Fight the Blob: Part I

EDITOR’S NOTE: PARTS II and III coming soon!

UPDATE: PART II Can Be Read Here

See our latest Puppetgov video: OUR GULF IN PERIL

(Don Paul was a roughneck in the Gulf of Mexico for four companies between 1977-1980. He left the oil-field with 3rd- and 4th-degree burns incurred while working with Offshore Drilling and Exploration Company (ODECO) in February 1980. He’s lived in Louisiana since moving to New Orleans from San Francisco in January 2006 to help with the recovery. He was honored to see his  January 2009 essay ‘Becoming Our Government: Making the Future Our Own’ become part of Bill Jablonski’s excellent puppetgov video “Why Resistance Is Essential”. Books and music of his are available at the puppetgov store.)

By Don Paul~Puppetgov

Greed and negligence alone do not explain the now 42-days-old, man-made catastrophe known as the ‘ “BP Oil Spill’ “.

Facts point to even greater evils and agendas than are popularly ascribed to British Petroleum for its crimes in regard to the blow-out and gusher that started with the botched capping of its Macondo Prospect well in Mississippi Canyon Block 252 on  April 20, 50 miles offshore of Venice, Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.

The primary greater evil and agenda more and more clearly appears to be an attack on people’s ability to feed and sustain themselves–not only the fishing people of southern Louisiana and elsewhere along the United States’ Gulf Coast, but the people of every Caribbean, Atlantic, Canadian, European and African region that will be damaged for decades by lack of photosynthesis in the Gulf Stream and that Stream’s northern and southern flows. (1) (2)

That is, by its 42nd day, the Blob on our screens that’s known as the “BP Oil Spill”, the ever-expanding and deepening Gulf Oil-and-Gas Blob, now appears to be most credibly explained as an attack on the global food-supply.

If the needlessly perpetuated catastrophe were about oil and profits only, British Petroleum and its partners in the Macondo Prospect well (BP owns 65% of this well and the Anadarko/Southern Union and Mitsui corporations own 25% and 10% respectively) would have first used explosives to pinch off breaks in downhole pipeline within the first seven days after the April 20 blow-out, thereby preserving the well and the estimated 50 to 100 million barrels of oil (3) (4) and an undisclosed amount in cubic feet of natural gas that might be the yield from about $100 million in drilling costs (5) paid to Transocean and consulting sub-contractors such as Halliburton and Schlumberger.

Even billions-dollar media is now discussing long overdue fixes. See MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan with oil-field veterans Nick Pozzi and Matthew Simmons on Thursday, May 27, courtesy of one of the best Internet reporters on the 41-day-old crisis, George Washington’s Blog (6) .

Also, if the the three partner Corporations’ and the U. S. Governments’ intention was to remove and recover as rapidly as possible the oil that has spewed into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of at least 1,000,000 gallons per day since April 20 (such a rate is the least that accounts for the Blob’s minimal and still growing size), supertankers would have been immediately recruited and deployed to the site of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon blow-out.

As Esquire online and other relatively mainstream sources have related since May 13, supertankers were used to suck up an estimated 85% of an estimated 700 million gallons offshore of Saudi Arabia between late 1993 and early 1994. (7). A former President of Shell Oil, John Hofmesiter, has been specific about how supertankers working in a criss-cross grid on the Gulf of Mexico can suck up much of the oil. (8)

700 million gallons of oil is about 17 times more than the low estimate of about 40 million gallons released through the Macondo well catastrophe, and 700 million gallons is about 65 times more than the 11 million gallons that the Exxon Valdez shipwreck released in 1989 into Prince William Sound. The main fact to be drawn, I think, from the comparisons and the reported 1993-1994 precedent is that supertankers and conventional tankers could remove and relieve a great deal of the oil and gas pollution now streaming through the Gulf of Mexico, a total that we may reasonably put at a minimum of 1 million barrels of oil so far, as one barrel of oil contains 42 gallons.

With this amount of 1 million barrels in mind, let’s review other numbers that bear on the catastrophe still spewing from the Gulf of Mexico’s Outercontinental Shelf. These numbers may help us understand what’s really happening.

You may recall the estimate by British Petroleum and oil-field analysts that 50 to 100 million barrels is the expected yield from the Macondo Prospect well. Such a yield represents $3.5 billion to $7.0 billion in revenue at a market price of $70 per barrel of oil.

Why would BP, Anadarko/Southern Union and Mitsui jeopardize such potential wealth by foregoing safety-measures in the capping of their first access into this wealth–by insisting on ‘unlikely’ and ‘uncommon’ shortcuts that might only save about $1 million per day in drilling costs at the Transocean Deepwater Horizon rig, shortcuts that would themselves jeopardize about $100 million in drilling costs already incurred by BP and its partners? Now BP and its partners face fines that may total $7.8 billion. Reasons of greed and negligence do not explain the serial failures of prevention and containment that compose the story of this tragedy from mid-April 2010 onward. (9) (10) (11)

Consider, next, the Mineral Management Service‘s statements as to proved oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico’s Outercontinental Shelf, as of December 31, 2006: 20.3 billion barrels of oil and 183.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. (12)

Multiply $20.3 billion by $70 ($1.421 trilllion) and you’ll see that more than three years ago the Gulf of Mexico’s Outercontinental Shelf held proved reserves from oil alone whose potential wealth so far exceeds the current losses from the Blob released through the Macondo Prospect blow-out as to make the losses due to the Blob like less than a literal drop from a bucket.

Why would BP and its Anadarko/Southern Union and Mitsui partners and its Transocean and Halliburton and Scllumberger sub-contractors jeopardize all the wealth potential from oil and gas in this Outercontinental Shelf through ‘an uncommon sequence’ of actions and non-actions that essentially guaranteed a blow-out of the Macondo Prospect well?

Why would the U. S. Government and British Petroleum, Anadarko/Southern Union and Mitsui and the implicated sub-contractors allow the blow-out to grow and spread through 42 days of denials, lies, and obviously mistaken or inadequate ‘solutions’?

Why is this mess still going on? Why is it so much worse than when it started? Why is the source of 1/3 of the United States’ supply of seafood (the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana’s wetlands) now off-limits to civilians, or a kill-zone, or a dead-zone? Why are Louisiana’s wetlands, comprising more than 40% of the United States’ total wetlands, now being more attacked by oil and gas? Why is a centuries-old way of life being destroyed by actions (BP‘s flaunting insistence on toxic Corexit as a supposed dispersant of oil and gas) and inactions that make no sense as remedies?

Why are all those people and animals in and along the Gulf Coast still suffering? Why are thousands of workers who make their living from fish, shellfish and oysters and thousand of volunteers in Louisiana and elsewhere still prohibited from helping in clean-up of the Gulf and Gulf Coast? Why has the U.S. Government ceded control of 20% of the Gulf of Mexico to British Petroleum and other supranational Corporations?

Why have the Blob’s oil-and-gas poisons been let into the Earth’s most far-reaching, trans-oceanic river, the Gulf Stream, and what is really happening to the myriad forms of life and life-support now stuck within the miles-long ‘plumes’ of deep-water oil and gas that are coursing toward Florida, the Atlantic Ocean, Europe and Africa?

Why? Why all these seeming ‘failures’ and follies? Like so much else in the 21st century, the 42-day-old Blob of life-killing oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico makes most sense if seen as one more attack on the freedom and ability of ordinary people to independently sustain themselves.

We’ve seen above that the ‘accident’ and ‘failures’ do not make sense as dollars-and-cents. The Blob of oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico does, however, make perfect and symmetric sense if seen as one more act in the decades-long war against working-class people across the Northern Hemisphere.

No accident, too, I think, is that the Gulf Oil-and-Gas Blob has come as strikes by working-class people in Europe retaliate against Banks and real unemployment in the United States stays around 16%.

How should we respond to acts of war that attack our livelihoods and families?

We should first, I suggest, look as closely and deeply as we can at the realities of situations that confront us. We should have the courage to probe and to see. We should thereby try to gain clarity. We can then decide, each one of us, according to his or her lights, how best to respond.

On Monday, June 7, Part 2 at puppetgov.com: how the Gulf Oil-and-Gas Blob may be used by supranational Corporations and their servant Governments to cause real or apparent scarcities, pass ‘Cap and Tax’ legislation, and demoralize populaces; a brief look at the histories of British Petroleum and other criminal players in this ongoing tragedy; and sketches of how working-class people of the world (including those whose daily bread is earned at keyboards of computers) can fight back with responses and remedies, by the millions and billions, to win freedom and prosperity for all of us.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream

2. ‘The Gulf Stream’, James C. Hobbs, from the Broward County Libraries’ exhibition ‘Florida, the Making of a State, at http://www.broward.org/library/bienes/lii14006.htm

3. ‘Macondo Field Development Project’ at subseaiq.com, May 17, 2010

4. ‘Gulf Oil Spill: What if BP Taps Leaking Macondo Well Again?’, Ron Scherer, Christian Science Monitor, May 19, 2010, at

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/projects/gulf-spill/5393-gulf-oil-spill-what-if-bp-taps-leaking-macondo-well-again

5. ‘Unlikely Decisions Set Stage for BP Disaster’

Ben Casselman and Russel Gold, Wall Street Journal May 27, 2010, at

http://rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=93841

6. http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/05/prominent-oil-industry-insider-theres.html

7. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/gulf-oil-spill-supertankers-051310

http://www.fastcompany.com/1646820/could-the-gulf-oil-spill-could-cleaned-up-by-supertankers

8. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1005/26/rlst.02.html

9. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/bp-gulf-oil-spill-timeline.php

10. ‘BP had warnings before accident’, Jake Sherman, May 15, 2010, politico.com

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37776.html

11. ‘Criminal Neglience: Despite Knowing It Had a Damaged Blowout Preventer, BP Still Cut Corners by Removing the Single Most Important Safety Measure’, May 17, 2010, at http://www.georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/05/despite-knowing-it-had-damaged-blowout.html

12. http://www.gomr.mms.gov/PDFs/2009/2009-064.pdf

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RELATED:

Act III — Those Most Hurt By The BP Oil Spill

Factbox: Gulf oil spill impacts fisheries, wildlife, tourism

How the BP oil disaster adds up

Gulf oil spill: New Orleans protesters rage against BP

Oil spill hits supplies; prices skyrocket

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Related posts:

1. Fight the Blob: Part III
2. BP oil spill may not be capped until Christmas, expert warns
3. Fight the Blob: Part II
4. Experts Double Estimate of BP Oil Spill Size
5. Seven hours of data missing from Deepwater Horizon operations just prior to explosion
6. Scientists: Oil leaking up to 2.52 Million gallons daily
7. BP Attempting to Implement Same Procedures That Failed In 1979 Oil Spill