[A-List] Fwd: F. William Engdahl: Gulf Oil Spill "Could Go on Years and Years"

[Suzanne de Kuyper]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Suzanne de Kuyper <suzannedk at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 9:44 AM
Subject: Fwd: F. William Engdahl: Gulf Oil Spill "Could Go on Years and Years"
To: Charles Brown <cdb1003 at prodigy.net>


Whether or not he believes in peak oil, his thesis that this crude oil
eruption, not spill, could continue for years reaching Western seas,
is one that is valid enough to print in whole.   You cut out most of
it.  One could add a disclaimer and print the whole thing, no?
Suzanne


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Suzanne de Kuyper <suzannedk at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 12:40 PM
Subject: Fwd: F. William Engdahl: Gulf Oil Spill "Could Go on Years and Years"
To: "kcourtenay at aol.com" <KCourtenay at aol.com>


Karen:

I quess I send this on to you because if it does go on, and as this
makes clear it might, it will effect Boston, the UK and the North Sea.
  Because the information coming out has been so 'massaged' thought
you would find another possibility interesting.  Suzette


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Suzanne de Kuyper <suzannedk at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 11:13 PM
Subject: Fwd: F. William Engdahl: Gulf Oil Spill "Could Go on Years and Years"
To: The A-List <a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Global Research E-Newsletter <crgeditor at yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 4:10 PM
Subject: F. William Engdahl: Gulf Oil Spill "Could Go on Years and Years"
To: suzannedk at gmail.com


Gulf Oil Spill "Could Go on Years and Years" ...

By F. William Engdahl

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19660

Global Research, June 11, 2010

The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically
working not to stop the world’s worst oil disaster, but to hide the
true extent of the actual ecological catastrophe. Senior  researchers
tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and
that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are
undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.



In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal
Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of
Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf
Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years...
many years.” [1]



According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of
abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, “What BP drilled into was what we
call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons
generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are
accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.”[2]
Ghawar, the world’s most prolific oilfield has been producing millions
of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. According
to the abiotic science, Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas
deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar
to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.



As I wrote at the time of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake
disaster,[3] Haiti had been identified as having potentially huge
hydrocasrbon reserves, as has neighboring Cuba. Kutcherov estimates
that the entire Gulf of Mexico is one of the planet’s most abundant
accessible locations to extract oil and gas, at least before the
Deepwater Horizon event this April.



“In my view the heads of BP reacted with panic at the scale of the oil
spewing out of the well,” Kutcherov adds. “What is inexplicable at
this point is why they are trying one thing, failing, then trying a
second, failing, then a third. Given the scale of the disaster they
should try every conceivable option, even if it is ten, all at once in
hope one works. Otherwise, this oil source could spew oil for years
given the volumes coming to the surface already.” [4]



He stresses, “It is difficult to estimate how big this leakage is.
There is no objective information available.” But taking into
consideration information about the last BP ‘giant’ discovery in the
Gulf of Mexico, the Tiber field, some six miles deep, Kutcherov agrees
with Ira Leifer a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the
University of California, Santa Barbara who says the oil may be
gushing out at a rate of more than 100,000 barrels a day.[5]



What the enormoity of the oil spill does is to also further discredit
clearly the oil companies’ myth of “peak oil” which claims that the
world is at or near the “peak” of economical oil extraction. That
myth, which has been propagated in recent years by circles close to
former oilman and Bush Vice President, Dick Cheney, has been
effectively used by the giant oil majors to justify far higher oil
prices than would be politically possible otherwise, by claiming a
non-existent petroleum scarcity crisis.


Obama & BP Try to Hide



According to a report from Washington investigative journalist Wayne
Madsen, “the Obama White House and British Petroleum are covering up
the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico
and working together to limit BP’s liability for damage caused by what
can be called a ‘mega-disaster.’” [6] Madsen cites sources within the
US Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and Florida Department of
Environmental Protection for his assertion.



Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary
Salazar, are working with BP’s chief executive officer Tony Hayward on
legislation that would raise the cap on liability for damage claims
from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10
billion. According to informed estimates cited by Madsen, however, the
disaster has a real potential cost of at least $1,000 billion ($1
trillion). That estimate would support the pessimistic assessment of
Kutcherov that the spill, if not rapidly controlled, “will destroy the
entire coastline of the United States.”



According to the Washington report of Madsen, BP statements that one
of the leaks has been contained, are “pure public relations
disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands for greater action
by the Obama administration., according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers
sources.” [7]



The White House has been resisting releasing any “damaging
information” about the oil disaster. Coast Guard and Corps of
Engineers experts estimate that if the ocean oil geyser is not stopped
within 90 days, there will be irreversible damage to the marine
eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond.
At best, some Corps of Engineers experts say it could take two years
to cement the chasm on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. [8]



Only after the magnitude of the disaster became evident did Obama
order Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano to declare the oil
disaster a “national security issue.” Although the Coast Guard and
FEMA are part of her department, Napolitano’s actual reasoning for
invoking national security, according to Madsen, was merely to block
media coverage of the immensity of the disaster that is unfolding for
the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and their coastlines.



The Obama administration also conspired with BP to hide the extent of
the oil leak, according to the cited federal and state sources. After
the oil rig exploded and sank, the government stated that 42,000
gallons per day were gushing from the seabed chasm. Five days later,
the federal government upped the leakage to 210,000 gallons a day.
However, submersibles monitoring the escaping oil from the Gulf seabed
are viewing television pictures of what they describe as a
“volcanic-like” eruption of oil.



When the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA
imagery of the Gulf oil slick, which is larger than is being reported
by the media, it was reportedly denied the access. By chance, National
Geographic managed to obtain satellite imagery shots of the extent of
the disaster and posted them on their web site. Other satellite
imagery reportedly being withheld by the Obama administration, shows
that what lies under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming
rate is a cavern estimated to be the size of Mount Everest. This
information has been given an almost national security-level
classification to keep it from the public, according to Madsen’s
sources.



The Corps of Engineers and FEMA are reported to be highly critical of
the lack of support for quick action after the oil disaster by the
Obama White House and the US Coast Guard. Only now has the Coast Guard
understood the magnitude of the disaster, dispatching nearly 70
vessels to the affected area. Under the loose regulatory measures
implemented by the Bush-Cheney Administration, the US Interior
Department’s Minerals Management Service became a simple “rubber
stamp,” approving whatever the oil companies wanted in terms of safety
precautions that could have averted such a disaster. Madsen describes
a state of “criminal collusion” between Cheney’s former firm,
Halliburton, and the Interior Department’s MMS, and that the potential
for similar disasters exists with the other 30,000 off-shore rigs that
use the same shut-off valves. [9]



Silence from Eco groups?... Follow the money



Without doubt at this point we are in the midst of what could be the
greatest ecological catastrophe in history. The oil platform explosion
took place almost within the current loop where the Gulf Stream
originates. This has huge ecological and climatological consequences.



A cursory look at a map of the Gulf Stream shows that the oil is not
just going to cover the beaches in the Gulf, it will spread to the
Atlantic coasts up through North Carolina then on to the North Sea and
Iceland. And beyond the damage to the beaches, sea life and water
supplies, the Gulf stream has a very distinct chemistry, composition
(marine organisms), density, temperature. What happens if the oil and
the dispersants and all the toxic compounds they create actually
change the nature of the Gulf Stream? No one can rule out potential
changes including changes in the path of the Gulf Stream, and even
small changes could have huge impacts. Europe, including England, is
not an icy wasteland due to the warming from the Gulf Stream.



Yet there is a deafening silence from the very environmental
organizations which ought to be at the barricades demanding that BP,
the US Government and others act decisively.



That deafening silence of leading green or ecology organizations such
as Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club and others may well be
tied to a money trail that leads right back to the oil industry,
notably to BP. Leading environmental organizations have gotten
significant financial payoffs in recent years from BP in order that
the oil company could remake itself with an “environment-friendly
face,” as in “beyond petroleum” the company’s new branding.



The Nature Conservancy, described as “the world’s most powerful
environmental group,”[10] has awarded BP a seat on its International
Leadership Council after the oil company gave the organization more
than $10 million in recent years. [11]



Until recently, the Conservancy and other environmental groups worked
with BP in a coalition that lobbied Congress on climate-change issues.
An employee of BP Exploration serves as an unpaid Conservancy trustee
in Alaska. In addition, according to a recent report published by the
Washington Post, Conservation International, another environmental
group, has accepted $2 million in donations from BP and worked with
the company on a number of projects, including one examining
oil-extraction methods. From 2000 to 2006, John Browne, then BP's
chief executive, sat on the CI board.



Further, The Environmental Defense Fund, another influential ecologist
organization, joined with BP, Shell and other major corporations to
form a Partnership for Climate Action, to promote ‘market-based
mechanisms’ (sic) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.



Environmental non-profit groups that have accepted donations from or
joined in projects with BP include Nature Conservancy, Conservation
International, Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and Audubon.
That could explain why the political outcry to date for decisive
action in the Gulf has been so muted. [12]



Of course those organizations are not going to be  the ones to solve
this catastrophe. The central point at this point is who is prepared
to put the urgently demanded federal and international scientific
resources into solving this crisis. Further actions of the likes of
that from the Obama White House to date or from BP can only lead to
the conclusion that some very powerful people want this debacle to
continue. The next weeks will be critical to that assessment.





F. William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American
Oil Politics and the New World Order



Notes

[1] Vladimir Kutcherov, telephone discussion with the author, June 9, 2010.

[2] Ibid.

[3] F. William Engdahl, The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti,
Global Research.ca, January 30, 2010, accessed in
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17287

[4] Vladimir Kutcherov, op. cit.

[5] Ira Leifer, Scientist: BP Well Could Be Leaking 100,000 Barrels of
Oil a Day, June 9, 2010, accessed in
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/9/scientist_bp_well_could_be_leaking

[6] Wayne Madsen,  The Coverup: BPs Crude Politics and the Looming
Environmental Mega Disaster, May 6, 2010, accessed in
http://oilprice.com/Environment/Oil-Spills/The-Cover-up-BP-s-Crude-Politics-and-the-Looming-Environmental-Mega-Disaster.html

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Tim Findley, Natures’ Landlord, Range Magazine, Spring 2003.

[11] Joe Stephens, Nature Conservancy faces potential backlash from
ties with BP, Washington Post, May 24, 2010, accessed in
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR2010052302164.html

[12] Ibid.



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