Back in the US the 69 is the day of the continued massive oil geyser spilling tons of crude petroleum into the gulf of mexico killing all Life there. It is set to go on for another six months to a year… at least.
But the main cause of the Disaster has been fully revealed.
It was BP.
It was BP executives ignoring many, many, repeated and major warning and safety failures:
From the comical absurdity, “Drill Baby Drill” mentality that assumes that we’re smart enough to drill for oil offshore… and in the Arctic and even in the natural preserves of the environmentally sensitive protected areas of the Alaskan wilderness to the Gulf of Mexico swimming in oil – it was all a very convenient BP and oil industry smart people’s trip.
A ‘trip’ fuelled by metaphysic oil fumes, macho aphrodisiacs and greed. And occasionally with potent street drugs rampantly available on the 4,000 oil rigs making the 33,000 holes into the bottom of the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico alone. It all appear a safe daily exercise, providing people’s oil addiction with another SOMA hit for the daily fix.
Who needs to take precautions in the face of such wealth generation?
The Precautionary principle has been forgotten…
Forgotten and written off as a useless professorial pursuit by all industries. Not just the Oil and gas industry. All industries have given it up. Remember this.
It all seemed perfectly normal even all the accidents that were happening, because this was a leather-neck industry after all. People get hurt and die and that is OK, ’cause they signed off for that.
As the Oil workers like to say: ”Evvthing is copusthetic down there”
But the BP disaster on the 20th of April did a heck of a job disproving that…
All BP had to do was heed the warnings over blow-out protectors (BOPs) — which ultimately failed and contributed to the fireball over the Gulf of Mexico — and BP most likely wouldn’t be in the mess it finds itself in today…
BP’s blowout protector was a 325 ton, $15 million beast that sat at the bottom of the Gulf, controlling pressure or shutting down flow if something went wrong.
Had it been working properly, it would’ve kept gas from running up too quickly into the rig, which is exactly what happened and what sparked the explosion of Deepwater Horizon.
But had BP listened to warnings, the Gulf wouldn’t be full of oil today.
You see for more than a decade, offshore rig operators were told to have other systems in place should the BOP fail.
Yet, no one listened… and no one enforced these safety precautions.
And you’d think that after 1,443 drilling accidents in offshore operations — leading to more than 40 deaths, more than 300 injuries, and 356 oil spills between 2001 and 2007 — some one would have enforced the law and done something to stop this disaster from happening now. It was really only a matter of time before another accident happened.
But you can’t totally blame the BOP in this situation. The Cheney’s bush had a lot to do with it. Halliburton and the wildcatter’s best friend image is at the core. The secret meetings of Cheney with Oil executives from Ken lay of Enron to the ”minnie me” Lord Browne of BP {predecessor to Tony Hayward and the real villain of cutting away all safety procedures and safe engineering methods} are the center of their Laissez Faire – rape the land and the seas and the oceans approach these guys have taken on and it brought the oil to our shores.
Human stupidity was largely to blame as well for this Disaster.
A Congressional investigation found that the Blow Out Preventer at the bottom of the sea floor and the literal head of the well; had a dead battery in its control pod and leaks in it’s hydraulic systems. The biggest problem, however, came when the drill from the Oil platform rig hit the giant oil field reservoir and began pumping pressurized oil.
Still because under standard operating procedures, the string is securely contained in the blowout preventer, which keeps it steady. But at one point, when the rubber pads were tight around the pipe, a technician in the rig accidentally bumped a joystick that moved the pipe upward about 15 feet. This both damaged the pipe and the rubber.
As the BP Deepwater horizon oil platform rig engineer, Mike Williams disclosed in his Media interview: “The pieces of rubbed-off rubber from the hugging mechanism began to flow upward with some oil, which concerned some people in the rig. But unfortunately, there was no way to follow up on those fears. Earlier in the trip, the battery which that powered the communication system between the BOP and the rig died, and workers were unable to monitor any problems that might occur. According to the Congressional report, BP officials on site looking to save time and money had continuously cajoled, intimidated and encouraged workers on the rig to press on without changing the battery.”
And drilling continued anyway… until the rig hit a stream of oil and methane gas and the BOP was unable to regulate the tremendous upward force.
Even more infuriating, is what a Deepwater Horizon survivor worker recently told BBC News that he and others identified a leak in a control pod (the brains of the BOP = blow out preventer) weeks before the accident.
And still BP moved forward in the face of all the danger for a disaster, anyway… like fools driving off the cliff with passengers in the bus.
If any FBI and Grand Jury investigation hears this, and acts upon it; they will surely find that BP was and is “complicit in gross negligence.” A major Crime no less. Justice needs to prevail here as a lesson no-less to all other late comers and lucky oilers out there…
The oil Paradise dream trip fueled from the winning lucky strike of a successful oil well find , spiraled into Hell immediately like all coke fueled trips end up in a giant crash soonest the drug wears off.
In a split second, BP’s oil rig blew-up, sky high…
Fire everywhere and 11 persons were murdered. Eleven people were killed due to this Gross negligence… Is someone going to do something about it?
And oil gushed everywhere… and has continued to spill into Gulf waters for more than two months.
Animals are washing up on land. Beaches are ruined. Jobs are being lost. Entire industries are being washed away…
And BP ?
Well, BP still doesn’t know its back end from its elbow.
Every one’s saying it’ll be another six months until the spill is stopped…
But while the BP spill is making headlines as the greatest environmental crisis in U.S. history, another oil industry segment it receives scant attention to it’s spotty record and it’s own environmental disasters in the making. The onshore drilling business and the Tar Sands oil extraction business are taking center stage in the push for more Oil and the Arctic wildlife refuge is the next natural victim. Because oil drilling is set to commence there next month and the Offshore oil debate has left this area completely unprotected.
Guess what?
This Arctic wildlife refuge is the focus of the Oil industry majors. The same dangerous players BP and Exxon are set to start drilling there as soon as next month.
And it’s likely to go on and continue, on their dangerous path, and they will built new pipelines that will give us the new spills in the next ten to twenty years. Even if offshore drilling is allowed in the future the Arctic and the Alaskan wildlife reserve are to be the next victims. We are not talking about Canada’s tar sands pollution as this will be uncovered as the toxins are found to be reaching the ground waters as far south, as New mexico. All the while the US – MMS was asleep at the oil company party, after boozing away wildly and sleeping with the enemy.
Deep-sea drilling is public enemy # 1 these days… but this obscures the real problems everywhere else and especially in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
President Obama is freezing any and all new projects from entering the water…
Is this the end of offshore drilling? Not at all… but it is a hiccup on the road for Oil majors and it exposes us to their dangerous and often criminal record.
From Washington to Wasilla… and from Wall Street to Main Street… people are rethinking old strategies.
Everywhere you turn, politicians, pundits, and average Joes can’t distance themselves far enough from deep-sea drilling.
Erstwhile supporters of Big Oil have found a New Faith Orthodoxy suddenly:
Ohio Republican and House Minority Leader John Boeher now says:
”This tragedy should remind us that America needs a real, comprehensive energy plan… which includes more of everything: more clean and renewable sources of energy such as nuclear power, wind, and solar energy, more alternative fuels, more conservation, and more environmentally responsible development of America’s energy resources”
Brit Hume recently said:
”It’s not a matter of if they’ll be a disaster of some kind resulting of this kind of offshore drilling, it’s only a matter of when. This verifies that argument and becomes a powerful factor in the debate over what to do next. I don’t see any way around the political reality that this will set back the cause of offshore drilling in the United States…”
Even Gov. Schwarzenegger of California, who had supported deep-sea drilling off his state’s coast, has now recently changed his mind and come out against it…
And so has President Obama — who, in late March, gave the OK to more offshore oil projects in Alaska, the Gulf, and along the Eastern Seaboard — is now backpedaling and freezing all new underwater drilling permits…
A CBS public opinion poll shows that support for increased offshore drilling has dropped more than 35% nationally since August 2008…
But no poll was taken nor anyone was asked about the imminent Alaskan Wildlife Refuge coastal and then offshore oil drilling, where BP is preparing it’s drills for the fresh batch of victims for slaughter.
Oil extinctions of species aren’t unheard of either…
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Remember the Precautionary Principle?
Follow these five little things bellow:
PS2:
Me thinks:
It’s high time we applied the Precautionary Principle, again, starting right here.
STOP ALASKAN WILDLIFE REFUGE DRILLING by applying the PP cautionary checklist.
In the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska’s Prince Williams Sound the endangered species of whales were hard hit.
Almost fifty percent of the whales making their home and annual migrations there were killed. The population of these whales never recovered.
PS3:
Until the drilling Oil companies BP and Exxon Mobile demonstrate that they understand and have applied the Precautionary Principle delay them from the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge coastal and offshore drilling.
A bit of medicine for the oil majors, for the wildlife and the natural ecosystem habitat and most importantly: For the people.
PS4:
And if You want honest Politicians who aren’t beholden to the Oil campaign contributions here is the chance.
Ask every Politician, from the President on down to return any and all koney they have gotten from BP and the oil majors in campaign contributions now.
Put that money in a fund to help health victims of the Gulf oil clean up crews and their families.
And then ask the same politicians to sign a pledge to never accept Oil money for their Campaigns.
That would change things in a Hurry.
PS5:
Because of that the Environmental parliament started a campaign to keep Politicians honest by asking them to return the BP oil campaign money they received in the last elections.
We’ll see who walks the walk.
