz7eGYMY&feature=related. The seafloor appears hard with thin layers of encrusted foliation. Besides the dark patches of coloration, the focus of the camera shows a rather sharp edge foliation detached from the lower layer. In the video, blobs of oil and burst of gas can be seen seeping through the gap in the foliation. For such a foliated layer to withstand the periodic burst of gas, it must be pretty hard and resilient.

Natural deposition of clayey sediment takes a long time in quiet, low energy environment. Undisturbed natural seafloor covered with surficial soft clay has a smooth flat surface.

Why is this patch of the seafloor (40-50 ft ENE of well A) so heavily cemented? Obviously the cement must have resurfaced and hardened at the seafloor; possibly even during the October 2009 drilling period. This is a conclusive proof that BP had experienced difficulties in well A since the first time the well was spud on 7 Oct 2009. It also proved that BP continued to drill even deeper when the shallow sections of the well had not been properly sealed yet.

Figure 122-2 is the typical comment by an expert driller assuming the shallow sections of the well would have been properly tested and sealed before proceeding to drill deeper. This ROV evidence clearly shows that this was not the case.

The fact that this patch of cemented seabed and several other gas seeps (as far as 500 ft) are aligned to the “super long leaking fissure” (2), is sufficient proof that the geology here is badly fractured and faulted.

2. “Super Long leaking fissure”

ROV Video from Olympic Challenger dated 21 August : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjAPRpVr-6Q showing massive gas/oil seeps that seem to hover above seabed level.

ROV Video from Skandi Neptune dated 29 August: http://www.youtube.com/user/mmimic34#p/a/u/1/EKg-GJV6d54 showing an elongated cloud that hover just above the seafloor. The video has a tag “prop wash”. This cannot be a prop wash as heavy prop-wash are generated at sea surface not at depths. Further any prop-wash bubbles would rise and dissipate fairly quickly; insufficient time for the ROV to track the “prop-wash” without seeing the vehicle generating the “prop-wash”. These are only some of the arguments against the prop-wash interpretation of these rov videos.

Basically the 2 videos confirm the existence of the WNW-ESE fault line passing through / close to Well A and offset about 50 to 70 ft N of Well B. See figure 122-3.

…. to be continued in part IIc of Root Causes.

President Obama's commission on the BP oil spill didn't spare his administration in its first four draft reports evaluating the government response to the disaster. By publicly lowballing the size of the spill for the first month, the draft reports said, "the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people." One report said the White House quashed a request from government scientists at NOAA to release a worst-case scenario. Did the Obama team try to bury the truth? (Watch an AP report about the finding)

- 5 Oct 2010 hydrocomgeo@gmail.com

When The Root Causes Of BP’s Oil Spill & The Imminent Threat Of More Oil Related Disasters (Part1) was first published on 8 July 2010, 71 days after the 20 April 2010 blowout, I had feared that the root causes were very much deeper than the flawed site decisions, poor field performance or the infringements and improprieties committed at site, that were being paraded in the post-disaster investigation. Part III of the root causes describes the human greed, unscrupulous profiteering and professional rot that had set into the oil industry; rendering our geohazards site surveys totally ineffective in preventing adamantly reckless exploration managers from drilling into such high risk locations as the Macondo wells.

Part II describes the geological reasons why the Macondo wells were destined to end up as a mega-disaster and why the “genie could not be popped back into the bottle”. The high drilling risks evident from the seafloor morphology alone, were so obvious BP’s geohazards specialists could not have possibly missed them; short of being willfully negligent. It was as if BP had intentionally set its own course on a one-way journey to destruction. The 3 well locations (Well A, Well B and S20BC) were located in the worst possible geohazardous conditions to drill into a huge high-pressured oil reservoir. A mega disaster was inevitable even if the best efforts by the drilling crew managed to overcome the myriad of problems posed by the nightmare wells from hell. Even the best field performance, safety standards, advanced drilling technology and well design would be no match for such a disastrously monstrosity BP had awakened from the deep.

In this Part IIa of the series, we begin by presenting ROV evidences that confirm our worst fears; the worst case geological scenario as illustrated by my qualitative geological model in Why Is BP’s Macondo Blowout So Disastrous & Beyond Patch Up first written on 25 July 2010.

Even though BP did their best to distort the truth and fudged up the ROV coordinates, the ROV video footages are still useful evidences, albeit qualitatively. As the geological framework of the giant jig-saw puzzle had already been proven and set right, the ROV evidences merely fill in the data gaps. Our forensic investigation of the BP’s oil disaster was thus not led astray by the fudged ROV coordinates or other distorted truths deliberately planted by BP.

The following analyses are not presented in any particular order of events as ROV video footages are still being analysed. The purpose is however, to illustrate snap shot interpretation of the seabed or events that collectively corroborate with the geological framework in building a true picture of the disaster. Readers are encouraged to reexamine the various ROV video clips on Youtube to judge for themselves the legitimacy of my analyses and reasoning (based on basic fundamental geology and physics).

It is basic human instinct to lie to cover one’s crime just as one would refuse to yield information that is self-incriminating. Does this answer why BP refused to release the early video footages of the disaster, especially the ones observing the BOP at the blown well from 21 April till after the second explosion at 10:22hrs 22 April 2010?

Figure 121-1 shows the famous snap shot of the robotic arm from the ROV attempting to shut down the inclined BOP at 01:08:54hrs on 22 April 2010. The water depth (4926 ±10 ft) was suspiciously short of Well A’s promulgated depth of 4992 (±10) ft by 66±10ft. The reported second explosion 5000ft underwater could not have been observed at sea surface. It could only be observed visually at depth via the ROV video feed. See Conclusive Evidence Well A Is Not The Well That Blew Up On 20 April - Part 3 Aomd.

This means the video footage of the second underwater explosion exists. It also means that the video footage of the second underwater explosion is highly incriminating to BP. Is withholding incriminating information not a crime by itself?

Why were the ROV coordinates taken off in that snap shot of that BOP on 22 April 2010? If no coordinates had been set for that ROV, how could the ROV operator maneuver the ROV to the well location 5000 ft below sea surface? Without coordinates it would be like driving in total darkness without headlights. How else could the BP’s company man inform the coastguard that the burning DWH had “moved approx 714 ft NE” from well A location? 714 ft is not an approximation that could have been estimated (to that degree of accuracy) from any of the vessels’ radar in the area. It had to be calculated from coordinates. Where else could the coordinates be obtained except from that ROV attempting to shut down the BOP?

There is no prize for guessing how many discrepancies (lies or inconsistencies) can be found in the few preceding paragraphs. If BP cannot be trusted to tell the truth even in this short time frame, 2 days after the disaster can BP be trusted in the months after, when BP’s survival hinges on the brink; pending the full magnitude of the disaster?

Yet prominent men of importance all around the world, heads of government and global corporations openly applauded BP for their “conscientious efforts” in finally killing well A for good on 19 Sept 2010? The defender of a Liar is also a Liar!

Quote from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/may/13/video-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill

After considerable pressure from the media and government agencies, BP tonight finally released a brief video showing for the first time the gushing stream of oil and gas leaking from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig into the Gulf of Mexico. The video released by BP shows oil spewing from a broken pipe 5,000 feet (1,500m) below the surface. The stream of crude oil is interspersed with lighter-coloured natural gas. The video was first posted on YouTube on Wednesday night by the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Centre, which said: "This video is from the larger of two existing leaks on the riser. This leak is located approximately 460 feet from the top of the blowout preventer and rests on the sea floor at a depth of about 5,000 feet."

~~~~~~~~~end of quote ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The fact that BP had to be forced to release the first ROV video on 11 May 2010, 20 days after the disaster first struck, speaks for itself the dishonesty of “supposedly honourable men” like Tony Hayward and his exploration managers.

Quote from BP Caught Lying While Deepwater Horizon Burns Part 5 Aomd

I have commented many times that the investigation into the disaster is the biggest joke of the century. In any financial disaster, the CEO and the ones most likely to be involved in the scandal would have been sacked or at least suspended pending investigation. In the BP's oil spill disaster, not only were the companies under investigation placed in charge of recovering the evidence, the CEO and all those who had recklessly driven the exploratory well to a disastrous blow-out, are still in control and have more than 4½ months to shred every piece of incriminating evidence.

~~~~~~~~~end of quote ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The “oil leaks” must have been far more extensive, more complicated and uncontrollable than just 3 simple leaks on the twisted and fallen 5000ft riser itself as reported by BP. It is incredible how BP could even think that intelligent humans could even fall for this absurd lie. Yet incredibly, the government of the most powerful nation on earth did. One must not underestimate the persuasive power of money and vested business interests.

The release of this first video footage raised more questions than answers. If this leak (the larger of the two leaks on the fallen 5000ft long riser) is 460 ft from the BOP, then there could not be another leak on the riser further away from the BOP since the video clearly shows the “riser” (looks more like a severed casing of the well head) being severed at one end. More importantly, why would the “riser” that had fallen onto the seabed be buried at the bottom of a crater that seems to be at least 1 metre deep? Why would the “broken riser” assuming it was bent, twisted and sheared before breaking, still maintain a solid circular shape with sharp angular cuts at its open end? It is so inconsistent with the highly bent leaking riser at the top of the BOP? The fact that there is a slight visible bend on the “riser” suggests 2 important points:

1. the “riser” at S20BC leak point is not made of the same material as the “flattened and bent riser” still connected to the BOP.
2. the angular cut in the “riser” at S20BC leak point, had been made manually; not flattened and broken off by the impact of the fall through 5000ft of water column.

Since the oil appeared to be freely flowing out of the open rounded end of the severed “riser”, any leak closer to BOP would have been very insignificant to be worthy of mention. In The Art Of Mass Deception Part 1 Ballistic Analysis Of Dwh Riser Wreck and many other videos of this major leak at S20BC location, the “riser” is clearly severed on the southern end (see video, heading 117.1º with casing dipping sub-horizontally northwards). Thus the oil had to be flowing from the north to south. But Well A where the “BOP was supposed to have been standing intact after the second underwater explosion” is 714ft to the south of this leak crater (S20BC). How can oil and gas be flowing from the BOP at Well A 714 ft south, when there is no “riser” connection from Well A to this leak location at S20BC?

In any case, if the oil was flowing out of the “BOP at Well A through the riser 460ft away” (as claimed by BP) would it not be much simpler and more cost effective, to cut off the riser at the top of the BOP at Well A where the LRMP cap was to be placed on anyway? Either the world must be crazy to accept this huge BP’s lie or expediency simply knows no bounds.

In this video dated 23 May where the ROV was injecting dispersant into the oil gushing out of the “riser” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590-3CAGpYU&feature=related) it is very clear the “casing with the gushing oil” is no “riser that has been covered with sediment”. It is a casing that had been bent over and manually cut. Now what casing strings would be rising out of the ground other than from BP’s blown-out well? The “sediment” in the vicinity of the crater is no natural clay sediment but a thick layer of heavy drilling mud. Natural clayey sediment forms a colloidal suspension on disturbance. That is why the water is always murky and never clear at mud flats and river mouths heavy with sediment. Heavy drilling mud however settles down quickly leaving the water clear as shown in the ROV video.

Natural light clayey sediment would have long been dispersed by the intense ROV activities around the crater. Only heavy drilling mud could have remained in-situ. One must again wonder why would BP dump hundreds if not thousands of barrel of expensive drilling mud just to cover a “sunken riser” so that the dispersant can be carried out more complicatedly?

Replacing a surficial clay layer with heavy drilling mud cannot be done overnight or over a few days. Imagine a lake with a few metres of soft clay layer. Dumping a few hundred barrels of heavy drilling mud into it would create a small mole hill within a wide depression instead of uniformly replacing the original clay layer. In order to have such a uniform replacement, the heavy drilling mud must be “leaking out at a higher pressure than the existing hydrostatic pressure” from beneath the surficial clay layer. Is this not another conclusive evidence that BP had been drilling in the vicinity of the “unreported illegal well” (S20BC) weeks before the blowout occurred on 20 April 2010?

Where did the reported massive drilling mud losses go to? Obviously, they must have found their way up to the seabed in the vicinity of the “unreported illegal well (S20BC)” during drilling. The presence of thick layers of drilling mud at the seafloor also confirmed our worst fears; that the fragile geological condition in the Macondo prospect is indeed broken.

Having established BP’s need to lie incessantly since day 1 of the disaster, we can now interpret the ROV video with a clearer logic, free from the totally obfuscating influence of The Oil Drum (TOD).

…. to be continued in part IIb of Root Causes.

(23 Sept 2010 hydrocomgeo@gmail.com)

~~~~~~~Reuter Sun Sep 19, 2010 3:58pm EDT.

With a final shot of cement, BP Plc permanently "killed" its deep-sea well in the Gulf of Mexico that ruptured in April and unleashed the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the top U.S. spill official said on Sunday.

Some 153 days after the Macondo well ruptured, the U.S. government confirmed that BP had succeeded in drilling a relief well nearly 18,000 feet below the ocean surface and permanently sealing the well with cement.

"The Macondo 252 well is effectively dead," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who has overseen the U.S. government's response, said in a statement. "We can now state, definitively, that the Macondo well poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico."

~~~~~~~~~~~quote ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A hollow victory speech indeed as even those who reported the official news do not really believe in the “good news” themselves. How credible can such a claim be, given the many lies that had been exposed? Could this “permanent killing” of the zombie well have been so simple and so fast to kill, all along? If it was, why had there been so much hesitation with so many postponements before this? Why could this “permanent killing” not be done sooner? Although the wish for a quick and permanent solution to this disaster is universal, it is just wishful thinking that such a disastrous runaway gushing well could be tamed so easily. But how are we to judge in the absence of verifiable technical data that BP holds so close to heart?

The answer is quite simple actually. The recently announced “permanent kill” is a farce and nothing more than a PR stunt. Otherwise, why was there a need to deceive? Why would there be a need for the crooked ROV coordinates scheme to create a confused picture of the oil and gas seeps and well locations?

The crooked ROV coordinates scheme is another component of BP’s Art of Mass Deception, foiled once again by the lowly bathymetry data. With the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle in place, BP’s cloak of mass deception is as exposed as the Emperor’s invisible golden clothes (Emperor’s new clothes – from Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tale).

Figure 120-1 shows the plot of some ROVs’ position with the date and water depth. The water depth is obtained by adding the altitude and the depth of the ROV. Figure 120-2 gives the tabulated ROVs’ details extracted from video footage or captured images available in the public domain. If this obvious falsification of data can be found in almost all of the video footage reviewed (picked randomly), there must be a lot more ROV video footage with falsified coordinates.

1.Video proof of oil gushing out of casing at S20BC – the unreported third well that blew on 20 April 2010.

This and many other video footage publicly available from mid May till the first week of June, is the video proof of the oil gushing out of a sub-horizontal casing within a crater at S20BC location; the unreported and unapproved third well that blew on 20 April 2010. This is the only well (out of the 3 drilled) that reached the reservoir at 18,303 ft below mudline (bml).

This location was publicly revealed on 13 Aug 2010 in the diagrammatic illustration of the CSI of the Deepwater Horizon Blowout (Why-It-Could-Not-Have-Happened-As-Reported-By-Bp). From the forensic analysis, S20BC location was determined to be approximately 720ft NNW of Well A. The coastguard log confirmed the location 9 days later; giving it a more precise location of 714 ft NNW of well A.

In one of the first video footages of S20BC reviewed for the article (HERC 6 ROV video recorded from 06:09:42 - 06:11:26 hrs on 29 May 2010) the average coordinates of the ROV is E1,202,504 N10,432,303 with a water depth of 4,970 ±10 ft.

In figure 120-1, the water depths estimated from ROVs monitoring the “dispersant operation” at the vicinity S20BC vary from 4959 to 4965 ft. This agrees quite well with the contour value of 4950 – 4970 ft.

Although the ROV was visibly stationary there was periodic “jumps in the coordinates” either due to errors in reading the coordinates from the video or navigation data noise. The largest distance moved is 45ft in 2 secs (7m/s). Over the 2 minute video, the virtual position variation is 0 to 45 ft. This is the magnitude of random data scatter that can be expected although the physical movement would be much less and much slower than 3 ft/sec (1m/sec or 3.6km/hr). Movement is perceptible even at a low speed of 0.5ft/sec.

2.Deliberate Shifting of ROV position by applying offset and bearing

In any positioning system there is always some noise scatter. In (1) we established the noise scatter to be less than 50 ft with a fairly noisy ROV video recording. In some stable ROV videos, the noise scatter on the position is much less. Noise by definition should be random. Deliberate human interference either by changing one of the digit in the 7 digit Northing coordinate or by range (distance in feet) and bearing (angle in degrees) input; produces a distinct pattern of change. Most importantly, as there is no actual physical movement of the ROV, the physical attributes such as time, depth, altitude, heading and speed do not change. Although the realistic corresponding variation in these physical attributes can be altered as well, it is more difficult to do this online without a complicated computerized system or programme.

In the 25 seconds video recording (from 15:01:26 to 15:01:51 hrs) on 29 May, the adulterated position of the ROV moved from the vicinity of S20BC (video shows oil gushing out of the sub-horizontal casing) 730 ft to just 248 ft NNW of Well A. See the track for 29/5 4959. The ROV moved at a speed of 1.1 to 17.3 m/s (4 to 62.3 km/h) within this short interval of 25 seconds or a total distance of 483 ft. ROV cannot cruise at 60 km/h through water and still record the same image of the seabed crater with the oil gushing out of the same sub-horizontal casing. The possibility of successive “random noise positions” moving progressively towards Well A is practically zero. The only other possibility is - human intervention by range (distance in feet) and bearing (angle in degrees) input. Even if the coordinates are plotted in isolation, the depth of 4959ft in the video recording would fall short of 30 ft (see point 29/5 4959 at bathy chart).

In the review of a second video (9 seconds long) from 09:43:03 to 09:43:12 hrs on 31 May, the adulterated position of the ROV moved from the vicinity of S20BC 740 ft NNW to 200 ft SE of Well A. See the track for 31/5 4962. In this track, the Virtual Position of the ROV moved back towards S20BC in the reverse direction; at the same time maintaining the exact heading, depth and altitude. The maximum virtual speed was 260 m/s (936 km/h). Undoubtedly the automatic positioning of the ROVs had been manipulated. For what purpose, you might ask?

3. Falsified Northing coordinates – by changing first 4 digits from 1,430,xxx to 1,432,xxx (2,000 ft)

An easier method of fudging the ROVs’ position is to change the fourth digit in the 7 digit Northing coordinate. Changing the first to third digits, would plot the ROV position out of range. It would be difficult to recover the true position and prevent the position from jumping erratically if the 5^th to 7^th digits were manipulated.

It is no accident that the fourth digit was specifically chosen and changed from 0 to 2. It was deliberate and intended to confuse. And confuse it did for if one were to diligently plot all the ROVs’ positions, it would make no sense. But out of the apparent randomness, a forensic pattern did emerge if the ROVs’ positions were superimposed on the bathymetry.

On 11 May at 23:33:46 and 23:33:53 hrs, the HERC 6 ROV was recording a gas seep between S20BC and Well A (497 ft NNW of Well A) at a point along the NW-SE fault passing through both locations. Its initial position E1 202 659, N10 430 092 was 1,532 ft SSW of Well A. But the recorded water depth is only 4963 ft; almost 120 ft short of the 5080ft water depth at this southern position. The seabed seep also looked familiar with another image at approximately the mid-position between Well A and S20BC. When the coordinates were corrected to E1 202 659, N10 432 092, the gas seep point falls between the 4965ft and 5970ft contours; a perfect match with regard to the bathymetry.

Two other points at 03:45:57 hrs and 03:49:15 hrs on 19 July, showed the same matching results with the bathymetry. With the “adulterated” southern position (2000ft south), the depth of 4944.2ft and 4943.9ft seemed out of place between contour 5040-5050ft. By correcting 2000ft north, the depths matched with the 4950ft contour shown in the bathy chart.

The “correction of 2000ft north” on all the three points confirmed that the original ROVs Northing had been tampered with a 2000ft shift to the south. But apparently the recorded ROV depth and altitude were left unchanged. Perhaps they did not realise anyone would notice the little discrepancy in depth.

With the general bathymetry sloping 3º to 5º southwards, the water depth should increase not decrease. This proves once again the lowest denomination of the exploration world (the lowly Bathy) to be the mightiest of them all (The-Little-Mole-Hill-That-Is-Really-A-Mountain).

Conclusion

The two methods of manipulating position data (for whatever reasons) are fairly common practices that had been exposed time and time again, during the many QC review of past geohazards assessments. Many errant survey contractors used them for a variety of reasons. It just means that BP is no better than the errant survey contractors caught manipulating their data. Is it any wonder that disasters like BP’s oil spill occurs?

"And I think the media now has to...tell the American people who's getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the Gulf." - Hugh Kaufman, senior EPA analyst, admits millions have been poisoned in the Gulf states.

BP and the government decided that millions of gallons of dispersants should be dumped into the Gulf to sink and hide the oil.

They succeeded in sinking it. As ABC, CBS and NPR note, huge quantities of oil are blanketing the ocean floor, killing virtually all of the sealife which lives there.

And giant new underwater plumes have been found in the water column itself.

But officials don't want to hear about them. As one member of the oil spill recovery team said:

(15 Sept 2010 This article is dedicated to a wonderful friend on his birthday, who sourced the material for this article).

The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

While others were busy fighting the fire on Deepwater Horizon and looking for survivors, those who had been instrumental in driving the exploration drilling into a disaster, were secretly planning to absolve themselves of blame. This is to be expected in each and every disaster I had investigated.

In my paper “The need for Independent Post Survey QC to check the high failure rate of geohazards prediction” which was presented on 11 June 2010 and submitted to Geological Society of Malaysia for publication; I wrote:

~~~~~quote ~~~~~~~

Yet geohazards predictions are often treated with disdain if the risk of geohazards is high. Many would prefer the risk of geohazards to be downplayed in order for the project or drilling to proceed “smoothly” as planned. In the event of an “unlikely” disaster, the “safe geohazards assessment” is always handy in absolving blame and financial responsibility. It is also easy to blame massive financial losses on geohazards which like all natural disasters are acceptable “force majeure”. The chain of human errors especially the erroneous geohazards prediction and interpretation leading to the disaster is often lost in the chaotic aftermath.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have commented many times that the investigation into the disaster is the biggest joke of the century. In any financial disaster, the CEO and the ones most likely to be involved in the scandal would have been sacked or at least suspended pending investigation. In the BP’s oil spill disaster, not only were the companies under investigation placed in charge of recovering the evidence, the CEO and all those who had recklessly driven the exploratory well to a disastrous blow-out, are still in control and have more than 4½ months to shred every piece of incriminating evidence.

~~~~~~~~~~~quote~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/feedarticle/9210344

The Deepwater Horizon rig's failed blowout preventer and the twisted remnants of the drilling platform may be "exhibit A" in the effort to establish who is responsible for the biggest peacetime oil spill in history, with the companies under investigation in charge of recovering the evidence.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~end of quote ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is it any wonder BP behaved as if the whole gulf belongs to them; to do as they pleased? Is it any wonder BP never seek prior permission to use “toxic dispersant” whose use had been banned in the UK? There are many more questions which investigators have to ask but perhaps the most important question of all; Would one lie if one is not guilty?

Thus while documentary evidences can be easily destroyed, disposed off or fabricated, time and space can never be created nor destroyed in the account of events. In my time, I have seen many fabricated seismic data, calibration reports, installation certificates, medical certificates and others, which appeared to be totally genuine on first look. However, all failed when subjected to the logic test of time and space.

So with this brief introduction, we can now critically analyze one of the first documented lies by BP on 22 April 2010, 0402hrs while DWH was still afloat burning and the Search & Rescue (SR) operation was underway to look for survivors. See figure 119-1, the highlighted lines of the Coast Guard log are reproduced here in bold.

JD. At 0402hrs, 22 April, BP reported the Deepwater Horizon has moved appx. 714ft in the north-east direction and is only connected by the Marine Riser.

JH. At 0539hrs, 22 April, Briefed by …(black out)….. MSU Morgan city. Modu reported to have move 714 ft to the NE direction. Held in place by Marine Riser.

The sea state at that time was reportedly calm with little wind. DWH had no power to move by itself. Notice the emphasis was “Move”; to imply that DWH had been moving or rather drifting and was only restrained from moving further north-east by the marine riser. This is the plain comprehension of those two sentences. On first look there is nothing wrong with DWH moving. In fact, why would this be important at all when there are more urgent matters at hand like putting out the fire and finding survivors? But things spoken in haste or at times of emergency do reveal a lot more than the PR messages and advertisement meant to improve the image of BP, at least to the unsuspecting public.

In the first place the marine riser is made of steel and cannot be extended without breaking. Also unlike mooring lines, there is virtually no slack. Thus, there can be very little movement, if at all it did move by undercurrent or wind. But there was little wind and current as we had all witnessed on the first 2 days. The flames and dark smoke were visibly vertical. Anyway this is just a minor point.

Even if there had been strong winds and waves (somebody should really check the wind and current direction), DWH could not have drifted that far. Since there is no slack and the steel string is non-extendable, at 714 ft from Well A (assuming it was vertically above well A at the seabed), DWH had to sink by 51 ft (15.6m). Now that would be noticeable. Why it was not reported? As the drift had happened within the first 2 days when DWH had not lost its buoyancy yet, there had to be a strong gale to continually “force” a floating body down. That the sea state was reportedly calm makes it even more interesting.

Without any electronic positioning devices onboard the burning DWH, how did BP get such an accurate measurement of 714 ft at sea? If BP had estimated DWH position from one of the vessels, the best estimate from the radar would be 2 decimal point of a mile (0.01 nautical mile = 60.76 ft). In any case why was there a need for 1 ft accuracy? Any normal seaman would have read off DWH’s position (from the radar) as 700 ft or more likely 0.11 n. mile (668ft) or 0.12 n. mile (729 ft). I doubt a surveyor would do any better. In any case why would BP specifically fly in a surveyor just to get such an accurate position of a burning rig? As if BP had nothing better to do than to get a good accurate position of DWH. Defies logic, does it not?

In all probability, the position of DWH must have been calculated from coordinates. But how did BP get the coordinates of a floating burning DWH surrounded by a circle of oil? The fire-fighting vessels cannot get near due to the intense heat. Why would anyone risk his life to get that accurate position of DWH so desperately?

Well, if the above do not make sense, then maybe the following reconstruction of events can.

Remember in my last posting (One-Month-Late-5-Days-Before-Blowout,Part-4-AoMD), 5 days before the blowout on 20 April, everybody was euphoric on their unexpected success in reaching the targeted reservoir and huge payload of the reservoir. BP made a delayed application on 15 April 2010 to spud the new well at an unreported location (referred to as S20BC from my forensic analysis) on 16 March a month earlier. Does this paint the picture of funny businesses going on behind MMS’s back?

Like all who were guilty conscious of their crimes, the first impulse was to cover their tracks. At that time, the BOP was still intact; before the reported second explosion on at 10:22hrs 22 April 2010, more than 6 hours later. Those who had ordered DWH to drill at the unreported and unapproved location would be in serious trouble if the ROVs during the recovery stage, were to report a blown location different from Well A. Thus it appeared to be an opportune (during the confusion) to introduce the new position. In their haste, they calculated the position of the BOP (still intact at S20BC) and LIED that DWH had drifted to the new location; hoping that no one will notice.

Why did the late Matt Simmons claim that the real blown-out well was 7 miles away? Why did the number 7 keep appearing? Like all the other information, he must have been briefed on the actual incident by an insider. Once the information is leaked out, it would be difficult to suppress it (or keep it secret anymore). Now if you cannot suppress it, you can distort it. As a seasoned leader in the industry, there would be close associates or past acquaintances who could override the first “insider’s leak information” with more “credible” (distorted) information. If there were 5 against 1, who do you think the late Matt Simmons would believe, especially if they were more senior or working at higher levels than the first insider?

If the late Matt Simmons is alive today, he would have realised by now who had been the ones feeding him distorted information.

-13 Sept 2010 hydrocomgeo@gmail.com

This article is dedicated to the 11 rig workers who died on the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) on 20 April 2010.

Many die-hard pro-BP supporters insisted that BP’s exploration management did no wrong and that the cause of the disaster was due to critical mistakes made at site at the last stage of an apparently smooth exploration well drilling. This cannot be further from the truth. If we willfully ignore the truth and not learn from this painful disaster, the stage is set for another mega disaster. This is one mega disaster that could have been averted.

Even from an outside perspective based on publicly available information, the previous articles on BP’s Art of Mass Deception (part 1 to part 3) had been able to show the many “bull-headed” management blunders pushing the exploration programme to the brink of disaster. Despite the many warnings from the two failed wells drilled over 3 months in 2009 and 2010, BP’s exploration managers still pressed ahead to drill a third well in an evidently geohazardous location. Every Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) policy requires major incidents to be investigated, before proceeding ahead. BP’s HSE policy is no different (see figure 118-1).

Twisted-Tale-Of-The-Missing-3rd-Well-That-Blew-Art-Of-Mass-Deception part-2 published on 25 Aug 2010.

In typical BP fashion, they “conveniently forgot” to inform MMS that BP was drilling from new surface locations at Well B and Well S20BC. It would not have mattered if there had been no disastrous blowout or fire onboard DWH that killed 11 crews. Things would have been quietly covered up as before. With billions in the cost of disaster recovery and litigation hinging on the balance, BP had no choice but to cover-up and to hide the truths. In doing so, BP had willfully obstructed justice and violated many laws of the country in addition to those committed prior to the disaster.

BP had allocated only 3 to 4 weeks for drilling 18,000 ft. Thus spending a total of 3 months (> 3 times the expected duration) and abandoning 2 problematic wells cannot be considered to be smooth sailing by any stretch of imagination. Yet, instead of stopping to investigate and to reassess as required by HSE guidelines, BP’s management pressed ahead with an even more punishing pace at an unapproved and unreported location.

The hawks responsible for deciding the fate of this exploration disaster should be criminally prosecuted for pursuing this kind of exploration madness. It was after all only an exploratory well. The 20 April disaster (204) will no doubt prompt safety manuals in the industry to be rewritten to include reckless management blunders as the key factors in mega-disasters.

BP was already having trouble drilling 4023 ft in one month, due to shallow geohazardous conditions. Well B was on the brink of a disaster as BP pushed the exploration pace faster; by more than 3 times. Despite the warnings of these two near-misses, BP was still adamant in increasing the drilling rate further. At the third unreported well, BP pushed for 18,300 ft in one month (4.5 times faster). Unfortunately, it was a push too far and too deep. The well blew into a mega disaster. Does this insane push for productivity with total disregard for geohazards, safety and loss of human lives, not paint a picture of an aggressive, reckless bull-headed management bent on a suicide mission?

Even though the facts speak for themselves, there are still die-hard pro-BP supporters who continue to insist that there is no documented evidence to show that BP had acted with willful negligence. Why?

Unlike any financial disaster where the CEO and top managers would immediately be removed, Tony Hayward and his managers continue to control BP USA. Five months is definitely more than enough time to shred every piece of incriminating evidence. That is why BP’s shills are arguing so confidently that no documents exist to implicate BP’s management of any wrong doing. The recently released BP’s investigation report on the causes of the disaster expectedly ignored BP’s management blunders.

If the blame lies squarely on the site professionals, hours before the blowout and the sub-contractors, why is there a need for such an elaborate hoax in the recovery efforts? Why should there be such a tight blanket of secrecy at both the crime scene and in the release of vital data for the investigation? Why the extreme focus on the micro-errors when the macro management blunders that really mattered, are blatantly ignored? Why did BP advertising spending increased by an unprecedented 3 folds (totaling $93.4 million) immediately after the blowout? There is definitely “more than meets the eye”.

But there is no such thing as a perfect crime; only hidden crime. Despite the forensic analyses, pro-BP opponents still insisted on documentary proof of drilling at the third unreported location. Figure 118-3 is that documentary proof.

Not only does this document proved that BP spud at a new location, the “twisted” details contained in it also tell of a deceitful BP in a cozy relationship with MMS, the enforcer of the industry’s regulations. This unreported 3^rd well (referred to as S20BC) was drilled at 714 ft NNW of the abandoned Well A from 16 March till 20 April 2010.

It was this well that reached the reservoir on or about 15 April and blew 5 days later. The world had been totally duped into watching BP’s magic show of capping the wrong well for more than 4½ months. What a world? Willfully ignorant (?) to the fact that BP was (and still is) deliberately mixing tons of Corexit with more than 50,000 barrels of crude oil in the gulf every day for the last 4½ months. Why is the world so blind to this genocide; the crime of massive destruction?

It is significant to note that Tony Hayward sold 1/3 of his total share holding (223,288 shares) on 17 March and then bought back insignificant amount (<83 shares) on 12 April, 10 May, 10 June and 12 July as if to cover his tracks of insider trading. That the pattern of “massive shares sold off and insignificant buy-back” was repeated by 3 other director share holders, cannot be mere coincidences. To connect the dots, the evidences cannot be investigated in isolation. The above is just a short summary to refresh the readers’ memories, in order to understand the discussions below. (Please read back previous articles on http://bklim.newsvine.com ).

Instantaneous Blind Approval (ATM facility)

The application date of the Revised Application for Bypass, Well Name 001, MC252, Lease G32306, is 15 April 2010, just 5 days before the fateful blowout on 20 April 2010. The approval date on the same day could only mean instantaneous and blind approval by MMS. MMS seemed to function more like a 711 convenient store rather than a regulatory body.

Willful Ignorance

The Required Spud Date was 16 March 2010; one month before the application was sent in. If BP had access to Instantaneous and blind approval (ATM) facilities from MMS, why did they not apply for it before spudding at the new location (S20BC)?

Did BP “conveniently forget (willful ignorance again?)” to inform MMS before they moved to S20BC? No, with a professional exploration setup, it is virtually impossible for such a slipshod. There are simply too many check points. It has to be intentional.

BP did not want to inform MMS not because they could not get the approval or had to wait (as I had suggested earlier to prove a point) but because BP was pretty certain they would have the same problems as in Well A and Well B. BP were already anticipating another location shift, in the event of another uncontrollable well situation. So even though they had the ATM facilities with MMS, there is a limit to the number of locations BP could shift before it becomes too obvious.

So why then did BP submit the application on 15 April, 5 days before the blowout on 20 April 2010?

If from 15 March to 15 April, confidence was at an all time low (reasons for the massive shares sell off) in reaching the target reservoir below 18,000 ft, the sudden realization that they had actually achieved it against all odds and the discovery of a huge payload, must have been euphoric. You can imagine everyone in the management letting their hair down after an intense 3 months ordeal. Suddenly, someone in the management must have realised that they had not registered the new location yet.

But why were the coordinates so screwed up?

If the strike well was going to be plugged and abandoned for future production, then the new coordinates of that “strike well head” must be recorded and made known. Numerous emails had to be sent to inform various departments at production level, the new coordinates of the strike well. But would the ones guilty of improprieties, want any official documentation of their misdeeds?

They obviously had a dilemma. It would be difficult to control the spread of the information and the document trail once the news of the strike is out. But if nothing was documented, later production crew (and contractors) might actually install production facilities on the wrong well (ie Well A) since both well heads would look the same on the seabed. If this “wrong strike well error” is not caught in time, it could mean wasted days of planning and designing (best scenario case) or worse, actual field time lost (costing millions) working on the wrong well.

So the well-tested practical solution is to give the strike well erroneous Lat & Long geographical coordinates totally inconsistent with the UTM coordinates. It is like introducing an obvious “genetic coding error” in the long string of data processing and storage spanning months across several independent sub-contractors. The error has to be so inconsistent and outright ridiculous that it could not possibly be missed out in the complex and hectic planning & design stages. Thus, instead of the normal Lambert transformation, NAD was used.

Anyone working on the location would have to give up trying to make any sense of it; seek out the right coordinates of the strike well from the “controlled source”. There could be other reasons as well but the screwy coordinates clearly confirmed why documentation details were willfully erroneous. It also proved that those in control of the Macondo exploration programmes were fully aware of the three wells (A, B and S20BC). Surely novices to such fraudulent practices would not have the insights to cover their tracks so well.

11 Sept 2010- This article is dedicated to the victims of 911 and the people who are still working to unearth the truth.

Introduction

From the very beginning, BP has officially stated that they had drilled Only One Well i.e. Well A that reached the reservoir and blew up on 20 April 2010. Even before my previous articles, there was already widespread suspicion that BP had drilled at least 2 wells, one whose BOP was blown off on 20 April and another one which is currently being capped to fool the world. In my posting DWH Blowout Csi: Why It Could Not Have Happened As Reported By BP on 13 Aug 2010, the CSI showed that it would not have been possible for Deepwater Horizon (DWH) to be drilling at Well A location.

On 20 Aug when the alternative media and bloggers’ sphere were still a buzzed with the revelation of two wells, The Mystery Of The April 20 Blowout was published to introduce the next shocker – the existence of a third well, the actual well (S20BC) which blew on 20 April 2010, 720 ft NNW of Well A.

This article provides the conclusive argument that any well which was drilled down to reservoir and blew up on 20 April 2010 cannot be the same well that was capped since the well head would have been badly damaged by the second explosion.

Many would wonder why the revelations have come out in installments. If few had believed the late Matt Simmons, a reputed visionary in the Oil Industry, even fewer would believe the lowly geohazards specialist from a third world country. It would be foolhardy of anyone to expect BP with its mighty Mass Deception machinery, to allow anyone to reveal the truth lying down. That is not to say legitimate criticisms of our argument are not welcomed. It is just to forewarn readers of the forth-coming downpour of dirt to suppress this vital truth of the BP’s Oil Spill disaster.

The significance of the reported second explosion.

(Memo dated 8 June 2010 Committee on Energy & Commerce)

At 10:22hrs 22 April 2010 a second explosion caused DWH to sink after burning for 2 days taking with it a riser pipe which remained attached to the BOP.

None of the main media and BP’s sponsored blogs reported or discussed the significance of the second explosion. The questions in figure 117-1 were used to dispute the CSI analysis. In their argument, the riser and BOP had to be intact for at least 2 days in order to feed the intense fire on the burning WDH and the tight circle of oil around it. This is however valid only until the second explosion.

Fintan and BP’s goons at TOD had used this “half-truth” to decimate Matt Simmons’ assertions (that the well head was badly damaged and the BOP had blown off), without the following consideration:

1. For a second explosion to occur (after the initial blowout and continuous oil and gas flow to the surface) there must be substantially higher pressure beyond breaking or failure point (the basis of all explosions). But how could there be a pressure build-up when the oil and gas were freely flowing to the surface?

1. It is no big surprise the second explosion was not even observed by any of the surface vessels fighting the fire. The impact at seabed which blew off the BOP and severed the riser connection to DWH was too deep beneath sea to be observed at sea level.

1. At 5000ft below sea level, the effect of the second explosion could be seen but not heard on the high frequency audio range, even if the ROV had a high frequency acoustic tracking device. The vibration of the explosion would be below the few hundred Hertz range. Thus for the second explosion to be reported, the ROV which had earlier tried to manually shut down the BOP, must have recorded the visual effect of the explosion. The soft seabed in the vicinity of the wellhead would suffer more damage (reason for the seabed crater) than the robustly built BOP. The BOP assembly, tightly secured on the well head, probably survived the impact intact but fell over with the bent riser.

But Matt Simmons was not at the site and definitely not an ROV operator. How could he have known this? Obviously this information must have been leaked out by insider(s). If this information had not been accurate, BP’s goons would not have bothered to dispute it with such tenacity.

Although my independent CSI analysis arrived at the same conclusion months later, the same incomplete argument was readily used to refute my analysis. The urgency in Fintan’s demand for answers was both surprising and reassuring. It was surprising because of Fintan’s sudden 180º change from being supportive to outright prejudiced condemnation in a public forum. I had earlier confided in Fintan, as a trusted member of my BP’s Oil Spill Truth Seekers circle. It was reassuring because the ferocity and promptness of the attack could only mean that I was on the right track. If I had been off-tangent, they would have left me alone to drift away. Why would they attack someone giving free service to their agenda?

BP had been “loudly” silent on the second and more devastating explosion even though it is most critical in the investigation. The second explosion proves that the gas influx in the initial blow-out could not have come directly from the reservoir. It also meant that the cement plug sealing the well from the reservoir did not fail immediately as widely believed. It is the failure of the cement plug 2 days later, that caused the second more powerful explosion.

Twisted Tale Of The Missing 3rd Well That Blew - Art Of Mass Deception -part 2 - 25 Aug2010

Only “the well that never was” (S20BC) reached the reservoir and blew up. The reason there is still so much gas and oil in the gulf today despite BP’s denial, is because S20BC’s top hole was badly damaged by the second explosion 2 days later after the initial blowout that caused the fire on DWH. The initial blowout was caused by gas influx from the EGCP (extended gas charged pressure) that had built up within the GWSF (gas-saturated weak sub-formation) zone. See Why Is Bps Macondo Blowout So Disastrous Beyond Patch Up? The second explosion that blew off the BOP and broke the lower fifth of the riser, resulted from a sudden high pressure surge of gas and oil from the reservoir when the bottom cement plug finally kaput (breached) big time.

We often use the word “blown off” quite loosely. In this case the BOP was blown off intact like a projectile rather than “cracking open or blown to pieces”. There was some resistance from the sea water but not the hard knocks to cause any dents. Imagine firing a shot gun barrel with a bolt screwed on the barrel. Would the barrel split open or the bolt shattered to pieces?

Why would the second explosion be more powerful than the first (initial) blowout?

With continuous oil and gas flow to the surface after the initial blowout, there are only a few ways for the pressure to build up to an explosive level. Either the flow was blocked until the pressure built up or a sudden and larger influx of oil forced itself into the well bore. As there was no evidence of a block, the latter explanation is most likely.

As first suggested in Why Is Bps Macondo Blowout So Disastrous Beyond Patch Up?, the initial blowout was caused by a gas influx from the EGCP (extended gas charged pressure) that had built up within the GWSF (gas-saturated weak sub-formation) zone. With hydraulic connection between the poorly-cemented casing-formation annulus and the GWSF zone, the initial gas influx could kick in from any one of the leaks in the well.

The second explosion only occurred after bottom cement plug finally kaput (breached) big time. The sudden high pressure surge of oil from the reservoir probably shot up the debris from the well bottom into the drill-string and the annulus. Unlike gas which is compressible, oil does not. The high pressured oil and blocked casing, parts of liners and drill-string acted like “pistons” that thrust, broke and forced a broken drill pipe up into the BOP. The seabed around the wellhead would have suffered the most from such a violent impact. In almost every violent blow-out, a blow-out crater and a badly damaged well head are inevitable. If Well A were to be the well that reached the reservoir and blew on 20 April 2010, its well-head would not have survived the second explosion intact. Then, Well A could not be the STAR of the longest running magic show on earth, “BP’s 7 attempts to kill the zombie well that refused to lay dead.”

BP had two alternatives after the second explosion. Either declare to the world the true situation as asserted by Matt Simmons or choose to fool the world by capping Well A.

In conclusion, the well that reached the reservoir could not be capped. The well that could be capped did not reach reservoir.

(6 Sept 2010, hydrocomgeo@gmail.com).

Very often we make a mountain out of a mole hill but in the BP’s Macondo bathymetry it is just the opposite. The reasons for this willful negligence are already given in previous articles. This posting is to illustrate why we do not get it right when looking at things from the wrong perspective.

Figure 116-1 shows the satellite image of the domes surrounding the Macondo site. The rectangular box (5 x 6 km) is the outline of the Macondo site. You will see that wells A, B and S20BC are all concentrated on the tiny red dot at the middle of a convex edge of the “L-shaped” escarpment which is approximately 12 km by 5.5 km.

There are probably some good geological reasons for this odd shape “low rise (BP’s assessment)” escarpment but that is the subject matter for future discussion. Even from the reconnaissance satellite image, the terrain can be seen to slope down from the point marked X. Whether we call this a cone, dome or just plain escarpment is immaterial, since the whole “escarpment” is by itself a raised landform. Raised landform is either “the seafloor manifestation of some underlying geological events or continuing processes” or “a product of erosion where the underlying formation is more resistant than the surrounding”. However the former is more likely given a number of tell tale features.

It is easy to dismiss this “escarpment” as insignificant, given its smaller extent and lower relief than its adjacent giant neighbours; Whiting Dome, Gloria Dome and Michell Dome. But a “mound” with a radius of 3 to 4.5 km and a height exceeding 500 ft (150m) is not insignificant by most geohazards assessment standards. The worst possible well location could not have been chosen for Well A, Well B and S20BC, even on the basis of this satellite imagery reconnaissance.

In my opinion, the erroneous and fraudulent Macondo bathymetry had a terribly misleading effect. Anyone looking at the highly smoothened Macondo bathymetry would be inclined to think that well A, Well B and S20BC were located on a gentle uniform slope. But the “smoothened seafloor morphology” belies the apparent sharp transition from sloping to flat seafloor, the distinct convex outline of the base of the escarpment and the 3º general slope.

Figure 116-2 shows the satellite image background with the superimposed Macondo bathymetry. The discrepancies are startling even to the untrained eyes. The dark blue shadows conjure an image of an irregular raised landform, possibly faulted close to the seafloor. An MBES (multibeam echo sounder) image acquired at 50 m above the seabed would have yielded a lot of seabed features (not featureless as asserted by BP) that could have averted the terrible Oil Spill Disaster. This disaster need not have happened. It could have been easily averted given due diligence in the geohazards assessment.

Just 60 MMS inspectors oversaw rigs in the gulf. They examined oil spill response plans that were often boilerplate reproductions from one well to another. BP's response plan for the gulf referenced seals and walruses , which aren't found in that body of water, referred to a home-shopping network in Japan and listed scientists who were dead. No one noticed. The inspectors, Ruch says," just made sure the companies checked the right boxes." Since much of the drilling data necessary to complete environmental reviews was proprietary, MMS scientists were not allowed access to exploration and drilling details . when BP made repeated last- minute changes to its drilling plan in the days before the blowout, the MMS approved them all, often within minutes. "That's what happens," Ruch says, "when the government is dependent upon industry for its expertise."

(updated 7 Sept 2010, correction to true slopes due to misread contour interval)

For a disaster of this magnitude, many things must have gone wrong from the very beginning. The long chain of human errors leading to the disaster could not have been purely accidental or random in nature. There must have been willful negligence, ignorance or misinterpretation to capitalize on certain opportunities or to make good on some bad situations along the way.

Like many, I followed the intense discussions at The Oildrum.com (TOD) to get some fair technical coverage of the BP’s oil spill disaster. As the disaster wore on, I started to wonder why industry experts like Art Berman, Rockman and many supporting actors (Rocdoc, PinkFud, Quaking, CraigWcoop & others) were so defensive of BP’s lies and zealously stamping out any independent bloggers’ views. If they had been truly professional and interested in seeking and disseminating the truth of the disaster, why were they not discussing incriminating issues that BP seems to be avoiding? Granted that nuking the gushing well was not really a good idea, but why should they be bitterly thrashing Matt Simmons’ apparently valid assertions as well.

Being a geohazards specialist, I started my own investigation with the bathymetry as I had always done. Being the lowest denominator (in terms of data ranking of importance and sophistication) any evidence of willful negligence should be readily apparent. To my surprise, I found many issues with the bathymetry which nobody seems to be discussing at all. So in the first draft of my posting; Would a better bathymetry chart have made the difference?, I asked the question “Is there something wrong with BP’s Macondo bathymetry?”

There had been some initial troublesome scaling errors while trying to superimpose BP’s bathymetry onto the satellite image from google. I could not find the reference points and was unfamiliar with a prospect using US imperial system. Instead of correcting it (since it was inconsequential to the development of the geological model) the scaling error was left uncorrected in the initial posting. It looked like an opportunity to use it as a “control” to gauge the readers’ responses on the erroneous Macondo bathymetry.

The five areas of fundamental problems with BP’s Macondo bathymetry are:

1. Data acquisition fraud. BP’s Macondo “smoothened” bathymetry did not appear to be consistent with MBES (multibeam echo sounder) images scanned at close range to the seabed. The bathymetry appeared more likely to have been compiled from widely spaced SBES (single beam echo sounder) data along surveyed lines. MBES mounted on AUV is designed to optimally scan the seabed with multiple ultrasonic beams (>100 to 250 beams) from an altitude of 150-200 ft above the seabed, while the conventional SBES utilizes a single ultrasonic beam from the sea level (5000 ft above). Needless to say, data acquired using the AUV-mounted MBES would yield a much higher resolution image of the seafloor as compared to one using a SBES. Three seafloor images using comparable 3m-bin size MBES data were included in my earlier posting (Would a better bathymetry chart have made the difference?) for comparison.

From my experience, passing the backup SBES data as MBES (a form of cheating) is widespread in the industry. Imagine a multimillion AUV-MBES system failing to function in the middle of a survey out in the open sea. Would the survey contractor stop work, return to port and resume survey after the system had been repaired? Sometimes it is not the question of cost. Whether time would permit is another important issue. In most cases, the survey contractor would rather continue the survey using the backup SBES system than to lose a few million dollars. With survey acquisition costing between 50,000-75,000USD/day, the compelling choice is clear. Whether the BP company man onboard the vessel knew or was happily sleeping in his cabin is open to question. Of course, 90% of the survey contractors would never openly declare that their AUV mounted MBES was non-operational 4850ft below the sea surface. Their favorite fallback argument has always been “What is the fuss as long as the bathymetric chart can be produced?” When the bottom line is at stake, quality and resolution fly out the window. MBES can cost more than 10 times the cost of SBES data acquisition.

2. Data compilation fraud: At the post survey data compilation stage, few survey companies would openly admit their data acquisition shortcomings. So although the bathymetry for the Macondo prospect was compiled mainly from SBES data, the legend in the chart still states “Multibeam Processing Sequence”. The graduated colour scheme normally used in MBES images (unusual for SBES compilation), is another tell-tale sign of willful intent. There are other evidences but these should suffice for the purpose of this article.

3. Willful Negligence and Ignorance: For the benefit of the layman, horizontal (spatial) resolution refers to the smallest measurable quantity or interval laterally. As the ultrasonic beam gets further away from the source (echo sounder), the reflection circle (cone) gets wider. Thus a SBES system using 30kHz frequency deployed at sea level would not be able to resolve or see better than 4.5 m or 14.5 ft (spatially) at depths of 5000 ft below sea level. The bin-size (9.84 ft) and contour interval (5 ft) cannot be smaller than the resolution limit of 15 ft. For comparison, a 30kHz SBES source deployed 150 ft above the seafloor would have a spatial resolution limit of only 2.5ft.

Mathematically, the minimum contour interval should be at least 15 ft but for practical mapping purposes, it should be twice the resolution limit or 30 ft and not 5 ft as BP had used. This means any point on the map has an uncertainty circle of at least 15ft radius. Contouring at 5 ft interval (1/3 the resolution limit) would have unduly distorted and biased the compiled bathymetry; the survey lines being 660 ft apart or 132 times the contour interval.

In contrast, a 3m-bin size means there is an average depth point (calculated from several angled-beams) at every 3 m cell. For a SBES source to generate the same data density, the Macondo bathymetric survey line-spacing has to be 3m or 66 times the number of survey lines shown on the chart. But surveying the lines so closely does not make any sense with a spatial resolution of 15 ft.

Would you trust BP’s pledge “to make it right” in the aftermath of the disaster when they could not be bothered with doing it right even with the fundamentals? The cost of a proper bathymetry survey is probably 1/100^th the cost budgeted for well A. Is this a classic case of penny wise, pound foolish?

The lack of resolution will also explain the smoothness of the seafloor which is inconsistent with true slopes exceeding 3º. Whether this was willfully overlooked is open to question. If the chart is to be used, the resolution limit and accuracy should have been clearly stated and cautioned. In BP’s permit application, the depth for Well A and Well B was stated as 4992 ft; implying an accuracy of 1 ft. This is willful negligence. Accuracy cannot be better than resolution. What is the purpose of implying 1 ft accuracy when a more honest representation as 4990 ±10 ft would suffice. Why was there a need to impress (or mislead)?

If AUV-mounted MBES data had been used as specified instead of the backup SBES sounding from the sea surface, the bathymetry would have been more accurate and better resolved to show the irregularities consistent with the true steep slopes (>3.7º to 6.6º) of a major escarpment. With a more accurate and detailed bathymetry, BP should have seen the minute tell-tale signs of the hazardous conditions beneath the worst possible parts of the escarpment to drill. If the well had been drilled from a safer seabed location, perhaps the Gulf Oil Spill disaster might not have happened?

4. Willful Misinterpretation: As evident in figures 7 and 8 of Satellite Image Comparison, the L-shaped escarpment which covers almost 2/3 of the Macondo site, stretches 12 km to the NW (~0.6 km wide) and 5.5km to the north, with the width of the north-eastern flank varying from 1.3 to 1.6 km. Although the total height of the escarpment cannot be measured from the satellite images, the lower slope itself is already 250ft. Compare this observation with BP’s assessment:

BP’s Shallow Hazards Assessment:

The only seafloor feature identified on the exploration 3D seismic data within the vicinity is a low-relief escarpment approximately 1,000 ft to the south of “A” location which is the seafloor expression of a deeply–buried scarp associated with mass-wasting.

The only seafloor feature identified on the exploration 3D seismic data within the vicinity is a low-relief escarpment approximately 950 ft to the south of “B” location which is the seafloor expression of a deeply–buried scarp associated with mass-wasting.

BP’s assessment was obviously very far from the truth. The escarpment is definitely not the only seafloor feature. Even from the satellite images and the “smoothened” bathymetry, there are obvious features such as steep to gentle slopes, almost flat seafloor at the canyon bottom, topographical irregularities etc. No one can deny that both Wells A and B are on the mid-slope of a massive escarpment rather than 950-1000 ft north of it.

Yet Fintan Dunne and Art Berman (TOD), both respectable experts in their own fields, can still assert that well A is located within a valley. Preconceived minds do work wonders.

This discrepancy can only mean that BP’s geohazards assessment had misinterpreted the southern foothill of the Massive Escarpment as the “escarpment” itself. See BP’s misinterpreted escarpment in figure 115-1. How can a massive escarpment be interpreted as an “edge” in the middle of a slope with no significant change in gradient? Was the steep irregular topography willfully downplayed to deceive the regulatory body (MMS) into approving the exploration application?

In my 30 years of geohazards work, it is totally illogical for a blowout to be so disastrous and yet the site can be described as “gentle and featureless” as implied in the hazards assessment. Did BP totally ignore the original unfavourable geohazards assessment? This question can only be answered after an independent review of the 1998 and 2003 geohazards reports. Why would BP America Inc carry out its own internal mapping in 2008 and 2009 using exploration 3D seismic data when there were already existing geohazards reports? Exploration 3D seismic data meant to map more than 25,000 ft below sea level, do not have the necessary resolution to detect and resolve shallow geological hazards as many had experienced in the past of such “disastrous experiments”. If BP’s internal mapping using 3D exploration data took precedence over the previous shallow geohazards reports in any way, then it would be difficult for BP to wriggle their way out of willful negligence?

All the previous shallow geohazards assessment and site survey reports should be reviewed and examined for evidence of willful misinterpretation and lack of due diligence in the shallow geohazards assessment.

5. Willful Misrepresentation: Figure 115-1 shows the seabed profile along the line XY drawn diagonally across the bathymetric chart. BP stated the slope dips 3º SE. Even with the current terrain “flattened” by resolution limitation the average true slope is already 3.7º. In slope analysis, it is the steepest slopes that matter, not the gentlest. It is also erroneous to quote a generalized slope since the slopes of the escarpment is neither uniform nor dip in the same direction. True slopes currently measured from the erroneously smoothened contour vary from 1.7º to 6.6º. This is certainly not uniform. In reality, the true localised slopes should be a few degrees higher than presently measured.

Why did BP state in its report that the seabed slope is ~3º and the escarpment is low relief? Even 3º slopes are considered to be steep, as most well locations are located at seabed with <1º slopes. Seabed with slopes >3º should have been investigated for possible shallow hazards, especially when the location is located right at the convex face of the escarpment. Any escarpment or raised landform exceeding 250ft (75m) in height cannot be described as “low relief”? BP’s choice of words and terms were definitely misleading? The cursory hazards assessment given in only one paragraph (less than 100 words) certainly do no justice; even if the severe slope is the only consideration.

Missing the Forest for the trees

If there had been no comments at all from TOD’s industry experts on my bathy posting dated 24 July 2010, I would not have been so convinced of BP’s deceits and willful mass deception to cover up the long chain of human errors leading to the disaster. Even though there had been visits from BP’s goons to my column and in particular the Bathy posting, they did not want to bring more attention to my blog by commenting.

On 29 July2010-10:30am, Robert Rapier’s posted “A Critical Examination of Matt Simmons’ Claims on the Deepwater Spill”. It must have been a tremendous group effort involving multiple Oil Drum staff members particularly Joules Burn, Art Berman, Euan Mearns and Robert Rapier, to compile all those satellite photos, statistics and causes of methane emission (including belching cattle) just to put down one man.

Just when they thought they had successfully “snuffed out” the last flame of argument against BP (after an exhaustive day hammering down Matt Simmons), someone posted my article, Why Is BP’s Macondo Blowout So Disastrous & Beyond Patch-Up? for discussion the next day. My diagrams and geological model must have infuriated those BP’s goons at TOD. Not only were my diagrams more beautiful than theirs, many impartial bloggers seemed to think my geohazards assessment made a lot more sense. It must have been most frustrating for those BP’s goons to have another sprout of doubts springing to life, so soon after the last one was snuffed out.

It could not have been coincidental that the debasing comments on the inconsequential scaling error by GeoNola, Klurker and Lurking came one day after my diagrammatic illustration of BP’s Macondo Blowout had attracted a 6,000% jump in website visits (first day) to my column. my diagrammatic illustration of BP’s Macondo Blowout had attracted a 6,000% jump in website visits (first day) to my column. Their complete silence on the fundamental issues was deafening. All except Fintan Dunne are oilman experts and judging from their blog comments, are fiercely defensive of BP.

There’s an old saying; “You can see the ant over the river but not the elephant on the same bank”.

I picked BP’s bathymetry to illustrate what many had long feared. It is an open record of BP’s list of willful negligence which everyone can understand. None of BP’s goons, who had been so vocal on so many issues, have remained “loudly” silent on issues incriminating BP. This proved beyond reasonable doubt who they had been working for. I will end this posting by quoting the latest news of BP’s tripled record breaking spending on advertisement.

BP tripled Ad spending after spill - NYtimes

It will come as little surprise to newspaper readers and television watchers, but BP significantly increased its spending on advertising after the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. BP spent $93.4 million on newspaper, magazine, television and Internet advertising in the three months after the disaster, three times what it spent in the comparable period in 2009 the company reported to Congress.

1 Sept 2010, hydrocomgeo@gmail.com

Some of the most critical details of the disastrous Deepwater Horizon (DWH) blowout on 20 April 2010 were never made public. We are told that only one well location was drilled when in fact BP drilled at 3 wells at 3 different seabed locations. In fact the 20 April blowout was the last of several serious near-misses and the blowout location was actually 714ft north of Well A location. Despite its importance, there were no public media reports of a second underground explosion 2 days after the initial blowout on 20 April 2010 burst into flames onboard the Deepwater Horizon.

Four and a half months is a very long time to permanently kill what was initially reported as a “small leak in a very big ocean”. We were first told that it would take 3 months to drill the two relief wells (C and D)? We were told that the Relief wells were the surest way to kill the wild gushing well. Well, mid-August had come and gone by without the promised permanent kill by the Relief wells.

Months had been spent discussing all the intricate details of killing the zombie well in so many ways, from Top Kill to Bottom Kill to Static Kill to Relief Kill that it was almost killing me instead of the zombie well. Has it occurred to them, the zombie Well A could not be killed because it was the wrong well?

What if the capped Well A was drilled only to slightly over 5000ft bml? It would easily explain why Well A could only be cemented to 5000ft. It could explain how 40% of the 500 barrels of cement went into the formation. It could explain why only 3000 ft of drilling rod was in the well and not 18,000ft. It could explain why Well A had to be abandoned on 13 Feb due to 3000ft of drilling rod reportedly jammed at the bottom of Well A. It could explain the mystery of BP's attempts to kill the zombie well that refused to lay dead.

See figure 114.1 on the depths of the 3 wells drilled in correct perspective.

Firm's stock sale nearly twice as large as any other institution; Represented 44 percent of total BP investment.

According to regulatory filings, RawStory.com has found that Goldman Sachs sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman's sales were the largest of any firm during that time. Goldman would have pocketed slightly more than $266 million if their holdings were sold at the average price of BP's stock during the quarter.

-28 Aug 2010 Hydrocomgeo@gmail.com

Within 4 days of publishing this article, Why is-BP’s Macondo Blowout so disastrous and Beyond Patch-up with this diagrammatic illustration, visits to my column shot up by almost 20,000%.

This diagram which had been pasted all over the world had been ridiculed as total nonsense, comical, garbage and many other terms which I will not post here.

Please judge for yourself the accuracy of this qualitative model and the predictions that had since proven to be true with recent events.

The label “Well Location” intentionally left out the alphabet “A” as it was intended to be the well that was actually drilled which forensic analyses of the seabed debris determined to be 720 ft NNW of Well A. This mysterious “well that never was” (referred to as “S20BC”) is still being ignored publicly by the Authorities, BP and all those involved in the cover-up to continue duping the American public and world at large. This damaged S20BC well is the real gusher and the vertical conduit draining oil and gas out of the giant reservoir at 18,300 ft below mud line; not the bogus capped Well A.

Well A was drilled down to 5000 ft or thereof. It had to be abandoned on 13 Feb 2010 due to a broken drilling rod string which was jammed in the well. One must ask why a drill string of steel pipes could be jammed inside the well bore. Recently we hear BP admitting the possibility of formation collapse. And how could the formation collapse into the well bore without pressurized fluid forcing debris and jamming the drilling rods in the open section of the well?

So my independent geological model was right. Dr Bea was right. Matt Simmons was right. So did millions all over the world who did not fall for the Bogus Press releases and the blatant acts of Mass Deception.

Well A could not be the well that blew up on 20 April 2010. At 5000 ft bml, the bottom of Well A is still 13,000 ft above the reservoir. Well A was already leaking hydrocarbon migrating through the faults, GWSF zone and the pervious flanks of the Dome or whatever vertical structural deformities. Well B was drilled to 13,100 ft.

The mysterious “well that never was” (S20BC) reached the targeted reservoir at 18,300 ft bml. It was this well that blew on 20 April 2010. This well had to stay hidden to hide the many dark secrets of the Macondo well. Credit must be given to the determined few who against all odds and the myriad of half truths, distorted facts and Bogus Press information, persevered to bring to the world the truth.

Drilling at Well B and S20BC only made a precarious geological situation worse, by acting as vertical conduits to the shallower 176 ft thick gas-charged siltstone bed discovered by the Texaco Rigel Well in 1999 and BP’s targeted giant reservoir at 18,000 ft bml.

As long been suspected, Well A was deviously capped to mesmerize the world into a hypnotic trance, diverted from the real environmental disaster. A 5000 ft deep Well A would explain the many unexplainable inconsistencies and mysterious evidence that are surfacing now in killing the zombie well that refused to lay dead.

This geological illustration that says it all was independently created on 25 July 2010 based on limited publicly available information, thousands of miles from the crime scene. It explains the need for so many cover-ups. And if these cover-ups are any indication of BP’s misconduct, integrity and credibility, we should be worried about Another Deepwater Production Platform in the Gulf called Thunderhorse at Prospect 778/822.

It turns out the oil field BP has been playing with for greedy gain is a notoriously volatile one. They've been trying to get a handle on for over a decade. Named Crazy Horse due to its unpredictable nature, BP was forced to change the project name to Thunder Horse in deference to the Lakota tribe spiritual reference.
(Wikipedia) 'Thunder Horse oil field is a large offshore deepwater production site in the Gulf of Mexico, around 150 miles (240 km) southeast of New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Thunder Horse discovery well was drilled in 1999 on Mississippi Canyon block 778. It was drilled to a depth of 25,770 feet (7,850 m) from the drillship Discoverer Enterprise, hitting three intervals of oil.

In February 2001 a new field known as Thunder Horse North was drilled in block 776, approximately 5 miles northwest of the original field. This well reached 26,000 feet (7,900 m) and again met three intervals of oil.[4]

Actually developing the field was a major technological challenge due to the depth of the find. Not only are the distances large, but at such depths the formations holding the hydrocarbons create pressures over 1,200 bars (120 MPa) and temperatures of 135 °C (275 °F).

It happens during night when no one can see: near the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of oil-poisoned seabirds and fish, countless whales, dolphins and turtles were and are secretly disposed of like so much garbage hidden from the public's view.

There are no words to describe the horror of it. BP, the corporate media, and our government want us to believe that five million barrels of oil followed by tons of toxic dispersants have had no deadly consequences. Thousands of birds were poisoned by BP's criminally negligent oil spill. We can't be sure how many whales, dolphins and turtles were killed because BP quickly bagged and buried the evidence. BP's oil spill is the largest, most toxic oil spill in history. It is also the largest cover-up of mass seabird and animal poisoning in history.

Could have happened to anyone? What about the trail of strange "coincidences" before the blowout, and the bizarre strategies and secrecies after it, with little probing from the mainstream media, and much less from the US federal government.
Did you know that Tony Hayward, BP's Chief Executive, sold about a million dollars of his BP stock, and the BP corporation sold about half of its own stock less than a month before the blowout occurred?
Goldman Sachs, the Monetary Cartel's main investment bank in the US, sold close to half their BP holdings just prior to the Gulf blowout, earning over $250 million on the transactions.
Another Cartel mega-corporation the Halliburton gang (of Dick Cheney infamy) – apparently also loaded with psychic powers, bought an oil spill clean up company (Boots n Coots) just before the Gulf blowout. And guess who's now making millions if not billions on the phony clean-up in the Gulf. If you said Halliburton, you're only partially right, as all large corporate profits percolate up to the private oligarchs of the International Monetary Cartel. (Incidentally, according to PressTV, Halliburton's profits soared 83% in the second quarter of 2010.)

CDC data: Cumulative amount of Hydrogen Sulfide INCREASES 700 PERCENT in coastal Louisiana since well was 'capped' on July 15

Hourly readings in last day have averaged 15-20 times above the EPA's "safe exposure level"

Human Health Effects from Exposure to Low-Level Concentrations of Hydrogen Sulfide, Occupational Health & Safety, October 2007:

EPA set the safe exposure level at 0.00014 ppm. [.14 ppb]

Yet EPA air monitoring has constantly shown much higher levels of H2S since July and reached an astonishing 9 PPB on July 30th which is over 64 times the exposure level.

-23 August 2010, hydrocomgeo@gmail.com

1. Filling the critical truths in BP’s gapping official storyline and making sense of it all

On 10 March 2009 BP Exploration & Production Inc (BP) submitted an application to carry out exploration drilling on two wells (A and B) within the Macondo prospect; Lease OCS-G32306 Block - 252 Mississippi Canyon Area using a Semi-Submersible drilling rig (semi sub). The wells locations are:

Lat Long Easting (Lambert) Northing (Lambert)

Well A 28º 44’ 17.277” -88º 21’ 57.34” 1,202,803.88 10,431,617.00

Well B 28º 44’ 16.027” -88º 22’ 0.581” 1,202,514.00 10,431,494.00

TransOcean Marianas first drilled at Well A from 7 Oct till 9 Nov 2009. On 28^th Oct 2009 Tony Hayward (CEO of BP) disposed 220,000 shares on the same day the Marianas reported some serious well problems which lasted till 31 Oct 2009. Ten (10) days later (on 9 Nov 2009) the well was officially abandoned due to damages sustained from Hurricane Ida. The total depth drilled was only 4,023ft (1,226m) below mud line (bml). On 17^th Nov 2009, Byron E Grote another BP Director sold 150,000 of his BP share holding.

On 3^rd Feb 2010 the Deepwater Horizon (owned and operated by TransOcean) was directed to drill Well A, by re-entering the previously abandoned well. BP has maintained that this was the only well drilled in February till the blowout on 20 April 2010. The well apparently took a total of 10.5 weeks to reach the targeted reservoir at 18,000 ft bml around 16 April; 6.5 weeks longer than expected. The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) caught fire in a blowout 4 days later (on 20 April 2010) which resulted in the worst ever mega-oil spill disaster experienced during peace time.

The mega disaster has not only killed millions of innocent wildlife and condemned thousands others to the ranks of the walking dead, it has also exposed the worst of human greed and reckless gambling of human lives and the environment by the irresponsible few who walked the corridors of power in the oil industry. This is the continuing untold story of the Art of Mass Deception (part 2) of the twisted tale of the missing third well that BP drilled and blew on 20 April 2010; killing 11 crews and injuring many of the 126 that were onboard DWH. It was a disaster that need not have happened, especially after numerous red flags and at least two near-misses.

The facts will show that the few who had been entrusted with the responsibility of managing BP’s exploration programmes, had been so reckless and had acted so selfishly for their own interests and ego, at the expense of the safety of the field personnel and the environment. It is no less than the crime of mass destruction. Since the accident till now, the efforts to stop the oil-gas gushes had been one lie after another; acts that were put up not to kill the wells but to deceive the world and to save their own skin.

On 17 Mar 2010, just a few days after the out of control well situation that nearly blew DWH, Tony Hayward led the pack by disposing off 223,228 shares (1/3 of his total holdings) just a month before the fateful DWH disaster on 20 April. Together with three other BP directors, a total of unprecedented 531,461 BP shares were disposed off in the period 17 – 30 March 2010. What triggered off the massive BP shares sell off which did not include shares disposed by other BP top executives and Goldman Sachs? See BP massive shares selloff. Did Tony Hayward know something ahead of others as he did on 28 Oct 2009 on the problems Well A had?

We were all led to believe that oil giants like BP had stringent safety policies and standards to prevent this sort of disaster. The congress hearings and investigations had so far shown BP to be seriously lacking in all aspects of any respectable level of standards. What you are about to read will blow your mind more than the actual DWH blowout itself.

2. Some Key Points from Part 1

In the “Art of Mass Deception – part 1”, we have already shown that Well A could not be the well that was drilled when the 20 April blowout occurred. We also showed that the 5,000 ft long riser string could not have fallen intact with the BOP still attached to Well A. If the riser was leaking oil-gas from Well A, the flow has to be from south to north to the leak point at S20BC. Yet all the video footage showed the gas-oil to be flowing from the north. BP cannot change this fact now. If the leaking pipe was already severed on the southern end at S20BC, how could the oil-gas still be flowing to S20BC in the north from Well A in the south ?

To those who still think that BP’s management had acted in good faith and responsibly, there is no need to waste your time by reading any further. To those knuckleheads at TOD who thought they had widely ridiculed and debunked my geohazards theories and diagrams, I am sorry to say the last laugh is on them. They had been the ones who swallowed “line and hook”, from BP without even a second thought on the reasonability of the lies presented to them.

Can they honestly call themselves experts in their own field of specialization be it drilling, reservoir engineering or petroleum geology (or whatever) if they can be so badly duped by BP? They can’t even see the forest for the trees. Yet they want to debunk a lowly shallow geohazards specialist from a third world country who could correctly predict “the well that never was” which blew up right in front of their faces. Readers please go to the TOD blogs and witness for yourself the intimate and lengthy details of supposedly intelligent discussions on how to kill the Zombie Well that refused to lay dead. Why? Because that Zombie Well (Well A) had never been drilled down to TD (target depth) or reservoir. No wonder it can never be killed. The depths of Well A and Well B had never exceeded 12,900 ft bml. Check BP’s drilling records.

Only “the well that never was” (S20BC) reached the reservoir and blew up. The reason there is still so much gas and oil in the gulf today despite BP’s denial, is because S20BC’s top hole was badly damaged by the second explosion 2 days later after the initial blowout that caused the fire on DWH. The initial blowout was caused by gas influx from the EGCP (extended gas charged pressure) that had built up within the GWSF (gas-saturated weak sub-formation) zone. See Why is BP's Macondo blowout so disastrous & beyond-patch-up? The second explosion that blew off the BOP and broke the lower fifth of the riser, resulted from a sudden high pressure surge of gas and oil from the reservoir when the bottom cement plug finally kaput (breached) big time.

In the-mystery-of-the-april-20-blowout-revealed and in The-art-of-mass-deception-part-1., one can logically see that the riser string (5,000 ft long) could not have fallen intact with the BOP still standing on Well A, twisted and bent backwards at an acute angle standing (inverted V) 1500 ft above the seabed. Why did the Oil experts at TOD keep their intellectual silence at the blatant ruse being played out by BP in containing the 3 oil leaks on the seabed? Where are your moral obligations (so often quoted in your TOD blogs) to educate those outside the oil industry on the mass deception being perpetrated by BP?

Simple logic dictates that if the 3 leaks on the riser were due to oil-gas gushing out of the punctured holes, the riser closer to source could have been cut to reduce the 3 leaks into 1 controllable situation. It is amazing to us common folks with only common sense to see that BP could have easily fitted the LRMP within the first month if BP had wished to do so. The only reason 3 containment domes were necessary is because the leaks were coming from the ground and not from the leaking riser as BP had wanted us to believe. Tsk-Tsk! It is excusable for us non-oil experts without 30 years of expertise in the oil industry to be duped by BP. But TOD, the top blog on expert discussion on oil matters? That is inexcusable; unless of course your silence was bought. In which case, you have waived your rights to comment and insult others.

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Those three leaks that BP had reported initially and had sincerely wanted to contain using the 3 containment domes (until the hawks won over) were actually the three leaking wells drilled by BP. I don’t suppose you have the audacity to ask why? BP’s credibility and trustworthiness are already beyond redemption. If BP admitted to drilling 2 wells when they had claimed to be drilling only one, BP would be torn to pieces in the Congressional hearing. Now the whole world would be shocked that BP had been playing footsie with a third well that actually killed 11 and injuring others (?). Would that not be criminal? So why have you knuckleheads kept your silence at TOD? Are you not knowledgeable enough to voice up this obvious flaw for justice or does your silence speak volume of the bias towards the oil giant?

BP’s only sincere recovery effort in this whole fiasco, was the immediate response plan was to contain the gas-oil leaks at 3 seafloor locations using giant containment domes measuring 14 x 24 x 40 ft and weighing 125 tons. But by the time the first of the 3 domes was transported to site, that sincere effort had all melted away. The giant dome was parked on the seabed away from the spill area. On 8 May BP announced they had abandoned this containment approach due to the purported formation of methane hydrate crystals inside the dome. Efforts to place it over the main leak point were suspended at the weekend as a built-up of hydrates prevented a successful placement of the dome over the spill area. Excuse me, but how did the hydrates form inside the dome when it was not even placed over the gas leak yet? Isn’t this just a lame excuse?

It is criminally disgusting the way BP is allowed to carry on the charade and none of the Oilman expert at TOD (the so called vanguards of the oil industry) stood up to say a word. The thousands of Americans who spoke up against BP certainly have more guts than you guys at TOD.

BP would rather let the open well S20BC gush and poison the whole gulf with oil than admit its wrongdoings. BP would rather install the “busily travelling BOP” over well A and mesmerize the world’s attention to the gushing well while it sneakily poisons the gulf with Corexit to disperse the oil gushing out of S20BC, the well that never was. With Americans who would rather poison their own environment and condemn their own American citizens living in the gulf regions to the ranks of the walking dead, who needs Saddam Hussein as the enemy?

You should be ashamed of yourselves (Oilman experts at TOD) that a lowly shallow geohazards specialist from a third world country shows more concern about the gulf disaster and its impact on the lives of innocents. Despite all the evidence of fraud committed against the American people, you still unabashedly and blindly using your knowledge and expertise to drown out the voices of common logic and reasons against the atrocities committed by the selfish few.

How can the relief wells drilled down to 18000 ft bml, be the ultimate weapon to kill well A when well A was shallower than 13000 ft bml? Why must it take at least 3 months to drill each relief well when a normal well to 18000 ft bml took just 4 weeks to drill at S20BC (at an average rate of 580 ft per day)? See Mike William’s Interview with 60-minutes.

No, for all purposes and intent, the relief wells were drilled to kill the real rogue well drilled at S20BC, not Well A which many already suspected was the wrongly capped well. The proof is in the pudding. Just when the relief wells were tens of feet away from their target, BP’s top commanders are now dragging their feet on their “ultimate kill well” weapon. What happens? Were the relief wells just a diversion to buy time? In the hope the rogue “well that never was” (S20BC) would have depleted itself or at least died down substantially for the relief wells to work. It has been many months since any video footage of the oil-gas gush at S20BC was shown. Is the oil-gas gush still as strong as in day 1? What is the real story on the relief wells themselves? Was Relief D having as much trouble as Well A and Well B at the shallow GWSF zone? Was Relief Well C having as much trouble as S20BC at the lower part of the well? BP has to be more transparent to redeem itself.

Many who had correctly analysed BP’s illogical recovery efforts that appear to be stalling like a bumbling novice rather than the professional technological giant it is, knew and predicted BP’s relief wells were not what BP had made them out to be. They were all part of BP’s Art of Mass Deception. That was why Independent experts gave the Relief wells less than 30% chance of success in achieving their “bogus” objectives. Why were TOD’s experts touting BP’s official line that the Relief wells were the ultimate kill well weapons? That so many of our predictions had come true surely must vindicate our qualitative geological model shown in Why is BP's Macondo blowout so disastrous & beyond-patch-up? So which of my predictions and geological models are comical, nonsensical or garbage as ridiculed by TOD oil experts in their blogs?

It is now clear whose professional reputation and credibility is at stake and on the brink of being totally annihilated.

Being Independent and giving valid professional opinions is definitely far more credible and professional than those TOD experts who had prostituted their high moral grounds and expert knowledge.

3. BP’s Seven Magical Attempts To Kill A Zombie Well that refused to lay dead.

If you think, you have been had with the above fairy tale version of “BP’s Seven Magical Attempts To Kill A Zombie Well”, then you are right. BP’s Art of Mass Deception is a Gulf Oil movie production brought to the world’s stage with millions of unsuspecting victims and this reality show is as real as it can get with millions of dead fishes and wildlife thrown in. BP would have proudly promulgated that “No person, animal or wildlife were harmed in anyway in the production of this movie” if not for 11 dead crew and the dedicated work of thousands highlighting the atrocities of BP’s Killing Fields of the Gulf. How the world got duped by BP’s Art of Mass Deception is another complete story by itself. It is almost unbelievable that one of the world’s largest exploration companies would indulge in such a charade. This following section will help you understand why.

Deception works well in isolation and modern advanced society is a perfect victim. The best technological minds would be too highly specialised and absorbed in their own field of work to notice the blatant deception being played out by the mass media. Like most animated movies, BP had the technological advantage to play the high tech game of “Hide and Virtual Reality” leaving outsiders lost and confused. Any piercing enquiries into the disaster would be blocked by the need to maintain technical and business confidentiality. BP’s army of bloggers is essential to out-blog and to drown out any threatening logical voice of opinion in the internet space, so that the public is kept bombarded with BP’s Bogus Press to keep the world numb to the realities of the disaster.

4 The Drilling Problems at Well-01 (aka Well A) in 2009

To understand why BP did what it had to do, we must go back to 2009. In the 2009 drilling campaign, the semi-sub rig (Marianas) drilled only 4023 ft in over one month from 7 Oct to 9 Nov. This means that the first well (Well-01 aka Well A) must have had a lot of problems in the GWSF zone since the expected duration to drill 18000 ft was only 3 to 4 weeks. Was Hurricane Ida a saving grace and a good excuse to hide BP’s huge embarrassment?

Surely the technological giant could have managed better than 4023 ft or 75% short of their target? In this high stake game of exploration, nothing is left to chance and achieving less than 25% is indeed a dismal record. Apparently the shallow drilling problems (within the first 4000 ft) were compounded by a NE-SW fault sub-cropping close to the seabed. Average drilling rate was less than 122ft per day.

Would a technological and market leader like BP admit defeat at the hands of Mother Nature? After spending probably more than 50 million USD, a public admission of failure would open a floodgate of enquiries on BP’s incompetence and ignorance, not to mention a big dent to BP’s ego and share value. Could BP publicly announce that it had spent more than 50 million USD and not even drilled beyond 4000 ft? If the shallow drilling problems had been so severe, why had BP not seen it coming? So either BP had not conducted a shallow geohazards survey or had totally ignored the shallow geohazards warnings? Either way BP was in the wrong. If BP had diligently followed the geohazards assessment, BP should have sued the geohazards contractor for the mistake. So why did BP take the tab silently?

It is as if BP had gone to Las Vegas and gambled away 50 million USD of their exploration partners’ and shareholders’ funds. Like all gamblers, with all commonsense knocked out of them, BP or rather the key prospect managers or directors needed to win back the money with one more throw of the dice. BP had to drill that damn hole at whatever cost even at the risk of lives. In this game of confidence, BP cannot afford to let any of the “cats out of the bag”. Chances are well-01 (the real Well A) would not have been properly sealed and abandoned in the rush to escape Hurricane Ida. That was why the drilling campaign in 2010 was destined to end as an utter failure. It had all the makings of a “mega disaster waiting to happen”; see my first article on Newsvine; The Root Causes of BP's oil-spill back in 8 July 2010. The best drillers in the world could not have prevented the blowout on 20 April from happening.

5 Third Strike And You Are Out.

BP’s disastrous blowout at S20BC on 20 April came after 2 near-misses at Well A and Well B. Even for the most stubborn gamblers, these two near-misses should have warranted a thorough reassessment of the battle plan instead of an obsessed bulldozing drive to a certain head-on collision. All international safety policies require a thorough investigation and review of project operation plans before proceeding. I can quote no less than 20 major projects where such a Halt-Review-Reassess break of opportunity had averted disasters in the nick of time. I can also quote a few which had blatantly ignored accurately predicted geohazards that ended in disasters.

Was the need to cover individual mistakes of the past, selfish greed and pride, the fundamental cause of BP’s evidently very bad judgment and incessant drive to drill that damn Macondo well, come rain, hell or sunshine? See for yourself the evidence contained in the following timeline of key events leading to the disaster. No one until recently realised there was a third “well that never was (S20BC)” so “well B” was assumed to be the last well that blew on 20 April 2010.

Most Likely possibility #1 – to be confirmed with operation logs of vessels & DWH (but be aware of adulterated logs)

Date: Location: Observation (italics – remarks by BK Lim)

3 Feb10 Well 01 (Well A)

(Good possibility Well A was re-entered ignoring the earlier problems encountered by Marianas semi-sub in 7 Oct – 9 Nov 2009.)

3 - 13 Feb10 Well 01(Well A)

Extract from www.godlikeproductions.com

They attempted to plug Well #A. There were some extreme problems with it for 10 days, then it blew out the BOP and the well pipe on February 13. The BOP held back the pressure and saved Deepwater Horizon. At that point, the new purpose for moving Deepwater Horizon into Well #B position was to drill a relief well. …. Almost the entire crew did not continue on to the drilling at Well B.

The writing Shop - by John Schettler

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.

17 Feb10 Well 02 (Well B)

(Good Possibility DWH moved to Well B (300 ft west of Well A) without informing MMS.)

17 - 23 Feb10 Well 02 (Well B)

Blog.alexanderhiggins.com

BP reported cracks in well casing and leaking of hydrocarbons into the surrounding rock formation. It took BP 3 attempts to fill the cracks with cement before the well control event was brought under control.

(probably the same thing happened with Well A in Nov 2009 as due to GWSF ).

02 -05 Mar10 Well 02 (Well B)

BP reported another well control event that took 3 days to bring under control

08 -14 Mar10 Well 02 (Well B)

BP reported a well control event that took 7 days to get under control. A series of BP internal emails released by Congress showed the surrounding rock formation actually collapsed on the drill. BP was then given special permission to cement the well at a shallower depth than normally required because the hole caved in on drilling equipment. Another BP email released by congress showed that unnamed MMS official at 11 p.m. on March 11 gave the special permission to insert the cement plug about 750 feet above the bottom of the hole.

(depth drilled on 10 March was 12,900 ft in 21 days average drilling rate of 614 ft per day)

16 Mar10 Well 03 (Well S20BC)

BP moved location first before submitting application 1 month later on 15 April 2010, 5 days before the blowout. New location was NAD 27 E 10431702.91 N 1202802.89 . Required Spud date was 16 March 2010.

(proof that BP moved location although coordinates were given in NAD 27 X-Y, probably in error)

04-07 Apr10 Well 03 (Well S20BC)

Well control event took 3 days to bring under control.

(same drilling problems as in well A and B, due to GWSF hazards in the first 4000 ft bml)

20 Apr10 Well 03 (Well S20BC)

Application for Permit to Modify - API 6901, Well 01, Rig - DWH, Status (blank), Permit Type "abandonment of Well Bore", Permit Subtype "Temporary Abandonment"; Date commencing 4-18-10. DWH blew up at 10pm.

(it was easy to let guards down after finally reaching reservoir oblivious to the fact that trouble was brewing at the GWSF zone.)

20-22 Apr 10 Well 03(Well S20BC)

At 0400hrs 22 April ROV made 3^rd attempt to shut-in well by cutting umbilical cord to activate BOP Ram. BP reported DWH had moved by approx 714 ft NE and was still connected by marine riser to BOP.

(above extracted from Coast Guard operation log in communication with BP personnel during the rescue and search operation)

At 10:22hrs 22 April 2010 a second explosion caused DWH to sink after burning for 2 days taking with it a riser pipe which remained attached to the BOP.

(Memo dated 8 June 2010 Committee on Energy & Commerce)

Notes:

Possibility #2: BP could have drilled Well B first followed by a shift to re-enter Well A after problems at Well B developed. Irrespective of whether Well A or Well B was drilled first, the final third well location was S20BC which was consistent with the forensic analysis given in The-mystery-of-the-april-20-blowout-revealed as well as in The-art-of-mass-deception-part1.

Possibility #3: BP could have drilled Well B only and did not re-enter Well A. After 13 Feb blowout, BP sidetrack from the same seabed location at Well B (a worse option given that the problematic GWSF zone was within the first 4000 ft). On 16 March, Well B was finally uncontrollable and had to be abandoned. DWH then moved to S20BC which was the final 20 April blowout location.

Note on DWH location at the time of disaster:

How did BP personnel onboard the vessel, know so precisely that “DWH had moved” 714 ft? If the position was extrapolated from one of the Rescue Operation Vessel’s GPS, DWH’s offset position could not have been so precisely determined; maybe to the nearest 50ft. If that location had been determined from the ROV sent down to manually shut down the BOP, then that location must have been the seabed location of the well DWH was drilling. It was not the surface location of the burning DWH which was 120 ft south of the S20BC seabed location – see The-mystery-of-the-april-20-blowout-revealed.

The CoastGuard log and 8 June memo(CEC) were received on 23 Aug 2010 (sent by Jack Todd) 9 days after DWH CSI was published.

DWH never moved 714ft NE as reported by BP to the Coast Guard. BP had to come up with something to explain why the burning DWH was in that location. The sea was calm and DWH had no power to move. This further confirmed DWH was sitting on top of the S20BC location as correctly predicted by the seabed debris forensic analysis. BP had to move the fallen BOP and placed it on Well A in the aftermath of the blowout. This is one of the many reasons BP cannot release the video footage of the BOP immediately after the second explosion blew off the BOP and broke off the bottom fifth of the riser string as detailed in The-mystery-of-the-april-20-blowout-revealed and in The-art-of-mass-deception-part-1.

6 Conclusion

If BP’s exploration management had any safety consideration and common sense, they would not have directed TransOcean DWH to reenter well A which they already knew was a nightmarish hole. Even if BP had directed the drilling contractor out of sheer ignorance, the least they could have done was to highlight and caution Transocean’s drilling crew the expected problems, hazards and precautions based on their month long nightmare experience at well A from 7 Oct to 9 Nov 2009. If Transocean had accepted the assignment after all the safety cautions (as per required safety pre-drilling briefing) then Transocean had to accept some of the blame in drilling a hell hole.

In typical BP fashion, they “conveniently forgot” to inform MMS that BP was drilling from new surface locations at Well B and Well S20BC. It would not have mattered if there had been no disastrous blowout or fire onboard DWH that killed 11 crews. Things would have been quietly covered up as before. With billions in the cost of disaster recovery and litigation hinge on the balance, BP had no choice but to cover-up and hide the truths. In doing so, BP had willfully obstructed justice and violated many laws of the country in addition to those committed prior to the disaster.

Having drilled the wells without proper authorization, BP had to keep up the charade especially since the only escape joint liability clause in the joint-venture partnership with Anadarko & Mitsui, was “willful negligence by BP”. Many would question why BP did not abandon the wells despite the numerous red flags. Would a gambler refrain from throwing his last dice in the futile attempt to win back his lost fortune?

In the next installment of the “Art of Mass Deception” series, we will examine why the relief wells were never meant to bottom kill Well A or Well B which had never been drilled down to reservoir level. Only well S20BC reached the oil-gas reservoir at slightly over 18,000 ft bml. Was it a coincidence the 3 leaks on the seabed coincided with Well A, Well B and the “well that never was-S20BC”. S20BC is the largest and most difficult to control since it was the only one with the direct vertical conduit (well) to the reservoir. Oil from the reservoir flows to wells A and B through a myriad of pathways. In addition, all the three wells probably had continuous gas supply from the 176’ thick gas-charged, low-permeability siltstone in the Rob E-age target, reported in Texaco’s Rigel Well. There are several more leaks through the NE-SW fault line passing through both Well A and Well B locations. See figure 112.1.

BP’s “Seven Attempts to Kill A Zombie Well” were all part of the stage play in the attempt to buy time in the grand finale of “Now you see Now you don’t”. Stay tuned.

"I think the media now has to...tell the American people who's getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the Gulf." - Hugh Kaufman, senior EPA analyst, admits millions have been poisoned in the Gulf states.

A biochemical bomb went off in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010—a bomb that was as dangerous and destructive as a nuclear blast.

Energy giant BP has been accused of hiding key data needed to investigate the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

Transocean, the company that owned the oil rig, alleged that BP is refusing to hand over information it needs about the explosion.

Few people in the world know more about oil drilling disasters than Dr. Robert Bea.

Bea teaches engineering at the University of California Berkeley, and has 55 years of experience in engineering and management of design, construction, maintenance, operation, and decommissioning of engineered systems including offshore platforms, pipelines and floating facilities. Bea has worked for many years in governmental and quasi-governmental roles, and has been a high-level governmental adviser concerning disasters. He worked for 16 years as a top mechanical engineer and manager for Shell Oil, and has worked with Bechtel and the Army Corps of Engineers. One of the world's top experts in offshore drilling problems, Bea is a member of the Deepwater Horizon Study Group, and has been interviewed by news media around the world concerning the BP oil disaster.

Washington's Blog spoke with Dr. Bea yesterday.

14 August 2010, hydrocomgeo@gmail.com

Coincidence is the word we often use when we want to hide the truth. The oil spill disaster has more than its fair share of coincidences. Matt Simmons’s death 4 days ago, is a great loss to all of us seeking the truth. In one of his final interviews, Matt Simmons said, “It was painful as can be… to be the only person in the industry that was willing to speak out.” This article is dedicated to him, all those (animals included) killed and those continuing to suffer from this mega disaster.

Despite BP’s numerous delay tactics, improprieties, inconsistencies and contradictions; the mainstream media, BP’s paid Bogus Press and “Oilmen Expert” bloggers never commented on the obvious flaws in BP’s rendition of the mega disaster. But the same Devil’s Advocates were so quick to bark and maul on articles or postings that disputed BP’s version of events. It was painful indeed to read these biased blogs hammering and mauling Matt Simmons’s character, professionalism and sanity, just because he had disputed BP’s claims and version of events. Many of Matt Simmons’s accounts have since been vindicated by recent whistleblowers’ accounts, evidence of previously undetected oil spill and gas seeps, and health hazards due to extensive usage of Corexit.

BP’s attempts to spin the disaster into an art form through the mass media and paid advertisement are all part of BP’s Charade. The failing Static Kill on the “wrongly” capped well (Macondo A) is just one of the “broken steps”. The return of BP Zombie Well by Fintan Dunne aptly described the multiple failures in trying to kill the wild well. Is there more to it? Did BP drill one or two wells? Apparently the wells were drilled outside their approved period of exploration. Despite what it seems Well B was not drilled at its proposed location. Instead after plugging well A, DWH drilled on an unreported location which blew on 20^th April 2010. Were regulations contravened?

This article is the first of several series which will present evidence of mass deception for public discussion. Without doubt, underhand tactics and adulterated data would be used to discredit me and my articles as they had done to Matt Simmons. Bloggers would be employed to disseminate distorted facts and to confuse the general public, under the guise of technical discussions. Do not be intimidated by technical jargons meant to confuse, for the truth is always simple and logical. Judge what I have presented here for its true academic values and not from any political or vested perspective. There are no hidden motives in my series of articles other than to educate, disseminate the truth and point out the obvious flaws in the accounts of the disaster. My expertise in the field of geohazards geophysics is given here on a pro-bono basis as part of my contribution to speak up for Mother Earth so that we need not live in constant fear of another mega man-made disaster.

1 Was the wrong well capped?
As the list of things that do not add up, continues to grow longer and longer, it is becoming more obvious the cover-ups are as elaborate and extensive as the disaster itself. One has to wonder why would there be a need for such a colossal cover-up. The truth then must be more devastating than the disaster itself. It is always easier to tell the truth as the truth will not contradict any facts that are revealed over time. The bigger the lie the more elaborate is the effort needed to cover it. But all deception no matter how perfectly planned cannot cover all tracks. After all, Man proposes but God Disposes.

The starting point of contention has to be Well A (E 1,202,803.88, N 10,431,617.00) which was supposed to be the seabed location drilled when the disastrous blowout occurred on 20^th April 2010. Is it a mere coincidence Well A is located outside the blowout circle drawn to connect the major debris from DWH? The source of any unconstrained explosion will always lie close to the “epicenter” of the blowout. While it is possible to have a skewed ellipsoid (as in explosions from directional charges), the debris field will be similarly skewed and not be a symmetrical circle. See figure 1 of DWH blowout CSI which was reproduced from the Macondo ROV Map Ver 1.0 compiled by Fintan Dunne on 9^th Aug 2010. Tuttlet must be commended for compiling the original map showing the ROVs’ position in early August.

It is only logical that DWH would be drilling directly above the well’s seabed location within tolerance limits of a couple of percentage error. DWH being the “state of the art” drilling rig, was definitely capable of maintaining dynamic position accurate to 50ft or 1% of water depth. For all practical purposes, 3% or 150 ft would be the position tolerance limit at that depth. It is therefore intriguing that Well A should be more than 520ft SSE of DWH’s surface location. If this was true, then DWH was drilling with the riser string at an angle of almost 6º. Given the dynamic positioning capability of DWH, there should be no reason for DWH’s surface location to be so far away from well A; if indeed the seabed location was Well A when the blowout occurred on 20^th April 2010.

2 Did Well A blow out on 20^th April 2010?
BP in their press conferences gave the impression that the riser string was largely intact and still connected to the BOP on top of Well A’s well-head, albeit badly twisted and bent. The figures at 7a to 7e (DWH blowout CSI) by Al Jazeera illustrate the simplistic but illogical rendition of how DWH could have sunk to the present wreck position on the seabed with 3 leaks on the punctured riser.

Doubts that the capped well (Well A) may not be the actual well that blew on 20^th April, is further fueled by the early video footage available to public in May. The videos showed oil gushing out of a partially buried, severed casing with several broken debris obviously associated with a catastrophic event. The oil gush seems to be flowing out of a sub-horizontal pipe (casing?) which apparently dips into the seabed within an “unnatural” seabed crater. This location referred to as S20BC, is approximately (estimated from the scatter plots of ROV coordinates) 720 ft NNW of Well A and just 120ft NW of DWH’s surface location. The water depth of 4960-4970 ft is consistent with the depth shown on the bathymetric chart. Figure 3 shows the charted location of these images presented in figures 3a -3d. Water depth at Well A is generally more than 4990 ft.

This is strange as in all past blowout investigations, the primary focus of attention should be the blown-out well (Well A?) and not any one of the three “secondary leaks” on the riser. Why the intense activities focusing on S20BC (supposedly the most serious of the 3 leaks on the riser) instead of Well A? Does action speak louder than words? Could S20BC be the real blowout well but misled as just a “secondary” leak on the riser? Another piece of Mass Deception?

Video footage of the faulty BOP on top of Well A was only widely available to the public from June onwards. In a video dated 4 June 2010, an apparent “Dispersant Ops” Rov showed the BOP at 61.8 ft above seabed level, at 221.5 ft WNW of Well A location. Figure 3d confirmed our suspicion that the BOP had been “busily travelling” around instead of being Static at Well A as we had been led to believe.

Stranger still, why does the partially buried, severed casing (at S20BC) with gushing oil and gas appear to resemble more of a broken well-head casing than a twisted or flattened riser? Why would the ROV video show the oil to be flowing from north to south? If the oil and gas were to flow from Well A to S20BC in the north through the “riser”, the flow direction should be south to north. This confirms that Well A could not be the source of the leaking oil and gas.

It was crucial to keep this key discrepancy secret initially to avoid adulteration of the ROV data. As expected, the recent video footage appears to have unreliable coordinates or had missing information; eg sudden jumps of several hundred feet in ROV position. While “jumps” in navigation or position can be due to a variety of instrumental errors or data lapses, it is more difficult to explain jumps that seem to converge to Well A location. Is this another evidence of “tampering with the data”?

3 The mystery of the Twisted Riser wreck standing 1500 ft above seabed
Figure 2 (DWH blowout CSI) illustrates that it would not be possible for the DWH wreck to have landed just 1,100 ft from Well A if the riser string was largely intact with the base attached to the BOP (BP’s official version).

Even if the riser string were to detach from DWH as it was sinking, the wrecks (both DWH and riser) would continue their motion northwards. By the time the riser string had tilted to 12.5º from the vertical, the burning DWH would be already 1082 ft from Well A and it would have sunk by 118 ft. It is also possible that DWH could have fallen apart much earlier at 6º tilt angle. In which case, the centre of the fallout circle would be very close to the observed surface location of DWH but the WDH wreck would have to sink by 27 ft. Thus while the WDH wreck could still land at the observed seabed location, the unbroken long riser string would not be so twisted and definitely not bent backwards at such an acute angle. It is only logical for a free-falling rigid string (anchored at the base to the BOP) to fall straight through the water column; thus ruling out such pronounced bending.

It is almost impossible to explain how the riser could have bent backwards at such an acute angle and landed at a standing position 1500 ft above the seabed, with the lower end of the riser still attached to the BOP. Either the mainstream media were totally misled or NOAA debris chart as shown in figure 2a is totally inaccurate. Surely the Press could not have been so meek, not to question the improbability of the twisted riser standing 1500 ft above the seafloor without breaking. Obviously BP was given a lot of leeway to cover its own charade with a “No Tough Questions” policy. This is BP’s Art of Mass Deception in action.

Even if the burning DWH had sunk with the riser string broken at the lower section, the swing momentum of any inclined rigid steel string would have propelled DWH towards its anchor point. NOAA debris chart is the documented evidence of physical laws governing the dynamics of DWH sinking. There is no way DWH’s wreck could have landed at its present seabed location 720ft away if DWH’s riser (steel) string was anchored to Well A.

The most likely anchor location of DWH’s riser string is S20BC. Figures 8a-8h show the likely sequence in the sinking of DWH following the blowout on 20^th April 2010. The blowout was so powerful its upward thrust probably broke the lower 1/5 of the riser. The BOP with the broken riser tilted and fell to the seafloor bending the upper section of the well casing. Whether the BOP was later cut and removed from the well-head or whether it broke off from the well-head by the blowout, is open to question? This can be confirmed by unadulterated ROV operation reports.

BP probably removed the BOP with the bent riser and installed it on Well A several weeks after the 20^th April blowout. It was only after the BOP installation on Well A, were video footage of the leaking BOP released for public consumption. Irrespective of the BOP’s “travel paths or transit points”, Well A could not have been the well location drilled by DWH when the 20^th April blowout occurred. Period!

(31 July 2010 – hydrocomgeo@gmail.com)

Return to main article:

Why is BP's Macondo blowout so disastrous & Beyond Patch-up.

A "hilarious" must see for those who thinks the capped BP's oil gusher is under control and the oil has disappeared over night.

(25 July 2010, hydrocomgeo@gmail.com).

There has been so much information (or mis-information) on the disaster it is difficult to separate the facts from the myths, let alone decide who is or are to be held responsible for the oil spill disaster. There is a need for a working geological model to integrate all the scattered pieces of information and evidence together, so that law makers can zoom into areas where data had been lacking (or withheld) and the wrongs be corrected in order for the industry to move forward. The fact that so many wells (even in deeper waters) had been drilled successfully in the past in the same Gulf region suggests that there may be more “hidden” factors that caused this blowout to be so disastrous.

The geological model presented here is based on facts derived from past blowout investigations that had been equally puzzling. It provides a fresh perspective into the blowout investigation which until now had been overly focused on the drilling itself. If the well blowout was already a disaster in waiting, there is absolutely nothing the drilling crew could do to prevent the blowout, short of abandoning the well prior to reaching the reservoir. The fact that this geological model had been independently generalized from data and information available on the public domain means that there is room for more detailed infill and ample opportunities for BP’s technical experts to prove the model wrong. On the other hand, if subsequent revelations (from yet to be published data or information) substantiate or improve on the accuracy of the model, then this geological modeling effort, is heading the right direction in providing a more sound basis for corrective measures towards making the oil industry safer from such future disasters.

1 Key components of the qualitative geological model.
It is reasonable to assume that BP was targeting a structural reservoir in the vicinity of a salt dome. In BP's bathymetric chart, both Macondo’s wells (A & B) were located on an escarpment discernible on satellite images of the seafloor obtained from Google Earth. Texaco Rigel well which is about 2.43 km from BP Macondo A, is about 1 km away from the edge of the escarpment. Thus, while a salt dome is selected for the model, any vertical geological structure like an intrusive dyke or a vertically inclined fault zone (lateral fault), would essentially produce the same effects. The present qualitative geological model can be converted to a quantitative one when sufficient quantitative data is available. For now this qualitative model is sufficient for us to understand how the blowout occurred, why it occurred, what should have been done to remedy a bad situation from getting worse and how it could have been prevented in the future.

2 Information substantiating the qualitative geological model
There have been “unconfirmed” reports that Macondo Well A which was first drilled by TransOcean Marianas and aborted on 9^th Nov 2009 after reaching a depth of 4023 feet (1226 m) below seabed, was re-entered by TransOcean Deepwater Horizon on 13 or 15 Feb 2010. Thus the present blown out well is Macondo B. There were also unconfirmed reports that Macondo B was so badly blown, that the well which is been shown to the worldwide audience is the first Macondo A well which blew earlier in early March (??), before the 20 April blowout. While such “unconfirmed” information would fit in quite nicely with the geological model, it does not affect its validity even if they are not true.

On 13 Feb BP told MMS they were trying to seal cracks in the well. It took 10 days to plug the first cracks. In early March , BP told MMS they were having trouble maintaining control of surging natural gas (according to emails).

A March 10 e-mail to Frank Patton, the U.S. Minerals Management Service’s drilling engineer for the New Orleans district, from BP executive Scherie Douglas said BP planned to sever the pipe connecting the well to the rig and plug the hole. “We are in the midst of a well control situation on MC 252 #001 and have stuck pipe,” Douglas wrote, referring to the subsea block, Mississippi Canyon 252, of the stricken well. “We are bringing out equipment to begin operations to sever the drillpipe, plugback the well and bypass.” Bloomberg News (31 May 2010).

According to Bloomberg news, Douglas or BP received verbal approval at 11pm on 11 March to insert the cement plug about 750feet (229m) above the bottom of the hole. The Federal regulators gave BP permission to cement the well at a shallower depth than normally would have been required after the hole caved in on drilling equipment.

In the congressional hearing on 15 June 2010, BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward and other top executives gave the impression they were ignorant of the difficulties the company’s engineers were grappling with in the well before the explosion… according to U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “We could find no evidence that you paid any attention to the tremendous risk BP was taking,” Waxman said as Hayward waited to testify. “There is not a single email or document that you paid the slightest attention to the dangers at this well.”

BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles and exploration chief Andy Inglis “were apparently oblivious to what was happening,” said Waxman, a California Democrat. “BP’s corporate complacency is astonishing.”

Perhaps Henry Waxman was not aware that there was a massive share sell-off (531,461 shares in total) by 4 BP directors just days after the 11 March incident. Tony Hayward sold 223,288 shares (a third of his total holding) on 17 March. This was followed by Byron E Grote on 18 March (58,536 shares), Andy Iglis on 23 March (219,500 shares) and Ian C Conn on 30 March (13,073 shares). And that were only BP’s directors. What about the shares sell off by BP’s executives? See Massive Shares sell off prior to expected disaster.

It is not that BP directors and executives were ignorant to the problems on the Macondo wells. Their personal fortune mattered more. It is not that they do not know a blowout was inevitable. They were only wrong in thinking that the blowout could be controlled. They had not expected the blowout to spin so badly out of control.

It did not matter whether Macondo A or Macondo B was eventually drilled to reservoir level since both wells were located right on top of the seabed escarpment which is clearly an indication of some massive geological structure beneath.

Would moving the location have made a difference?

Texaco’s Rigel well 2 km from BP’s Macondo wells (but 1 km from the edge of the escarpment), was drilled safely in stark contrast to BP’s ill fated wells. Why? The reason is obvious on Figure 1a.

The Rigel exploration well, the Texaco OCS-G-18207 #1, was drilled in 1999 in Gulf of Mexico block MC 252 in 5200’ water depth. The well targeted a Miocene age, low-relief downthrown closure/stratigraphic trap that was supported by a strong amplitude response on the 3D seismic data. The results from the Rigel exploration well were disappointing. The well encountered what was interpreted to be a 176’ thick gas-charged, low-permeability siltstone in the Rob E-age target. This reservoir was believed to be uneconomic at that time. This presentation focuses on a few stalwart individuals’ efforts to continue to pursue appraisal of this marginal discovery. These efforts included pre-appraisal geologic modeling, reservoir modeling, and analog work. (Westside - Rigel Deepwater Field Appraisal and Development 16 Nov 2005.)

3 What possibly happened?
Figures 1a shows the geological setting just prior to drilling BP’s Macondo well. Problems started as soon as the drilling entered the GWSF hazardous zone. The top hole condition would have deteriorated as escaping gas swirled outside the well casing, enlarging the well bore. With heavy circulation losses, the drillers would have reduced ECD (equivalent circulation density) to limit mud losses and minimize damage to the pervious (weak) rock formation. Unfortunately, each time the ECD dipped below the previous charged pressure, gas influx would kick in. Thus the drillers would have no choice but to keep ECD high enough to keep the gas out. Cementation to isolate the hydraulic connection between layers would be futile as the cement would not remain static long enough to set. This was partly due to pressurized gas and cavitations in the GWSF zone caused earlier, by drilling in an open hole. The dynamic movement of fluids in the GWSF zone gradually increased the fractures and permeability in the vicinity of the poorly cemented well bore as the drilling continued deeper.

The presence of gas-saturated weak rock formation immediately underlying the non-lithified sediment is a slow acting hazardous condition (GWSF hazards) not readily recognized or understood by the industry despite being the common factor in most blowouts. Although GWSF hazardous conditions do not immediately caused a blowout, the seeds of destruction are sown at this shallow sub-formation depth. The deterioration of the well bore outside the casing and damage to the rock sub-formation is beyond the control of any drillers. Pumping in cement to seal the cracks would not work under gas-charged conditions.

The drilling problems were further compounded when up-dipping beds were encountered with sudden loss of circulation. To cut mud loss, ECD had to be reduced. But when pressure in the well dipped, gas influx kicked in as the Extended Gas Charged Pressure (EGCP) zone had previously been charged to a higher mud weight. See illustrations in figures 1d &1e.

The permeable contact aureole of the salt dome or an intrusive dyke, obviously added to the problem. It is like having a “U-tube” counterbalancing the mud column inside the well. No wonder the drillers described the Macondo well as a “Hell Well”. Compare this nightmare scenario with the Texaco Rigel well which was drilled safely just a km away from the salt dome. BP’s management should have correlated the drilling problems with the geological structure. If they had done that (which is the gist of this article), they would have realised that the Macondo well was just a disaster waiting to happen. They should have taken the responsible way out by abandoning the well before reaching the reservoir.

By failing to do that, they were just postponing the inevitable. The “giant aquifer system” was fully charged and just waiting for any mistake to trigger the blowout. No wonder the directors and top executives were rushing to sell off their shares after the 11 March incident, in anticipation of the worse to come. Perhaps BP should stand for “Before Public-interest” for the blatant manner in which personal profits come before the welfare of the environment and public.

As soon as the pressure in the well dipped below the EGCP (replacing the drilling mud with seawater) gas influx kicked in, at the leaking points in the well from pressurised gas stored at the GSWF zone. When the gas bubble in the well started to rise and expand with lower pressure, it rapidly displaced the seawater column (>5,000 ft) in the riser. This is like sucking liquid out of a glass with a straw. The tremendous suction and static pressure exerted by the reservoir created a sudden jump in differential force, resulting in the breach of the bottom cement plug 2 days later. This triggered the uncontrollable continuous gushing of oil and gas out of the reservoir through the blown well. See figure 1f.

The futile attempts to “Top Kill” or “Top Cap” the gushing well only made the bad situation worse by increasing the damage to GWSF zone and increasing the EGCP size. See previous article; The high risk of top capping the gushing well.

After quickly reaching 6,400 psi in the pressure test using the TOP CAP, the increase in the well pressure slowed down to 10, then 2 to less than 1 psi per hour. Oil and gas are obviously being forced into the “giant aquifer” which kept expanding and finding new pathways in the rock formation. That is why the initial 8,000 to 9,000 psi passing mark would never be reached. After 41 hours, the pressure inside the top capped well was 6,745 psi and still rising very slowly. Of course, the pressure inside the capped well would never decrease (until the reservoir is depleted) even as oil and gas are being forced further into the EGCP zone and into the giant aquifer.

As only the light hydrocarbons (methane) filter or seep through the Quaternary Sediment layers, no oil seeps would be evident at the sea floor yet. The oil would remain buried beneath the sea floor until weaknesses in the sediment developed into cracks big enough to result in active oil seeps (which would also mean a near calamity). By then the hot oil and gases from the reservoir may have tilted the world into an irreversible ecological disaster, by warming up and vaporising strata of methane hydrates into gas. The result would be an exponential increase in dissolved methane in the deep waters of the Gulf and eventually into our atmosphere. No one knows how much methane hydrates lay beneath the Gulf sea floor.

But one thing is for sure. The longer the gushing well stays “top capped”, the more severe is the environmental damage. There is no logical reason why the gushing oil could not be tapped through the LMRP TOP CAP with a floating platform or subsea facilities; rather shutting it off completely to cause further damage to the fragile sub-seabed structure and sediment.

4 What you don’t see can be covered up.
Perhaps the botched-up “photochop-chop” photos put up by BP was just a test. To see how keen the public eyes were in following BP’s clean up efforts. It would be hard to believe BP paid professionals for such a shoddy job. We should give BP more credit than that (remember the shares issues)? Let’s play dumb and the problems will go away.

Many experts in the oil industry were surprised and questioned the rationality of capping the well when the relief wells were so close to achieving their “bottom kill” objectives. They could have installed the TOP CAP much earlier. This means that BP knew if the gushing well was completely shut at the top, the oil and gas would spread beneath the sea floor and gas seeps would start appearing. So the TOP CAP had to be placed just before the relief well was ready for the “magic show”. Hurricane Bonnie spoilt the show and the delay is already showing signs of stress (gas seeps).

This could also mean that BP was getting less and less confident that the relief wells would work. The relief wells were held up as the last Trump card. If it fails in full (ROV) view of the concerned public throughout the world, BP’s shares would drop like a stone. There are good geological reasons why the chances of the relief wells’ success are less than 30%. But that would be in the next posting.

So instead “of going on a public stage with a final trump card of 30% chance of success” and risking everything BP stands for, a magic show will be set up so that what ever happens, it will be a success. How?

With a gushing well in full view, a successful bottom kill would show oil slowing down to eventually a tickle. With the cap on, it would be easier to manipulate the data. Thus botched-up photos were a test to check the keenness of the public eye. If the bottom kill fails, there is no independent monitor to prove it. BP could quickly pack and leave the site. Without ROVs’ video, the world is blind. Independent scientific researches later on could be disputed or controlled in post-recovery mopped up battle plan.

The TOP CAP had to be installed and the integrity pressure tests used as an excuse to completely shut down the flow. There is no need to prove the well is leaking. It is already a fact. David Copperfield could not have performed better.

For complete appendix to article see Diagrammatic Illustration of blowout

- hydrocomgeo@gmail.com (revised on 2 Aug 2010)

Would a better bathymetry chart have made the difference in averting a disaster? Bathymetry charts provide more than just depth information. The morphological features of the seafloor can be a useful guide to the nature of the sub-seabed. Figure 1 shows a section of the Gulf seafloor (with superimposed regional bathymetric contour extracted from NOAA) showing the domes and canyon topography. Figure 2 shows the visible deformation “cracks” around Whiting Dome due to down slope movement.

Figures 3, 4 & 5 show the typical high resolution 3m binning MBES (Multi Beam Echo Sounder) images that are normally produced for site surveys (data acquired in 2006 - 2008). Compare the details of these seafloor images with the bathymetry chart submitted by BP to MMS in the application to drill Macondo A and B wells in figure 6. The locations of the two relief wells (C & D) drilled after the blowout on 20 April 2010 are also plotted in figure 6.

Figure 7 & 8 shows BP’s bathymetry chart superimposed with the satellite image extracted from Google Earth. Satellite images are quick reconnaissance counter-checks and have been found to be useful in highlighting regional trends which are sometimes missed out from detailed survey charts. The superimposition reveals that Macondo wells A and B were sitting at the edge of a massive structure. As a general rule, wells and platforms are normally located away from the edge of any escarpment for a variety of geological reasons and obvious shallow sub-seabed problems. See the probable geological model for the blowout.

The AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) is similar to ROV (remotely operated vehicle) and DTS (deep tow system), except that the vehicle is remotely controlled and programmed to run the survey lines without the use of cables. By mounting a MBES system onto one of these deep-underwater vehicles, high resolution data can be acquired at about 50m above the seafloor. This reduces noise, shortens the distance from the transducer to the seabed and enhances overall clarity, sampling intervals and resolution. Seafloor details such as tensional cracks, mega ripples, slumps, gullies etc, can be useful indications of the shallow sub-seabed condition and structure.

For example in figure 3 the seafloor image reveals a “U-shaped valley” of a regional lateral fault zone. Although not visible directly, there is another NE-SW trending fault which had been leaking gas from deeper reservoirs. The two mud-mounds on the upthrown side of the fault, are actually mud volcanoes spewing out 80m gas columns and mud debris. The original site survey report missed out on the high drilling risk posed by the massive shallow gas accumulation spanning more than 3 km in extent. This vital bathymetric information had been instrumental in pushing for a complete review of the initial geohazards assessment which completely missed out the risk of gas blowout. The extended survey confirmed that the severity of the gas hazards risks.

Figure 4 reveals a steeply sloping seafloor that was already developing signs of an ellipsoid bulge. Tensional crevices, longitudinal undulations and snaking gullies are some of the superficial seabed features, warning of an impending giant submarine landslide (2 to 2.5 km in diameter). Yet the 2008 geohazards site survey totally missed out on the impending geotechnical disaster; preferring instead to blindly copy a previous 2000 survey report on the same site inferring the presence of a fictitious Bottom Simulating Reflector (BSR). Strata of gas hydrates were therefore suspected, due to the presence of this fictitious BSR. The gas hydrates were (in turn) the suspected basis of sporadic gas thrusts causing undulations at the lower half of the slope. At the same time, both the 2000 and 2008 surveys reported the surficial sediment layer to be wholly composed of homogenous Very Soft Clay.

This is a classic case where the high resolution seafloor image had been useful in alerting a fundamentally flawed geohazard interpretation that had been blindly accepted as the industry’s standard in deep water site interpretation. More of this interesting story later in another posting, but essentially the seafloor image served as a red flag in stopping the cascading flow of blunders which would ultimately lead to some future disaster downstream. If the surficial sediment were to be Very Soft Clay, there would be insufficient soil strength to remain on the steep slope let alone develop gullies, tensional crevices and undulations on the seafloor notwithstanding the enormous hydrostatic pressure of 700 to 900 m of water column.

Gas hydrates were reported to be responsible for the localised vaporisation of gas which then forced upwards resulting in undulations on the seafloor. This inconsistency could not be more telling. Gas hydrates are regional deposits. If the deposits were to vaporize (due to a rise in temperature or decrease in pressure or both), the process would not have been so localised as to cause seabed undulation of only 10 to 50 m wavelengths in the very soft clay sediment. Vaporisation would also start from higher up the slopes. How would gas vaporized higher up the slope cause undulations found at the lower half of the slopes? Soft Clay would easily disintegrate at the slightest pressure. If there was any gas seepage, the seafloor would have been filled with pockmarks. Therefore the surficial sediment cannot be Soft Clay as erroneously interpreted. The BSR interpretation was found to be fictitious in 2008; 8 years after it was first mis-interpreted. Re-examination of the supposedly BSR reflectors confirmed them to be data artifacts generated by noise interferences due to limitations of the equipment used.

There are many more cases where the initial inconsistencies in the high resolution bathymetric information led to the discovery of erroneous presumptions and significant mistakes which would otherwise be buried under the thick layers of documentation and gigabytes of data. The seafloor images often provide the last minute check before the hectic submission of project details for approval.

In the light of the BP’s Macondo well blowout, some pertinent questions should be asked:

1. Why the satellite image which had been acquired at considerably much larger imaging distances from the seafloor and at much lower resolution, is able to pick up vital seabed features missed out by BP’s site survey?
2. Would the ill-fated wells (A & B), still be located where they are, had BP’s bathymetry chart been able to show more details of the escarpment, deformation and seabed unstable features? In the examples shown in figures 3 to 5, the oil company had been able to move their respective locations out of harm’s way. Could BP have done that with a better seabed bathymetry instead of an obviously “smoothened” seafloor?
3. With so many stages (acquisition, data processing, quality control, site hazards evaluations, well location finalization etc) before the well location was submitted for approval, why did this apparent discrepancy on the escarpment not surface earlier?
4. If the MBES data acquisition had not been acquired to the stated contract specifications or required resolution, it would also reveal a serious inadequacy in compliance with industry standards. From previous experiences, this appears to be an industry wide problem, not only confined to the US.
5. It also reflects the general lack of importance attributed to seabed morphology by most exploration and geohazards experts, despite its usefulness in alerting numerous past mistakes, either in geohazards assessment or imprudence in exploration management.

Sometimes in an industry as big and sophisticated as the oil industry, it is difficult to know the true health of the industry. Bogged down by the sheer volume of paperwork, technical confidentialities, mazes of red tapes and test procedures, abuses and shoddy work are often carried along unnoticed by the torrential flow of offshore exploration programmes. It is worse when non-quantitative work is involved. How does one judge whether a geohazards map had been compiled diligently to the highest standard? A rush job with a colorful finish or dazzling display would look just as good as one which had been meticulously compiled from every piece of data and information available. Similarly how does one judge the geohazards or survey contractor before a serious problem surfaces or a disaster strikes?

QC consultants need to actively identify delinquents and improprieties in survey work instead of letting things pass. After all, who would know if the deep-towed equipment had malfunctioned for the last 10 km? Retrieving the equipment to check and towing in the 3 km long tow-cable would take at least half a day. If the critical and fail-safe fire detection and alarm system can be expediently switched off on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon, such transgressions may be more common than we care to admit.

While it may be shocking to the general public to read news of deliberate misinformation, photoshop adulteration of scenes of the clean up effort, recycled video footage of the gushing well and the widely believed capping of the wrong well, such “irresponsible adulteration” had been going on for a long time in some segments of the industry; hidden under the guise of maintaining technical confidentiality and public confidence in the industry. The disaster has exposed the malaise and complacency that had set in with vested international business interest; what many in the industry had long feared and held in silence.

Could BP’s Oil Spill disaster have been averted?

As a normal safety precaution, wells are not located on seabed escarpments as these are surface manifestation of many geohazardous conditions such as the Gas-saturated Weak Sub-Formation (GWSF) hazards, deeper beneath the seafloor. See previous warning on GWSF hazards.

Any geohazards specialist worth his salt would have strongly advised moving location to a more stable ground. Could BP’s oil spill disaster have been averted if this fundamental mistake had been discovered in time, prior to drilling? Once the rig is on location, it is just a disaster waiting to happen on the slightest mistake to trigger an already explosive situation.

A year before the BP’s oil spill disaster, my colleagues and I at RPS had already felt the need for post-survey independent QC’s in view of the number of fundamental mistakes made during and after the geohazards site investigations. A paper was presented by Dr. Fiona Fittzpatrick on our behalf at the Geohazards Geophysics Seminar at Perth, Australia on 25^th March 2010, less than a month before the fateful Deepwater Horizon Blowout. On 11 June 2010, another paper stressing the need for independent post survey QC to check the failures of geohazards predictions was presented by me at the National GeoScience Conference at Shah Alam, Malaysia. Clearly there is a need to check on these fundamental mistakes if another disaster is to be averted in the near future.

If the lowest denomination of the exploration work at the most basic work level, uncomplicated by any advanced mathematical formulae or analysis that requires projection to the highest unknown degree can be screwed up, then we should be really worried about the health of our oil industry. Clearly, the industry had failed on the lowly bathymetric litmus test.

- hydrocomgeo@gmail.com

On 7 July I started a discussion thread titled “Deep Horizon Blowout – was it a disaster in waiting?” at http://www.drillingahead.com, a social network website for oil and gas professionals.

On 13 July 2010, there was a thread discussion posted by Stan asking an apparent contradiction. Why “shallow hazards reports and assessments” were cited in BP’s permit application to MMS (dated 10 March 2010) for drilling the ill-fated Macondo well in 5,000ft of water? This is an obvious legitimate question from a keen member of the public on an apparent “red flag”. Somehow in the discussion, the website owner (Curtis) started to chastise Stan for being “stupid” and misled by false reporting. To prove that point Curtis posted a listing of share transactions showing Tony Hayward buying BP’s shares (50 lots each) instead of selling. The listing however started from 20 March 2010 onwards. Curtis closed further posting on the threat discussion, thereafter.

At 4:25pm July 13, I replied to Stan’s request on the apparent “red flags”. Shallow hazards do not mean shallow water but shallow sub-seabed (below mudline) hazards. In the same posting, I pointed to Stan that Tony Howard disposed of his shares (223,228 lots) on 17 March before buying them back a week later on several transactions but on smaller lots of 50.

Apparently this struck a raw nerve at DrillingAhead website. At 9:01 am July 14, Curtis sent me an email. Apparently this was to get me to log on to the website with my internet connection (to obtain my IP address) and to bar me from accessing the website without notice. My email to Curtis requesting the basis for barring me from the website has been unanswered.

This brings up several questions:

1. Isn’t this barring legal in prohibiting “freedom of information”?
2. This is supposed to be a social network website for open professional discussion. Or is this just a cover to channel one-sided information? Was BP or Tony Hayward sponsoring this website?
3. Was there a hidden agenda?
4. There is nothing offensive at all in my posting. All my postings had been deleted from the website’s discussions. Why the haste in barring me?
5. Why was Tony’s share sell-out so sensitive on this technical website for professional?
6. Is there money to be made from an apparent “rig accident”?
7. Were the shares in small lots (50) bought to cover Tony’s track?
8. Why did Curtis not list Tony’s share sellout on 17^th March 2010 in his posting? Was it deliberate?
9. There is probably more than it meets the eye in this disaster.

Stan, if you are reading this, you can contact me through hydrocomgeo@gmail.com.

BK Lim

14 July 2010

- hydrocomgeo@gmail.com

Today on day 81 of the disaster, an estimated 4 million barrels of oil would have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the end to the oil gush is still no where in sight. At today’s price of 75 USD per barrel, more than 300 million USD had been flushed into the sea. BP has spent more than 3 billion USD on the recovery efforts so far and still counting. BP’s investors lost even more in billions, as BP’s share value dropped more than 50% from its high of over 60 USD per share to less than 30 USD recently.

As oil continues to gush out from the ill-fated Macondo well at more than 50,000 barrels a day, the causes of the disaster are still in question. While the Obama Administration is battling with the Gulf states on the moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling (>500m water depth), oil producing countries are holding their breath and oil companies continue business as usual.

Could a BP’s style disastrous oil spill happen in South-East Asia? It is not a question of IF but when. If the threat of a disastrous oil spill is imminent, should we then not try to avert it or be more prepared for the containment following the disaster? Should we not be concern of the environmental damages and its financial woes about to hit our shores?

As oil industry’s standards and regulations in the US and Australia, are much higher than in South-East Asia, disasters of this nature should have happened more often in this region if it is only the question of industry and safety standards. Why would the worst of oil spill disasters in recent years occur in the better regulated countries? Montara disaster on 21 August 2009 in the Timor Sea, offshore Australia and Macondo disaster on 20 April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, offshore USA?

Before we jump with joy, let’s look more closely why no major oil spill (BP’s style) has yet occurred in South-East Asia?

First and foremost, the recent disastrous oil spills all occurred at deeper waters close to the shelf-edges (see figure 1 and 2). The shelf edge zones are more hazardous to drilling not only because of deeper water depths (>500m) but because of the presence of abnormally weak highly fractured-faulted stress zone at the upper rock formation immediately underlying the Quaternary sedimentary deposits; collectively termed as Gas-saturated Weak Sub-Formation (GWSF) zones. GWSF hazards are less hazardous within the shallower shelf zone because of shallower depths and gentler slopes. Still we did have blowouts and we learned to handle them over time.

As the shallower and cheaper (easier) to exploit oil reserves get depleted, oil exploration in South-east Asia will intensify in the shelf-edge zones. Figure 3 shows the shelf-edge zones that are currently the most promising prospects. If we are to avoid the costly mistakes of PTTEP and BP’s oil spill, we must learn the root causes of the disasters and not the superficial political excuses[1].

Deep water wells require advanced drilling technology. But while modern drilling techniques are credited to preventing more blowouts, they are also the reason why mega oil spills occur.

As recent as 10 years ago, most wells would have blown at the GWSF hazardous zones. Now with advanced drilling technology, many of the wells “safely” bored through the GWSF hazardous zones without blowing out, to reach their high-pressured gas/oil reservoirs thousands of metres below. Unfortunately, gases (even at low pressure) do cause cavitations in the overlying unconsolidated sediments, as they escape into the water column. Drilling mud invasion into the highly fractured rock formation can seriously undermine the cementation of the top-hole section. “Damaged” geotechnical conditions beyond the immediate vicinity of the wells are not normally monitored. Abnormal drilling losses, complicated well cementation, erratic test results and gas influxes such as those observed while drilling the Macondo Well, are indicative of the problematic GWSF zones.

Given the high daily costs (>1 million USD/day) of drilling operation, the pressure to drill and complete the well in the shortest time possible is understandable for any oil company. Suppressing the blowout at shallow depths however only postpone and compound the disastrous consequence to the next higher cost level.

In BP’s case, more than 81 days of massive oil spill. It took more than 3 months for PTTEP to control Montara’s oil spill in the Timor Sea. In Total’s 1988 Sisi-2 blowout in the Straits of Makassar, offshore Kalimantan, there was no oil spill as the well blew after drilling less than 900m below the sea floor. The well collapsed into a crater swallowing the whole drill ship and continued to bubble out gas for a few weeks. In the 1991 Shell’s Barton BT05 blowout, previous drilling mud and cement were spewed out with the gas since the well had only intercepted an undetected feeder fault and not the gas/oil reservoir hundreds of metres below.

Delayed Blowouts as the name implies do not occur instantaneously as “normal blowouts” do when a well is drilled into a high pressured gas pockets or abnormally high-pressured formation. That is why Delayed Blowouts are difficult to understand just as Cancer, AIDS and other slow-acting diseases were initially misunderstood in Medicine.

The PTTEP’s Montara blowout occurred more than a year after the platform was installed. At BP’s Macondo well, the blowout (20 April 2010) occurred almost 2 months after Deepwater Horizon had resumed drilling the well in Feb 2010. The well was first drilled by Transocean Marianas semi-submersible rig on 7 Oct 2009 but was aborted at 4023 feet (1226 m) below seabed on 29 Nov 2009 when the rig was damaged by Hurricane Ida (Wikipedia & various sources).

Reports of localised subsidence at some of the offshore producing platforms within the shelf edge zone are particularly disturbing. Localised subsidence up to a few km in diameters, are unlikely to be associated with reservoir depletion but more likely due to problems associated with the shallower GWSF hazardous zones. These platforms would be prime candidates for future blow-outs and oil spill disasters.

But not all future oil spill disasters need to be triggered by man-made blowouts. There are many potential submarine landslides on the deeper shelf slopes just waiting to fail. Evidence of past giant landslides is evident from sea floor down to as deep as few hundred metres below. With the recent spate of earthquakes in the region, it is only a matter of time.

Is there any hope of us averting a BP’s style oil spill disaster? Are the oil companies and the governments not worried of another mega-oil spill and their high clean up costs? Are they as clueless as the mainstream public or simply “tidak apa” (could not care less) on the disastrous effect on our marine environment, the Armageddon of the marine world? Isn’t prevention better than the cure?

Believe it or not, the oil industry does have a first line of defence against disasters. Geohazards Site Surveys are specifically commissioned to seek out geohazards for each and every well or platform location. But in reality, this line of defence against disasters is a badly broken one; brought about by years of easy profits, vested business interests and pandering to the whims and fancies of the oil companies rather than being an independent watch-dog. Hidden from public scrutiny, the geohazards industry was having an easy ride on the waves of windfalls from the meteoric rise in oil prices. Mega disasters like BP’s oil spills are inevitable consequences of the “Oil Bubble” and its past exuberance just like the global financial meltdowns from the housing bubble, credit crunch and Ponzi schemes.

The offshore oil industry is often thought as being infallible with stringent HSE regulations and strict code of conduct, all in the name of safety and preservation of the environment. The BP’s Oil Spill disaster busted that myth and confirmed our worst fears. BP’s Oil Spill disaster publicly confirms what many professionals in the industry had long known and feared in silence.

It is human nature to ignore early warning signs of potential hazards; just as 90% of you reading this article would dismiss this imminent threat of another mega oil spill disaster. Even if a mega disaster had been accurately predicted, trying to avert it is like trying to stop a speeding train from its collision course, miles before the actual collision.

Would any geohazards specialist be brave enough to stand by his/her geohazards prediction or give in to expediency? The typical geohazards prediction given for the ill-fated Macondo’s well was intentionally ambiguous, designed to allow BP to proceed with the drilling while providing some defensive cover in the event of some “problems”. It cleverly evades the question of a disaster; by meaninglessly ranking the risk of encountering gas from “negligible to moderate”, from top to bottom, far and wide (see extract below).

Imagine paying hundreds of thousands of dollars only to have a generalized standard assessment that is almost the same for every site, save for the numbering and sequencing. It reflects the depth of insignificance this once important role of geohazards prediction had sunk into.

Imagine paying thousands of dollars for a fire inspector to report to you that your house is at a moderate risk of fire for using gas in the house. The presence of gas is not the question but the piping condition and potentially hazardous leaks are. The risk of encountering gas is less important than the quantity, distribution, pressure and nature of occurrence in relation to the geological structure. If the gas occurrence is assessed to be potentially hazardous then the assessment needs to define the means by which drilling could have triggered or developed the situation into a blowout or disaster. In addition, the geohazards assessment should have recommended the best alternative in averting the potential problems, blowout or disaster which is the primary objective. The cheapest way of averting a disaster is to relocate the well location.

Geohazards surveys and geohazards predictions are not as easy as currently practiced worldwide. The oil companies and the world have been short-changed into accepting “half-past six” geohazards assessment and playing Russian roulette with our lives and our environment. Is it unreasonable to demand for a more reliable and accurate geohazards interpretation without the “cover all” ambiguities?

There is a simple solution. Less than 20% of all sites surveyed are at risk of any immediate short term geohazards. A QC review of past geohazards reports by a knowledgeable and experienced geohazards expert can quickly isolate the risky well or platform locations for more detailed assessment. For risky wells that had not been drilled yet, safer alternative locations can be found while for platforms already in place, detailed trajectory risk analysis can be carried out to minimize the risk of a disaster. For locations at risk of landslides, the solution will be more difficult since significantly larger areas are involved. Nevertheless, it is better to face the situation now than later; after a disaster has occurred.

Life is about choices; resolve it now or postpone it to a later date at a much higher cost. BP’s oil spill disaster is another warning sign that the worst is yet to come. Given the many unreported problems of production wells sited dangerously at the (shelf) edge (pun intended), the next oil spill disaster need not necessarily be triggered by a drilling mishap. So far very few in the oil industry recognized the potential disasters that could result from induced or natural occurrence of giant submarine subsidence, landslides and earthquakes in the vicinity of the production platforms. If an oil giant could teeter on the brink of financial collapse, what hopes do poor third world countries have in the face of a massive oil spill disaster? More booms, anybody?

[1] The root causes of BP’s oil spill & the imminent threat of more oil-related disasters. BK Lim, 1 July 2010

- BK Lim (hydrocomgeo@gmail.com)
1 Introduction
After gushing more than 3.55 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 71 days, the end to BP’s oil spill disaster is still nowhere in sight; at least until mid august when the relief wells are expected to intercept and seal off the ill-fated Macondo well. At today’s price of 75 USD per barrel, the oil would have fetched more than 266.25 million USD in revenues. BP has spent more than 2.6 billion USD on the recovery efforts so far and still counting. BP’s investors lost many billions more as BP’s share value dropped more than 50% from its high of over 60 USD per share to less than 30 USD recently.

At a hearing on June 15, when Congress pressed oil executives on their readiness to handle the worst-case blowout scenario, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson responded frankly, "We are not well equipped to handle them. There will be impacts." He added, "That is why the emphasis is always on preventing these things from occurring." In the same hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, BP argued that this disaster was an aberration and would not have occurred given proper corporate oversights and safeguards.

After more than 2 months, the causes of the disaster are still in question. A disaster of this magnitude could not have been caused by any single human error. It is a culmination of a chain of human errors, misjudgment and oversights even before the well was spud. The health of Mother Earth from such environmentally disastrous “accidents” is at stake. It concerns all the 6 billions inhabitants of this tiny blue planet which we all call home. Finding a convenient scapegoat to blame and missing the real lessons to be learnt from all this, would be the true tragedy of this aberration. The search for the root causes of BP’s Macondo blowout must include investigations on other similar gas blowouts around the world, if we are to prevent another environmental disaster of this magnitude from happening.

2 The high risk of over reaction and over simplification of facts
The question of imposing a total ban on offshore drilling is as silly as the total ban on air flights over Europe caused by the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland. Although 4 jet engines failed on the 1982 BA09 flight after passing through the ash cloud, it must be borne in correct perspective that the flight path was less than 200 km from the erupting volcano Mount Galunggung. In contrast, EU airspace is thousands of km from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Simple logic dictates that the particle size of the volcanic ash would diminish exponentially with distance from the erupting source as the heavier and more destructive larger factions progressively dropped back to ground without the powerful eruptive force of the volcano. The concentration or density of the volcanic ash, the vertical and lateral distribution of the ash clouds are also key factors since at low concentration, the ash would not be sufficient to clog the powerful jet flow. In essence, hazards assessment is more than just the simplistic aerial distribution of ash clouds (or amplitude anomalies in seismic interpretation) as shown by the satellite imagery.

Just as drilling locations had been moved unnecessarily to get away from pseudo-geohazards, the flight ban over Europe had been totally unnecessary since the vertical extent, particle size and concentration would have been too minute to cause any serious damage. The lateral distribution of the ash clouds (visible from the satellite above) may appear menacing and “potentially hazardous” even if the ash particles are too fine and the thickness of ash clouds strata too thin to cause any significant damage. The Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption flight ban exemplifies the over-reactions, over-simplification and the real dilemma facing any disasters predictions.

A total ban without knowing the root causes of the disaster would only lead to disasters of a different kind. There are clearly many things wrong with the oil industry but the "wrong medicine" would be a cure worse than the disease itself. Has advanced drilling technology actually decreased the number of disasters? Or has it merely suppressed and postponed the disasters to a later date with far more disastrous consequences. Assessing the risks of disasters using superficial data in isolation and imposing arbitrary limits (water depth > 500m) to offshore drilling without understanding the underlying root causes would be a grave mistake. It would be an over-simplification on the same magnitude as the recent total flight over Europe. Surely the underlying root causes could not be that simple.

3 In search of the root causes of the disaster
If the oversights, misjudgment and the long list of cut-corners are to be blamed for well blowouts, it stands to reason that wells drilled by less advanced smaller oil companies with even more appalling safety and quality standards in less regulated countries, would have blown more frequently before the recent Macondo blowout. PTTEP’s Montara blowout occurred six months earlier in Australia; another first world country with an apparently well-regulated offshore industry.

If the Macondo Blowout was an aberration as asserted by BP, then either

1. the drilling techniques used had deviated from normal industry practices or
2. the sub-seabed conditions at the ill-fated well location were not recognized as potentially hazardous, or
3. both.

Admittedly there had been some obvious cut corners and oversights. It would however, be difficult to argue that experienced technological giants like BP, Transocean and Halliburton would be so naïve to cut corners so deep, to push an apparently “safe” well into the brink.

With record annual earnings, BP does not look like an exploration giant that was skimming to save a few dollars here and there. BP could have used cheaper rigs instead of the state of the art, ultra-deepwater dynamically positioned Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible drilling rig. The “Rolls Royce” of drilling rigs had successfully drilled the deepest oil well in history (10,683 m deep) in the Tiber field at Keathley Canyon block 102, in 1,259 m of water. Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon had apparently won the 2008 MMS award for safety. On the day of the disaster, BP and Transocean managers were on board to celebrate “seven years without a lost-time accident”.

It goes to show that safety records, experience and technological capability are not the yardsticks by which we measure the safety of our oil industry and environment. BP, Shell, Exxon-Mobil and Total are all technologically advanced giants in the oil exploration industry with some of the most stringent Health Safety & Environmental (HSE) policies. Thus while corporate oversights, cut corners and safety lapses in the field might be the “straws that broke the camel’s back”, there is absolutely nothing the field crew can do if the Macondo well was a disaster waiting to happen.

The analogy is like lighting up your gas stove everyday without any problem if there is no gas leak in your kitchen. Even with a gas leak, there would be no explosion if the kitchen is well-ventilated. Thus, while a gas leak does not necessarily lead to an explosion, it would if the escaping gas is allowed to accumulate till the air-gas mixture is just right for an explosion to occur on ignition.

4 If hazardous sub-seabed conditions exist why wasn’t BP forewarned?
This brings us to the question why BP was not forewarned of the impending disaster by the geohazards site survey which was precisely commissioned to seek out potentially hazardous sub-seabed conditions.

There has been a complete silence on the geohazards site assessment of the ill-fated well location. Why? Would this not be the crucial starting point of any site disaster investigation? It reflects the insignificance attached to the geohazards site survey in general and the perceived negligence. This should not be surprising given the second-rate expertise, incoherent and ambiguous cover-all geohazards predictions found in most geohazards reports[i].

The key question then is “why did the blowout occur so late in the drilling process (almost 2 months after drilling had commenced) and not when the well first penetrated the abnormal hazardous conditions in the first few hundred metres of the sub-seabed?” Delayed Blowouts as the name implies do not occur instantaneously as “normal blowouts” do when a well is drilled into a high pressured gas pockets or abnormally high-pressured formation. That is why Delayed Blowouts are difficult to understand just as Cancer, AIDS and other slow-acting diseases were initially misunderstood in Medicine.

Past investigations into previously unrecognized Delayed Blowouts at Total’s SiSi-2 (1988) at the Makassar Straits, Indonesia and Shell’s Barton-BT5 (1991), offshore Sabah, Malaysia have all revealed a common geotechnical factor as far back as 1991; the presence of gas-saturated, abnormally weak highly fractured-faulted stress zone at the upper rock formation immediately underlying the Quaternary sedimentary deposits; collectively termed as Gas-saturated Weak Sub-Formation or abbreviated as GWSF.

The widely held perception that low-pressured gas occurrences are not hazardous to drilling is not true under such geotechnical circumstances. Cement placement is a critical component of well architecture for ensuring casing mechanical support, protection from fluid corrosion, and most importantly isolating permeable zones at different pressure regimes in order to prevent hydraulic communication. The presence of gas-saturated permeable formation immediately underlying poorly consolidated Quaternary deposits can seriously undermine cementing the well as evident in Barton, Montara and Macondo cases.

The 1991 Shell’s Barton-BT5 delayed blowout occurred years after 4 previous problematic trajectories had been drilled. The recent PTTEP’s Montara delayed blowout (21 August 2009, Timor Sea, offshore Western Australia) occurred more than a year after the platform was installed. At BP’s Macondo well, the delayed blowout (20 April 2010) occurred almost 2 months after Deepwater Horizon had resumed drilling the well in Feb 2010. The well was first drilled by Transocean Marianas semi-submersible rig on 7 Oct 2009 but was aborted at 4023 feet (1226 m) below seabed on 29 Nov 2009 when the rig was damaged by Hurricane Ida (Wikipedia & various sources).

In both BP’s Macondo and PTTEP’s Montara incidences, the drilled wells had already reached their targeted reservoirs when the wells blew; compounding the blowouts with even more disastrous oil gushes from the high pressured reservoirs. Would BP and PTTEP stop and abandon their wells before reaching the oil reservoirs, even if they knew that the wells had a high risk of blowing as the list of abnormalities grew as the drilling progressed? It would be like stopping a speeding train. On the contrary, BP was rushing to complete the well and in the process skipping a few critical procedures and integrity tests. It appears at least some top managers knew the score and were hoping against hope and racing against time to quickly plug the well before something “serious” happens.

"Any employee, anywhere at any level, if they have any concern about safety, has the ability and, in fact, the responsibility to raise their hand and try to get the operations stopped, whether that's our operations or a contractor's operations," Lamar McKay, chairman and president of BP America, told the House Natural Resources Committee. (CNN,27 May 2010)

Preliminary findings from BP’s internal investigation released by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on May 25 indicated several serious warning signs in the hours just prior to the explosion.[29][30] Equipment readings indicated gas bubbling into the well, which could signal an impending blowout.[24] The heavy drilling mud in the pipes initially held down the gas of the leaking well. [31] A BP official onboard the rig directed the crew to replace the drilling mud, which is used to keep the well's pressure down, with lighter seawater even though the rig's chief driller protested.[23] According to a number of rig workers, it was understood that workers could get fired for raising safety concerns that might delay drilling.[23] (Wikipedia & various sources)

Was it a coincidence that the CEO of BP (Tony Hayward) cashed in a third of BP’s shares before the rig burst out in flames? Similarly Goldman Sachs sold more than half of its BP’s stock in the month of April before the blowout (The Telegraph, 29 June 2010). It seems that the tell tale signs from the “nightmare Macondo well” were taken more seriously than most would care to admit. If it was a prudent financial precaution, perhaps more could have been done on the “nightmare well” (proactively) instead of letting the “speeding train continue in its collision course”. Imagine telling a board of directors that an almost completed well had to be abandoned after spending millions on it. You would be told to “jump into a lake” first.

On March 10, 2010, a BP executive e-mailed the Minerals Management Service that there was a stuck pipe and well control situation at the drilling site, and that BP would have to plugback the well.[32] A draft of a BP memo in April warned that the cementing of the casing was unlikely to be successful.[24] Halliburton has said that it had finished cementing 20 hours before the fire, but had not yet set the final cement plug.[21][33] A special nitrogen-foamed cement was used which is more difficult to handle than standard cement.[31]. (Wikipedia & various sources)

It happened in Barton-BT5, Sisi-2, Bajt-F and many other near-misses and near-disasters around the world. That is the reality of the oil business. It is almost impossible to stop a disaster from happening when it has not happened yet and even more impossible to pin the blame on the ones who could have prevented the disaster from happening in the first place.

5 BP’s Oil Spill a disaster waiting to happen
The gas blowout on TransOcean’s Deepwater Horizon rig on 20^th April 2010 was a disaster waiting to happen, just as Total’s SiSi-2, Shell’s Barton-BT5 and PTTEP’s Montara. Sad to say, many more such disasters are just waiting to happen especially at the shelf edge zones. Why?

With water depths rapidly changing from tens to thousands of metres, the geotechnically stressed continental shelf edge zones are fraught with GWSF hazards. High resolution seismic data from geohazards site surveys at these shelf edge zones reveal evidence of past landslides, creep movements, subsidence and other geotechnical instability. Yet none of these potential geohazards were ever understood or reported. Why? (see part 2).

6 Our badly broken line of defence
Our line of defence against disaster in the oil industry consists of:

• Geohazards site surveys;
• Certification & Regulations (safety training, medical fitness, critical failsafe systems and policies);
• Quality Control (QC) supervision at site.

On paper it makes good sense to seek out geohazards and geotechnical problems and to forewarn the oil companies of impending disasters if appropriate precautions are not taken. Regulations, certifications and various safety audits are in place to ensure that Health Safety & Environmental (HSE) rules and policies are complied with. Lastly we have a system of QC supervision on sites to ensure that the safety rules and policies are strictly adhered to and to snuff out any incidents at sites before the situations spin out of control.

Sounds good but in the reality, our line of defence is badly broken due to years of cozy business relationship, vested interest and unscrupulous profiteering and neglect. Hidden from public scrutiny, the geohazards industry was having an easy ride on the waves of windfalls from the meteoric rise in oil prices. But the good times cannot last forever. Somewhere down the line, the party has to end. Mega disasters like BP’s oil spills are inevitable consequences of the “Oil Bubble” and its past exuberance just like the global financial meltdowns from the housing bubble, credit crunch and Ponzi schemes.

The offshore oil industry is often thought as being infallible with stringent HSE regulations and strict code of conduct, all in the name of safety and preservation of the environment. The BP’s Oil Spill disaster busted that myth and confirmed our worst fears. BP’s Oil Spill disaster publicly confirms what many professionals in the industry had long known and feared in silence.

Although there are whistleblower policies and ground feedbacks in most HSE procedures, these appear to apply only to minor infringements and violations in the field. More damaging as we see in most disasters, are the imprudent management decisions that circumvent legal regulations; scandalous decisions that are clouded with technicalities with the sole aim of improving the bottom line. These are root causes of the disasters, not the minor abuses, infringements and improprieties committed at site that are being paraded out now in the aftermath of the disaster.

The mixture of imprudent business greed, geohazards and our broken line of defence, is a potent recipe for disasters, not only in the Gulf but in every region around the world where oil is actively being explored or produced. Part II of this report explains how the Macondo Well was destined to blow even with the best safety standards, drilling technology and well designs. Part III describes the rot that had set into the industry, rendering our geohazards site surveys as ineffective as searching for a needle in a haystack.

BP’s oil spill disaster is another warning sign that the worst is yet to come. Given the many unreported problems of production wells sited dangerously at the (shelf) edge (pun intended), the next oil spill disaster need not necessarily be triggered by a drilling mishap. So far very few in the oil industry recognized the potential disasters that could result from induced or natural occurrence of giant submarine subsidence, landslides and earthquakes in the vicinity of the production platforms. If an oil giant could teeter on the brink of financial collapse, what hopes do poor third world countries have in the face of a massive oil spill disaster? More booms, anybody?

[i] BK Lim, 12 June 2010 National Geoscience Seminar KL. The need for post survey independent QC to check the high failure rate of geohazards predictions. (in publication, Geo Soc Malaysia bulletin)

BK Lim, Tim Pugh & Fiona Fitzpatrick (RPS) 25th March 2010 Australiasian Oil & Gas Exhibition and Conference, Perth. The need for QC on Geophysical Interpretation of Geohazards and Engineering Site Surveys.

BK Lim and Wong S C, 1990 BTJT-A Platform Location, BT-105 Post-drill Analogue And Digital Site Survey, Report no. XTS/1 – PSS.SB.14. Topographical Department, Sarawak Shell Bhd.

BK Lim and Wong S C, 1994 BAJT-F 1991 Digital Seismic Site Survey (Proposed BAJT-F/4 location) and Correlative Study of Digital Seismic Data And Boreholes, Report no. XTS/1 – PSS.SW.35. Topographical Department, Sarawak Shell Bhd.

JP Velasco and Wong S. C, 2000 Survey report on the Offshore rig location site survey At the Bungong Seulanga 1 location, Offshore North Sumatra, Indonesia. Report No. S0956/02. LASMO KRUENG MANE LIMITED

SF Yap, YT Tan, BK Lim & Jack Fitzsimons, 2003, Trans Thailand Malaysia (TTM) Project Gas Pipeline, Pre-Engineering Survey Report, Offshore Section (from KP 0 to KP 262). Report no: ED.A-0303.08-010-001. SAIPEM.

Mohamad Kodri Aziz and HJ Ang, 2006 Final Geophysical Report for the Proposed Aster-4a, Aster-4b and Aster-4 (modified) Well locations In Bukat Block, Offshore East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Report no. S1797/02. ENI KRUENG MANE LTD.

BK Lim and John Worthington, 2008 Report On Contractor’s Performance, Deep water site investigation surveys at Krueng Mane PSC, offshore north Sumatra and Maura Bakau PSC, Offshore East Kalimatan, Indonesia by Fugro (M/v GeoSurveyor & M/v Voyager) for Eni Krueng Mane Ltd.

Graham Macdonald Bell, HJ Ang and Agus Norman Bin Abdul Rahman, 2008 Onboard Preliminary Report on the Provision Of Deep Water Sea Bed Survey Services, BSN-1, Offshore North Sumatra, (M/v GeoSurveyor & M/v Voyager). KRUENG MANE PSC

BK Lim and David Waugh, 2008 Report On Contractor’s Performance, Site Investigation Surveys at Calauit 2, Block SC50, offshore Palawan, Argao 1 & Bahay 1, Block SC51,offshore Cebu by Fugro (M/v Baruna Jaya 1) For NORASIAN Energy Ltd, Philippines (operated by OTTO Energy Ltd).