Halliburton - Gulf Oil Rig Explosion

[Linnea]

Do not want to go all wingnutty here, but what is it about the Gulf that would cause it to be targeted by tptb? Agribusiness has subdued the 'family farms' and taken over food production in the heartland. Now, I suppose a major 'natural' marine food industry needs to be brought to heel?

showthread.php?s=&threadid=30952

Is Blackwater going to be brought in to 'clean up the mess', and deal with the 'messy' fall out from the natives there?

[Psychicwolf]

I think most of the "commoners" in the Gulf are just beat after all that has happened to their area during and since Katrina. I doubt they will be a problem for Blackwater or Xe Services LLC (pronounced zee), as they call themselves now.

I think it just a matter of corporate greed, Linn. Have you been watching the testimony of the guys on the rig. The mudder who is guiding the drilling line is supposed to constantly watch the mud pressure as they pull the drill line, but a BP guy who was on the platform just kept pushing and the rigger didn't watch the pressure like he was supposed to. Halliburton had never tested that particular BOP in that depth. Combined with BPs prior safety record (poor) it was a disaster waiting to happen.

But we all bear some responsibility too. There are well documented ways to use less of the black stuff, but it is too convenient to have a personal automobile, not use plastic, spend the extra money for green energy etc.

But mainly it is the amoral scumbags at the top of the food chain.

[Linnea]

Well yes, there were at least 5 BP execs out there on the rig that night...messing around.

This is exactly what I am alluding to - and trying not to go all wingnutty about...

A disaster 'waiting to happen'?

and etc.

[Psychicwolf]

The start date of that thread you posted, Linn was 10-15-2007. What happened one year later? The Financial Crisis. Naomi K was absolutely right, but the disaster was financial in nature. It is still going on. Both in this country and Europe. We are about to embark on another leg down. This is permanant change in wages, life style and leveraging.

History of the US, Since 1980:
1.Government aligns with business to make war on unions and workers
2.Government aligns with business to make war on schools, colleges, and educators
3.Government aligns with business to turn a fast profit by dumping imports in America, eviscerating manufacturing
4.Government aligns with business to pillage the country with fraudulent lending practices
5.Government aligns with business to reward the outsourcing of jobs

The vitriol in politics nowadays is intentional, IMHO. It keeps us seperated and unable to work together to seek solutions outside of TPTB.

The good in human nature will eventually rise out of the ugliness once that ugliness has done its worst and has burned itself out again. Just like a forest-fire that is ultimately destructive, or a volcanic eruption; out of the ashes life, creativity renews.

A friend of mine, also formerly politically active, sent me this:

"There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For until November, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits of Capitalism."

[joequinn]

Please allow me to inject some poison into this discussion...

It is the week before Memorial Day, and gas prices at the pump have been DROPPING. That NEVER happens, but it's happening this year. Why?

I believe that the degenerate bastards who rule our very bodies and our very souls are extremely apprehensive at the present time: indeed, as the proverb puts it, "in prison the most anxious man is the warden." These degenerate pigs realize that both the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 took place when the grain harvest failed, and they fear that raising the price at the pump to pay off Obama and to guarantee their usual profit margins might spark serious trouble. These degenerate pigs are sweating 'n farting like mad in their Wall Street board rooms, terrified that the rubes will finally get wise to them...

Gas will stay low this summer, but it will go to $7 a gallon once the subhuman proletarian trash go back to sleep. For Obama MUST be paid off and the degenerate pigs MUST maintain their usual profit margin. AND. THEY. WILL.

[Linnea]

At this point, Obama could be just trying to survive, much less awaiting any payoff.

Anyhow - here is a news article regarding the Deep Horizon rig that fateful night - from closer to the scene:

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill ... s_pri.html

[Kaztronic]

Of course, he could have gotten out in front of the situation if he had gone onto a strategically placed aircraft carrier deck in a flight suit and declared 'Mission Accomplished' - with a cowed and complicit 'you're either with us or against us' media chorus providing cover.

imo, gotcha politics is not what is needed in this situation.

Simply comparing Obama to the lousy President who preceded him is probably not what is needed in this situation either. At one point, I felt that this was indeed "Obama's Katrina" - but have since come to regret agreeing with that terminology as it is simply incendiary payback by those who were angered by the accusations against Bush.

Now, I do happen to think the Federal government and Commander In Chief have done a lousy job dealing with this situation on nearly all levels (actively censoring the media, deferring so damn much to BP when it comes to sharing information with the American people, and in determining how much oil was actually flowing as two glaring examples).

The communication with the public has been incredibly tone-deaf, and certainly not reassuring (at one point, Robert Gibbs complained to reporters that they were "asking too many questions" about the response of BP, and the government in dealing with this disaster).

While I agree that President Obama specifically, and his Administration to a lesser extent deserve very little blame for the disaster occuring (we will run out of fingers to point before we get through all of the people responsible for putting in place a beaurocracy that would have licensed ships to head in to Iceberg zones in 1913 without enough lifeboats for all passengers), I think it is entirely legitimate to look seperately at the current governments response to the unfolding disaster with a critical eye. Frankly, the stakes are too high not to.

No one can deny the extreme technical challenges facing those trying to plug this well, and that our government could struggle with the effort were it to take over for BP. But we also cannot deny that BP has been dishonest, and misleading in the information it has provided as well. They lack credibility when it comes to relying upon them to solve this problem. It seems at times as if political considerations about "owning" this disaster are coming in to play when it comes to the idea of the government taking over the efforts to cap the well.

Why can't the President declare a national state of emergency (way overdue in my opinion) and simply get out there and say "Hey, we need Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the major oil companies of the world, universities that study deep-sea environments, and other nations to send us their best and brightest to help come up with a working plan to plug up this well"?

If you're going to blow the budget, blow it on this (I don't think that even the Tea Party would take issue with government spending a ton to deal with this problem). Who cares how much it costs to pay them, why can they not have a group of scientists/engineers operating parallel to BP, coming up with additional ideas to plug the leak while BP is still permitted to lead the operation at this time? I cannot imagine one good reason why that should not have been happening all along - instead, we have been actively turning away offers of international assistance!

Why aren't the American people being rallied to deal with this yet? Instead our Coast Guard and BP are often idling their ships while oil moves in to environmentally sensitive areas, why aren't they being pressed ever harder to protect the beaches and marshes? Why isn't the military mobilized to get involved with the clean-up yet, where is the Navy?

[Kaztronic]

It is worthwhile to compare and contrast our reaction to this spill, the worst in our history - with a spill that took place in South Korea in 2007 - the worst in their history. A finite amount of oil was spilled, much smaller than the amount we are facing, and the South Korean government declared a national state of emergency. They asked their people to get out there and HELP protect the shore lines, get the oil up out of the water.

The effort in South Korea was massive, involved the government & public, and frankly puts ours to shame in comparison. Interestingly enough, their government was also criticized for a slow response (and they had over 1,000,000 volunteers working on the clean-up within 33 days!).

~snip~

The South Korean government declared a state of disaster in the region. The cost of cleanup has been estimated at 300 billion South Korean won (US$330 million). The cleanup involved 13 helicopters, 17 airplanes, and 327 vessels.[1] It has also been estimated the cleanup will take at least two months.[1][9] Hundreds of thousands of volunteers and celebrities including popular Korean actress Park Jin Hee helped to clean up the beaches in the campaign.[citation needed] As of January 4, 2008, the Navy had deployed 229 vessels and some 22,000 military personnel to help clean up the spill, in addition to civilian aid. [2]

On 10 January 2008, the number of volunteers topped the 1-million mark to reach 1,037,000 people, 33 days after the accident occurred on December 7, according to the South Chungcheong provincial government. [3] The Taean office for emergency operations reported that ordinary civilians took up the largest portion of volunteers with 580,000, followed by local residents with 186,700, soldiers and policemen with 127,000, and public officials with 57,143. The emergency office said an average of 20,000 volunteers took part in the operation during weekdays and 3,000 over the weekends. [4]

By January 2008, approximately 4,153 tons of crude oil spilled had been collected by utilizing some 268,710 kilograms of oil absorbents and other cleanup devices. [5] Financial contributions combined to 27.76 billion South Korean won (about 20 million euro) in donations, as well as food and clothing. The Taean emergency center said more than seven billion won in donations have come from about 4,200 organizations and individuals. [6]

Internationally, the Regional Oil Spill Contingency Plan under the Northwest Pacific Action Plan(NOWPAP) has been activated following a request of the Korean government. Among the emergency supplies available in the other three NOWPAP members (China, Japan and Russia), Korean government, taking into account logistical issues, accepted kind offers of 50 and 10 tonnes of sorbents from China and Japan respectively. Japan has also dispatched a team of experts in addition to the teams from the Joint UNEP/OCHA (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) Environment Unit and the European Commission Monitoring Information Center, U.S. Coast Guard and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (AUB). [7]

Wiki.com

[Linnea]

Originally posted by Kaztronic
Simply comparing Obama to the lousy President who preceded him is probably not what is needed in this situation either.

Comparing media/corporate coverage of Obama/Bush is the focus here. And, this is not simple. It is as murky as the oil spilling into the Gulf...

*Hint. 'Politics' is the screen, the distraction.

[SquidInk]

We're not getting the real story on this one - period... and yes, I'm a freaking wingnut.

The real situation is probably more like this (imho):

• There is more than one leak in gulf.
• Between 5 & 10 thousand barrels a day are flowing into the gulf - best case scenario.
• The "live feed" is neither live, nor is it placed on the site of the primary blow-out. Instead it is trained on what is essentially an ancillary riser on the grid work of blown out wells.
• The blowout was an error, but now that it has occurred, the "PTB" are going to employ it for a certain economic advantage.
• A non-existent weapons system, involving a series of large explosive charges (nukes?) will be required to cap the wells. The development of this weapon system will be the first opportunity for profit - the first of many - I mean, after the toxic dispersant dividend profits, & the "short the Gulf" profits.

video #1
video #2

3:11 - "It's gonna cost 50 times what we estimated we would have spent..." - if the oil hits the shore on the gulf coast.

I think the quote above sums up the crypto-response strategy of the "PTB".

video #3

Article #1

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser this morning claimed that Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen had turned thumbs down on the parish's portion of a state plan to erect sand berms along barrier islands and wetlands to capture oil from the Deepwater Horizon well accident. But Allen and federal on-scene coordinator Rear Adm. Mary Landry said the state plan is still under environmental review and no final decision is made.

Nungesser is probably worthy of a Congressional Medal of Honor for his service.

[joequinn]

I go nuts when people call Obama a "socialist," by which term they really mean "commie pinko faggot niggah who should be opening the door to the White House rather than be residing in it." In point of fact, Obama --- like Clinton and, quite possibly, Carter before him --- is a fascist fellow-traveler. I happen to agree with Obama's hyper-fascist critics who describe the BP oil spill as "Obama's Katrina." Eisenhower would have sent the Army Corps of Engineers to fix the problem, would have fined BP up the kazoo for the repairs, and would have reduced the oil depletion allowance by law during the next session of Congress. Not Obama: he doesn't want to die with his wife and his two daughters in a car explosion if he does that. So he goes to the Gulf Coast, makes meaningless gestures and allows Joe Sixpack and his hag wife, Soccer Mom Darlene, to call him a "socialist" (i.e. a "commie pinko faggot niggah who should be opening the door to the White House rather than residing in it"). But then again, perhaps being abused by these two mindless yahoos (while, behind the scenes, the degenerate capitalist pigs on Wall Street continue to steal everything that isn't nailed down) IS the reason why he's paid the big bucks! Bottom line, sports fans: Uncle Tom lives!

[HB3]

Now it's Maureen Dowd:

Obama and top aides who believe in his divinity make a mistake to dismiss complaints of his aloofness as Washington white noise. He treats the press as a nuisance rather than examining his own inability to encapsulate Americans’ feelings.

“The media may get tired of the story, but we will not,” he told Gulf Coast residents when he visited on Friday. Actually, if it weren’t for the media, the president would probably never have woken up from his torpor and flown down there.

Instead of getting Bill Clinton to offer Joe Sestak a job, Obama should be offering Clinton one. Bill would certainly know how to gush at a gusher gone haywire. Let him resume a cameo role as Feeler in Chief. The post is open.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opini ... ef=opinion

"Feeler in Chief"?

[Janus232]

Nuking the oil spill: nuclear option being considered?
"Truth is that Russia has used it at least five times starting with a blast near Bukhara Uzbekistan in 1966. Then a 120 meter tall flame, fuelled by massive natural gas was blazing for three years with deafening sound. When all efforts to contain the flame in the desert failed, a 30 kiloton atom bomb was used. The explosion did seal the well-it worked displacing tonnes of rock over the spill thus cutting it"
http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/nu ... gusher.php

Nuke the oil spill: Could nuclear bomb be answer for huge leaks as at US Gulf coast?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ojCbqfR ... re=related

[Kaztronic]

Oh man, I'm not sure this country is quite ready to mess around with a nuke to deal with this problem - it would have to be the absolute last-ditch option in my mind for anyone to even buy in to it.

You would really have to go a long way to convince the American public that other options had been exhausted, truly communicate how it would work, why it was necessary, and be open and honest about what the risks were if things went wrong, and also what the negative repercussions were of using such a technique even if it were successful.

I'm not personally averse to an "outside the box" solution here, and it may be that this has been used successfully in the past, and that it could in fact be the best option. Like anyone else though, I can't help but cringe and worry when you hear talk about using a nuke to deal with a problem (and I am probably more comfortable with the relative safety of nuclear technology than most people).

It is sort of like visiting a Doctor and being diagnosed with a serious medical condition that will require surgery to repair. You want a second, and sometimes a third opinion. We would need that in this case to say the least, and it does not appear at this time that any working groups are studying the leak at the behest of government in a fashion that is independent from the response by BP.

Thus far, it does not appear that our government is up to that task.

[joequinn]

But why is the government not up to the task? It was fifty years ago, in Eisenhower's time...

Do you know what I think? By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes... I am convinced that the Cryptocracy knows that --- perhaps as quickly as a mere two years from now --- all hell is going to break loose on the planet. Something that the members of the Cryptocracy are going to survive because they will be able to scurry into their underground bunkers, but that we children of a lesser god cannot. The Cryptocracy knows this because of its remote-viewers and its time-travelers.

Why bother to cap the oil spill and save the Gulf ecosystem when you know that the merde is going to hit the machine in less than two years?

Folks, the stern of the ship is starting to rise out of the water; it's every man for himself now; and Gawd help the poor bastard who can't make it to a lifeboat in time. And yeah, I think that now it's just as simple as that...