BP Spills Coffee: sea floor "fractured beyond repair"

Great video doing the rounds that sums up industry ineptitude over the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

OK, laughs over. Steel yourselves for this, for what it's worth:

"Scientists Warn Gulf Of Mexico Sea Floor Fractured Beyond Repair"

A dire report circulating in the Kremlin today that was prepared for Prime Minister Putin by Anatoly Sagalevich of Russia's Shirshov Institute of Oceanology warns that the Gulf of Mexico sea floor has been fractured “beyond all repair” and our World should begin preparing for an ecological disaster “beyond comprehension” unless “extraordinary measures” are undertaken to stop the massive flow of oil into our Planet’s eleventh largest body of water.

According to Sagalevich’s report, the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico is not just coming from the 22 inch well bore site being shown on American television, but from at least 18 other sites on the “fractured seafloor” with the largest being nearly 11 kilometers (7 miles) from where the Deepwater Horizon sank and is spewing into these precious waters an estimated 2 million gallons of oil a day.

Interesting to note in this report is Sagalevich stating that he and the other Russian scientists were required by the United States to sign documents forbidding them to report their findings to either the American public or media, and which they had to do in order to legally operate in US territorial waters.

As a prominent oil-industry insider, and one of the World's leading experts on peak oil, Simmons further warns that the US has only two options, “let the well run dry (taking 30 years, and probably ruining the Atlantic ocean) or nuking the well.”

I don't know this source (supposedly the Kremlin) and I'm not sure that the nuclear option is viable for a raft of reasons. And we are talking about a great depth of solid rock said to have been damaged. But it does look as if the pipe itself is doomed. And that sets up a whole load of additional problems.

UPDATE: Saturday 19th June 2010. Naomi Klein on the hole in the earth and the "hubris at the heart of capitalism".

If Katrina pulled back the curtain on the reality of racism in America, the BP disaster pulls back the curtain on something far more hidden: how little control even the most ingenious among us have over the awesome, intricately interconnected natural forces with which we so casually meddle. BP cannot plug the hole in the Earth that it made. Obama cannot order fish species to survive, or brown pelicans not to go extinct (no matter whose ass he kicks). No amount of money – not BP's recently pledged $20bn (£13.5bn), not $100bn – can replace a culture that has lost its roots. And while our politicians and corporate leaders have yet to come to terms with these humbling truths, the people whose air, water and livelihoods have been contaminated are losing their illusions fast.

UPDATE 2: Saturday 19th June. Although we're venting our collective anger at the arrogant Tony Hayward, he has only been at the BP helm since 2007. Part of his brief has apparently been to correct the culture of cost-cutting negligence and irresponsibility overseen by Lord Browne during his ten-year tenure as Chief Executive and a lifetime spent with BP. This same Lord Browne is now on Team Cameron, leading the onslaught on the poor through its policy to claw back as many of the gains made by the British working class as they can muster before being kicked out on their fat behinds. Meanwhile, the wealthy, many of whom brought on the recession, remain unscathed. Given the size of the calamity in the Gulf of Mexico which looks increasingly due to BP's cavalier attitude to safety, my view is that Browne should be banged up in prison with the other criminals, not flouncing about in ermine. BTW, he's one of Tony Blair's mates. Quelle surprise!

Big Oil and global pollution. We need renewables fast.

UPDATE 3: Sunday 4th July 2010. Lord Browne's former lover is now assisting the American lawyer prosecuting BP and alleging that it is Browne's cost-cutting measures that left to such disasters as the Texan oil explosion in 2005 and the unstoppable Gulf of Mexico oil gusher. He is also the person brought in by David Cameron to lead the attack on the poor and make cuts of nearly £7 billion. I hope this doesn't descend into an orgy or homophobia and that everyone remembers Browne is a scumbag because of his class interest and not his sexuality.

Is BP Oil leak unstoppable? BOP tilting

Boris Johnson, Norman Tebbit and Toby Young, among other priority-warped pundits, may be screeching about BP dividends and imagined anti-British sentiment in the US, but there are more pressing concerns.

On May 14th I blogged about the possibility that the BP Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico may be unstoppable. Now spilling 150,000 barrels a day according to some estimates — not BP's — the nightmare scenario that the entire oil reserve may break open is now increasingly looking like a reality. [EDIT: official figure now around 40,000 barrels per day.] The Oil Drum — a website for oil industry geologists, engineers, technicians and other experts — carries this comment by dougr. I recommend you read it.

Essentially, there are signs that the well pipes below the Blow Out Preventer (BOP) may be being eroded to the point where the seabed collapses and the entire oil reserve is emptied into the ocean.

All the actions and few tid bits of information all lead to one inescapable conclusion. The well pipes below the sea floor are broken and leaking. Now you have some real data of how BP's actions are evidence of that, as well as some murky statement from "BP officials" confirming the same. ... It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot...the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?...the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle?...it doesn't leak so bad, you close the nozzle?...it leaks real bad,
same dynamics. It is why they sawed the riser off...or tried to anyway...but they clipped it off, to relieve pressure on the leaks "down hole". I'm sure there was a bit of panic time after they crimp/pinched off the large riser pipe and the Diamond wire saw got stuck and failed...because that crimp diverted pressure and flow to the rupture down below.

A down hole leak is dangerous and damaging for several reasons.
There will be erosion throughout the entire beat up, beat on and beat down remainder of the "system" including that inaccessible leak. The same erosion I spoke about in the first post is still present and has never stopped, cannot be stopped, is impossible to stop and will always be present in and acting on anything that is left which has crude oil "Product" rushing through it. There are abrasives still present, swirling flow will create hot spots of wear and this erosion is relentless and will always be present until eventually it wears away enough material to break it's way out. It will slowly eat the bop away especially at the now pinched off riser head and it will flow more and more. Perhaps BP can outrun or keep up with that out flow with various suckage methods for a period of time, but eventually the well will win that race, just how long that race will be?...no one really knows....However now?...there are other problems that a down hole leak will and must produce that will compound this already bad situation.

This down hole leak will undermine the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area. It also weakens the only thing holding up the massive Blow Out Preventer's immense bulk of 450 tons. In fact?...we are beginning to the results of the well's total integrity beginning to fail due to the undermining being caused by the leaking well bore.

The first layer of the sea floor in the gulf is mostly lose material of sand and silt. It doesn't hold up anything and isn't meant to, what holds the entire subsea system of the Bop in place is the well itself. The very large steel connectors of the initial well head "spud" stabbed in to the sea floor. The Bop literally sits on top of the pipe and never touches the sea bed, it wouldn't do anything in way of support if it did. After several tens of feet the seabed does begin to support the well connection laterally (side to side) you couldn't put a 450 ton piece of machinery on top of a 100' tall pipe "in the air" and subject it to the side loads caused by the ocean currents and expect it not to bend over...unless that pipe was very much larger than the machine itself, which you all can see it is not. The well's piping in comparison is actually very much smaller than the Blow Out Preventer and strong as it may be, it relies on some support from the seabed to function and not literally fall over...and it is now showing signs of doing just that....falling over.

If you have been watching the live feed cams you may have noticed that some of the ROVs are using an inclinometer...and inclinometer is an instrument that measures "Incline" or tilt. The BOP is not supposed to be tilting...and after the riser clip off operation it has begun to...

... What is likely to happen now?

Well...none of what is likely to happen is good, in fact...it's about as bad as it gets. I am convinced the erosion and compromising of the entire system is accelerating and attacking more key structural areas of the well, the blow out preventer and surrounding strata holding it all up and together. This is evidenced by the tilt of the blow out preventer and the erosion which has exposed the well head connection. What eventually will happen is that the blow out preventer will literally tip over if they do not run supports to it as the currents push on it. I suspect they will run those supports as cables tied to anchors very soon, if they don't, they are inviting disaster that much sooner.

Eventually even that will be futile as the well casings cannot support the weight of the massive system above with out the cement bond to the earth and that bond is being eroded away. When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP will collapse the well. If and when you begin to see oil and gas coming up around the well area from under the BOP? or the area around the well head connection and casing sinking more and more rapidly? ...it won't be too long after that the entire system fails. BP must be aware of this, they are mapping the sea floor sonically and that is not a mere exercise. Our Gov't must be well aware too, they just are not telling us.

All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit...after that, it goes into the realm of "the worst things you can think of" The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out...as I said...all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn't any "cap dome" or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?....is the only real chance we have left to stop it all.

It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo.

We are not even 2 months into it, barely half way by even optimistic estimates. The damage done by the leaked oil now is virtually immeasurable already and it will not get better, it can only get worse. No matter how much they can collect, there will still be thousands and thousands of gallons leaking out every minute, every hour of every day. We have 2 months left before the relief wells are even near in position and set up to take a kill shot and that is being optimistic as I said.

Over the next 2 months the mechanical situation also cannot improve, it can only get worse, getting better is an impossibility. While they may make some gains on collecting the leaked oil, the structural situation cannot heal itself. It will continue to erode and flow out more oil and eventually the inevitable collapse which cannot be stopped will happen. It is only a simple matter of who can "get there first"...us or the well.

... We need to prepare for the possibility of this blow out sending more oil into the gulf per week then what we already have now, because that is what a collapse of the system will cause. All the collection efforts that have captured oil will be erased in short order. The magnitude of this disaster will increase exponentially by the time we can do anything to halt it and our odds of actually even being able to halt it will go down.

Also carried by Mother Jones. Via @warrenellis and @stevesilberman.

BP is a multinational company, 49% non-British (Edit: 39% owned by Americans), having been privatised by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Today's $20 billion fund Obama has made BP put aside for reparations plus future fines are beginning to look like chump change for an industry that may have poisoned irreparably the world's oceans.

Will criminal charges be brought?
Porn, cancer, drugs and gifts at the Minerals Management Service.
Collapsing seabed a possibility.

UPDATE: Friday 18th June 2010. "Scientists Warn Gulf Of Mexico Sea Floor Fractured Beyond Repair"

A dire report circulating in the Kremlin today that was prepared for Prime Minister Putin by Anatoly Sagalevich of Russia's Shirshov Institute of Oceanology warns that the Gulf of Mexico sea floor has been fractured “beyond all repair” and our World should begin preparing for an ecological disaster “beyond comprehension” unless “extraordinary measures” are undertaken to stop the massive flow of oil into our Planet’s eleventh largest body of water.

According to Sagalevich’s report, the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico is not just coming from the 22 inch well bore site being shown on American television, but from at least 18 other sites on the “fractured seafloor” with the largest being nearly 11 kilometers (7 miles) from where the Deepwater Horizon sank and is spewing into these precious waters an estimated 2 million gallons of oil a day.

Interesting to note in this report is Sagalevich stating that he and the other Russian scientists were required by the United States to sign documents forbidding them to report their findings to either the American public or media, and which they had to do in order to legally operate in US territorial waters.

As a prominent oil-industry insider, and one of the World's leading experts on peak oil, Simmons further warns that the US has only two options, “let the well run dry (taking 30 years, and probably ruining the Atlantic ocean) or nuking the well.”

UPDATE 2: Sunday 4th July 2010. Former BP chief Lord Browne's former lover is now assisting the American lawyer prosecuting BP and alleging that it is Browne's cost-cutting measures that left to such disasters as the Texan oil explosion in 2005 and the unstoppable Gulf of Mexico oil gusher. He is also the person brought in by David Cameron to lead the attack on the poor and make cuts of nearly £7 billion. I hope this doesn't descend into an orgy or homophobia and that everyone remembers Browne is a scumbag because of his class interest and not his sexuality.

BP Oil Spill Top Kill Fails: will criminal charges be brought?

We should never have laughed at that Mayan prophecy about the world ending in 2012. We're on course to make it just in time.

As I updated yesterday, I was watching the live oil spill feed in the morning and noticed that the leak was belching black again, rather than the dense brown mud we'd seen over the last two days. This was bad. In the evening (GMT) the media confirmed that the Top Kill effort had failed and even the junk shot wasn't working.

We now have vast dead zones being created as a result of the continuing leak. The entire food chain could be devastated. The blue fin tuna spawning ground is just south of the spill so an already distressed species may become extinct.

Everything is compounded by the use of 800,000 gallons of Corexit 9527 which is even more toxic than the oil. The main purpose of this poison appears to be cosmetic as it makes it look better. One marine toxicologist warned: "That ruptures red blood cells and causes fish to bleed. With 800,000 gallons of this, we can only imagine the death that will be caused."

BP has been withholding information and has given figures that massively underestimate the volume of oil being released, surprise, surprise, possibly in anticipation of legal action and liability to come. BP is lobbying for a Houston-based oil industry-friendly judge to hear the plethora of spill cases mounting up.

We're now hearing about all the other spills and negligence by BP, such as with their other spill this week, in Alaska. There's been one in Singapore, and of course, the ongoing hellhole created by Shell in Nigeria.

Bush and Cheney favourite, Halliburton, is in the frame for the inferior cement that was supposed to hold back the oil.

This affects us here. In the two months it will take for BP to drill the relief wells, the oil and chemicals will have been picked up by the same Atlantic currents that bring the warm waters of the Gulf to Britain and Ireland, making us unusually warm for our northerly latitude, and will be headed here. Then the rest of the West coast of Europe gets it. Readers of this blog know how much I love Cornwall. I'm already picturing it dead and toxic.

Bankers and oil men. Dontcha just love 'em?

A new Google Earth Map Tool lets you compare the size of the spill with your area. I just typed in London and the slick covers almost the whole of the south east of England.

UPDATE: 7th June ""Are you fucking happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen." New eyewitness accounts via @MacMcLelland.

UPDATE 2: Rustbelt Radical has this left overview of BP and the rape of the Earth: Expropriate the Expropriators.

BP Oil Spill Top Kill Fails: will criminal charges be brought?

We should never have laughed at that Mayan prophecy about the world ending in 2012. We're on course to make it just in time.

As I updated yesterday, I was watching the live oil spill feed in the morning and noticed that the leak was belching black again, rather than the dense brown mud we'd seen over the last two days. This was bad. In the evening (GMT) the media confirmed that the Top Kill effort had failed and even the junk shot wasn't working.

We now have vast dead zones being created as a result of the continuing leak. The entire food chain could be devastated. The blue fin tuna spawning ground is just south of the spill so an already distressed species may become extinct.

Everything is compounded by the use of 800,000 gallons of Corexit 9527 which is even more toxic than the oil. The main purpose of this poison appears to be cosmetic as it makes it look better. One marine toxicologist warned: "That ruptures red blood cells and causes fish to bleed. With 800,000 gallons of this, we can only imagine the death that will be caused."

BP has been withholding information and has given figures that massively underestimate the volume of oil being released, surprise, surprise, possibly in anticipation of legal action and liability to come. BP is lobbying for a Houston-based oil industry-friendly judge to hear the plethora of spill cases mounting up.

We're now hearing about all the other spills and negligence by BP, such as with their other spill this week, in Alaska. There's been one in Singapore, and of course, the ongoing hellhole created by Shell in Nigeria.

Bush and Cheney favourite, Halliburton, is in the frame for the inferior cement that was supposed to hold back the oil.

This affects us here. In the two months it will take for BP to drill the relief wells, the oil and chemicals will have been picked up by the same Atlantic currents that bring the warm waters of the Gulf to Britain and Ireland, making us unusually warm for our northerly latitude, and will be headed here. Then the rest of the West coast of Europe gets it. Readers of this blog know how much I love Cornwall. I'm already picturing it dead and toxic.

Bankers and oil men. Dontcha just love 'em?

A new Google Earth Map Tool lets you compare the size of the spill with your area. I just typed in London and the slick covers almost the whole of the south east of England.

UPDATE: 7th June ""Are you fucking happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen." New eyewitness accounts via @MacMcLelland.

UPDATE 2: Rustbelt Radical has this left overview of BP and the rape of the Earth: Expropriate the Expropriators.

Porn, Cancer, Drugs and Gifts: Oil Spill Top Kill Guesswork Under Way

Gulf Oil Tracker spillcam PBS.com If it's not working, try the BP website live feed

So what do we know so far about attempts to halt the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, now estimated at covering 16,000 square miles? While BP tries choking the broken riser with mud in an increasingly desperate series of measures — a "Top Kill" method never attempted at these depths which risks blowing the rupture wide open — corruption surrounding the oil industry emerges faster than the gusher of oil.

The 600,000 of gallons of toxic dispersant chemicals dumped in the sea has a largely cosmetic effect, breaking up the oil and making it harder to capture, making a nightmare situation even worse.

Corexit is carcinogenic, mutagenic, and highly toxic, and scientists are concerned about its effect on marine life. Corexit is banned in Great Britain.

The chemical company, Nalco, has a former BP executive on its board.

"Why would you use something that is much more toxic and much less effective, other than you have a corporate relationship with the manufacturer?" asked Jerrold Nadler, a Democratic congressman from New York told a hearing on Wednesday

US oil spill clean-up boats have been recalled as crew fall ill. Something is certainly toxic, and not just the relationship between government and oil companies.

We now know that government workers at the Minerals Management Service who dealt with the gulf oil industry, and whose job it was to inspect offshore drilling and rigs, accepted gifts, took drugs on the job and spent their work time slavering over porn. Meanwhile, Rick Steiner, a fierce critic of the oil industry, lost his grant and was elbowed out from his university.

Steiner observes that the BP plan is almost 600 pages largely consisting of lists, phone numbers and blank forms. "Incredibly, this voluminous document never once discusses how to stop a deep water blowout even though BP has significant deep water operations in the Gulf," he said.

Mary Kendall, acting inspector general at the department of the interior, told a congressional committee yesterday that there were problems with "gift acceptance, fraternising with industry and pornography" at the agency. She suggested there was a problem with the closeness of ties between watchdogs and industry executives: "The individuals involved in the fraternising and gift exchange – both government and industry – have often known one another since childhood."

BP oil spillers face no charges while peaceful Greenpeace protesters have been charged with felony.

The Obama government is still issuing environmental waivers. This despite the fact they already issued the BP permit for the Gulf of Mexico knowing they would be drilling on a tectonic plate with known earthquake activity — there was an underwater earthquake in 2006. Today there's talk of a well overdue oil moratorium. And, at last, a drive to stop Shell drilling in the Arctic.

As with any gripping action drama script, there's a time-factor involved and a ticking clock before something more catastrophic occurs. The escaping oil is eroding the seabed and has probably entirely eaten away the riser casing by now. This weakens the sea bed over the world's second largest oil reserve. This means not only more leaks, but if an entire chunk of seabed collapses, we get the mother of all tsunami and the release of a helluva lot more oil into our oceans. An extinction event if ever there was one. If Top Kill fails, BP's last remaining options are a junk shot (so-called because the idea is junk), where they throw everything they can get their hands on including golf balls and old tyres, calling Superman, and prayer. At the moment, the last two have the edge.

National Geographic: What happens if we can't stop the leak? Gulf oil leaks could go on for years until the reservoir is dry.

UPDATE: 19:00 Top Kill slowing down the leak.
UPDATE 2: Saturday 29 May. Top Kill fails. I noticed around 11am GMT that the leak was gushing black again, and a bit later both black and brown (dense mud). 7pm, just saw the NY Times has just confirmed it's failed.

At a Gulf Aid event, where locals were angry that the state of Louisiana got so little from the massively profitable oil industry in their own area, the BP man declared that the company had contributed $15 million towards encouraging tourism while pledging $500 million over ten years to study the impact of the oil spill on the environment. When you consider that BP makes $66 million per day, you realise how insulting this is. There should surely be a principle that the people whose resources are being exploited should share in any bounty. Instead, Louisiana's education system is second from bottom in the US.

Good source of oil spill news at The Oil Drum
Philppe Cousteau Jr video: Scenes under the sea — ‘This Is a Nightmare… a Nightmare’
Hat Tip Their Vodka

Has BP oil spill seabed collapsed?

Not sure how reliable this is as I can't find anything in the newspapers yet, but it looks as if the seabed at the BP oil-spill has collapsed following a series of explosions, resulting in massive escape of oil.

Found the video screen-grab above at Harmony Central where there's an interesting debate. Speed Ball Blues writes : "Update: Here's a screen grab showing the new hole in the seabed. That's not the riser end from a new angle. This was grabbed while the ROV on the riser end was panning around. The BOP is over 600 feet away, so it is not that, either."

Does this mean an entire oil reserve is being released into the sea?

The BP live webcam has gone offline.

God help this planet if it's true.

Previously: BP incompetence, criticism of BP oil spill "UnAmercian", and volcano of oil unstoppable.

More pictures of seabed collapse

Heavy advanced technical debate as to what went wrong at Drilling Ahead, oil and gas professionals. The bits I can understand are fascinating.

BP Deepwater is the second largest oil deposit in the world, Daily Kos.

Gulf of Mexico: BP have been drilling on a tectonic plate prone to volcanic activity. More here.

Disturbing pictures of the effects of the oil as it reaches land.

Casing finally worn through 300 ft below seabed with oil finding new exits. This is bad.

Deepwater Horizon Response Unified Command

Obama government still issuing environmental waivers.

NOAA Gulf Spill Restoration website.

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill - History & Analysis

USGS Oil Spill Response

"Volcano of oil" in Gulf may be unstoppable

The breached pipe in the video is 20 inches in diameter

The Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill off the Louisiana coast is now being described as a "volcano of oil" under such high pressure at these depths that it may be impossible to stop.

According to one reading of the situation:

Reports about the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill have been largely underestimated, according to commentators, including Paul Noel, a Software Engineer for the U.S. Army at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. He believes that the pocket of oil that's been hit is so powerful and under so much pressure that it may be virtually impossible to contain it. ...Even the word "spill" is incorrect. This isn't some ship of oil that spilled into the ocean -- it's a "volcano" of oil spewing from the belly of Mother Earth herself. It's under extremely high pressure, it's spewing a huge volume of oil directly into the ocean, and there so far seems to be no human-engineered way of stopping it (short of setting off an underground nuclear bomb near the well site).

This is potentially catastrophic on a global level as the oil is swept beyond the Gulf and into Atlantic currents which will take it around the world, devastating fishstocks and the communities dependent on them, animal and human.

As I wrote last week, it looks as if they may have been drilling deeper than the 20,000 feet allowed by the government. Estimates of the spill may have been vastly underestimated with the real tally being closer to a massive 25,000 barrels per day, five times the official figure. (EDIT: Some are now saying 70,000 barrels a day — one Exxon Valdez every four days.)

It also looks as if doubts about the safety of the drill-equipment were brushed aside with reports that all three companies responsible, "ignored tests in the hours before the 20 April explosion that indicated faulty safety equipment."

No other facilities seem to have been shut down pending investigation. Quelle surprise.

Meanwhile, House Republicans have been holding an "oil and gas" breakfast fundraiser for Texas representative Kevin Brady who touchingly defends the safety of the industry.

More here. And a whole smorgasbord of oil spill horror from the Huffington Post.

When Rosa Luxemburg said the choice for us would be between socialism and barbarism, she wasn't kidding.

Hat tip Gavin Martin. Thanks to Ollie for the video link. Let's hope there's a miracle and they close it off soon.

UPDATE: Deepwater Horizon oil rig didn't have necessary permit for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

UPDATE 2: 17th June 2010. The well pipes below the Blow Out Preventer (BOP) may be being eroded to the point where the seabed collapses and the entire oil reserve is emptied into the ocean — Mother Jones and The Oil Drum.

"Volcano of oil" in Gulf may be unstoppable

The breached pipe in the video is 20 inches in diameter

The Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill off the Louisiana coast is now being described as a "volcano of oil" under such high pressure at these depths that it may be impossible to stop.

According to one reading of the situation:

Reports about the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill have been largely underestimated, according to commentators, including Paul Noel, a Software Engineer for the U.S. Army at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. He believes that the pocket of oil that's been hit is so powerful and under so much pressure that it may be virtually impossible to contain it. ...Even the word "spill" is incorrect. This isn't some ship of oil that spilled into the ocean -- it's a "volcano" of oil spewing from the belly of Mother Earth herself. It's under extremely high pressure, it's spewing a huge volume of oil directly into the ocean, and there so far seems to be no human-engineered way of stopping it (short of setting off an underground nuclear bomb near the well site).

This is potentially catastrophic on a global level as the oil is swept beyond the Gulf and into Atlantic currents which will take it around the world, devastating fishstocks and the communities dependent on them, animal and human.

As I wrote last week, it looks as if they may have been drilling deeper than the 20,000 feet allowed by the government. Estimates of the spill may have been vastly underestimated with the real tally being closer to a massive 25,000 barrels per day, five times the official figure. (EDIT: Some are now saying 70,000 barrels a day — one Exxon Valdez every four days.)

It also looks as if doubts about the safety of the drill-equipment were brushed aside with reports that all three companies responsible, "ignored tests in the hours before the 20 April explosion that indicated faulty safety equipment."

No other facilities seem to have been shut down pending investigation. Quelle surprise.

Meanwhile, House Republicans have been holding an "oil and gas" breakfast fundraiser for Texas representative Kevin Brady who touchingly defends the safety of the industry.

More here. And a whole smorgasbord of oil spill horror from the Huffington Post.

When Rosa Luxemburg said the choice for us would be between socialism and barbarism, she wasn't kidding.

Hat tip Gavin Martin. Thanks to Ollie for the video link. Let's hope there's a miracle and they close it off soon.

UPDATE: Deepwater Horizon oil rig didn't have necessary permit for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

UPDATE 2: 17th June 2010. The well pipes below the Blow Out Preventer (BOP) may be being eroded to the point where the seabed collapses and the entire oil reserve is emptied into the ocean — Mother Jones and The Oil Drum.

Sinophobia and Copenhagen: open letter to the Guardian's Mark Lynas

PREVIOUSLY: The story so far ... One moment we were told there was a scandal brewing with the leaking of the 'Danish Text', a stitch-up of the poor nations by the wealthy, with the US and Britain among those implicated (8th Dec 2009 onwards), the next moment, this happened.

The Copenhagen blame game continues with the media reaching a hysterical pitch in their attempts to demonise China over the disappointing results at the climate change summit.

The Guardian publishes another lurid smear, this time by someone called Mark Lynas and titled: "How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room"
Starring Mark Lynas as Sax Rohmer which, I guess, makes me Fu Manchu. (I recommend you read all the comments on the Guardian thread.)

UPDATE Wednesday 23rd December : Comment is free but only if you agree. The Guardian removed my comment below from their thread, posted 22nd December 9.23pm. Not only mine, but I notice some other very good posts robustly rebutting Lynas's assertions and errors have been removed. Now I'm BANNED

Dear Mark,

So the cold war is alive and well.

Western spin is really pulling out all the stops, perhaps because we are onto you as the various blogs and forums show.

if anything, China got strong-armed into signing a weak deal when it should have held out as Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and others have said.

The US and the rich nations use up almost all the carbon allowance in the atmosphere over the past 160 years, the US dithers over ten years of Bush, they refuse to ratify Kyoto, the Danish summit chair has to resign when she's caught fast-tracking the rich nations' deal, the West fail in their Kyoto pledges, Canada rips up its Kyoto deal and proceeds with exploiting its huge reserves of dirty oil, the US will only reduce emissions by 4% against the 1990 base year and not the 17% you describe as "serious cuts", while China makes real strides in green technology, and so on.

But it is all China's fault.

Hillary Clinton bursts into the conference demanding China eat merde when the US didn't even have anything to offer. They knew that the terms of the "verification" they demanded was an exercise in humiliation and China would not stand for it. The US can't get anything meaningful past their senate, which includes some "wholly owned subsidiaries of the energy industry" (Monbiot) and resorts to sleight of hand.

But China is the villain.

As for Merkel, she is a massive hypocrite when you look at what her government's been doing.

Even John Prescott pointed out that we've had our industrial revolution yet the poor countries have to halt in their tracks and people live on an average of $2 per day. [Update: see Prescott's take here.]

But according to you China twirls its moustache and strokes its cat as it eats the planet for breakfast.

What other country has an entire city using solar powered appliances? Who else has planted such huge tracts of forest while loggers tear down the rest? China aims for 15% of its energy from renewables, it has revolutionised wind-turbines, makes a key component of electric car batteries, and so on. We in the UK can't even meet our Kyoto promise.

The world says it'll pay $100 billion into the global kitty. Yet how much does the US spend each year on wars? Something like a million dollars a day on petrol alone.

This game of smoke and mirrors is shameful. Dividing the world into angel and devil does not help, neither does throwing a hissy-fit when China baulks at signing the rich nations' deal which condemns the poor nations to a slumdog future. At an early stage in its industrial development China is moving onto the right track. By all means criticise them when they screw up but give them credit for what they're getting right. The future of the planet is too important for these political football games.

Seasons greetings, although seasons may soon be a thing of the past if the rich nations get their own way,

Anna

Practically a lone voice in the Guardian, George Monbiot writes:

Obama went behind the backs of the UN and most of its member states and assembled a coalition of the willing to strike a deal that outraged the rest of the world. This was then presented to poorer nations without negotiation: either they signed it or they lost the adaptation funds required to help them survive the first few decades of climate breakdown. ... Pushing a strong climate programme through the Senate, many of whose members are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the energy industry, would have been the political battle of his life. Yet again, the absence of effective campaign finance reform in the US makes global progress almost impossible.

Almost forgot, Naomi Klein: Copenhagen's failure belongs to Obama

UPDATE 2: A recent comment (not mine) at the above Guardian CIF thread:

The Guardian writer was trying to confuse the public by omitting the fact that the EU couldn't even agree to its binding emission cut targets even by 2020 and they couldn't fill that blank. He also omitted the fact that the US also refused to have its emission cut target by 2020 included in the draft. An 80% cut by 2050 on a global scale obviously would have painted a big panckage in the sky. When the rich countries have not honored their pledges to the Kyoto Protocol to cut their emissions and they couldn't set binding short-term emission targets, how do we expect them to honor a long-term emission cut targets by 2050? In fact, Yvo de Boer in his last press conference said that the commitments to cut GHG emission by individual developing nations combined are far larger than those of the developed countries combined.
They want 80% cut by 2050 written into the accord so they could pressure the developing nations, because after all, the developing nations are the ones whose emissions will have to grow and peak as the year 2050 gets closer.
Above all, the writer didn't even tell how the US and other rich nations were pretty successful in detrailing and deviating the negotiations over the Long-term Cooperative Action and amendments to the Kyoto Protocol, especially the Kyoto Protocol, the two documents that have legal binding over the rich countries. The writer didn't even have the courage to mention the two most important documents, upon which any political declaration should have been based on.
It is the rich countries, the US, particularly, which has hijacked the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. That much should be clear to us all.

Wonder how long that'll stay posted.

The real reason Copenhagen failed.

UPDATE 3: AAARGH! Just read at a debate here that I have a typo. The international kitty is, of course $100 BILLION not million. Apologies. And thanks to the peeps at www.metafilter.com/87766/General-Tsos-Climate

UPDATE 4 (sigh!): A very clear article on what went wrong at Copenhagen.

"But what was this ‘deal’ that these obstinate rascals obstructed? “A 50% reduction in emissions by 2050 and an 80% reduction by the developed countries,” laments Mr Milliband. “Both were vetoed by China.” What he refers to of course is none other than the infamous Danish Text. But what he carefully omits from his account is the reason why this deal was ‘obstructed’.

"The Danish Text, which had been secretly put together by the US, the UK and Denmark, revealed the true aim of the rich countries in Copenhagen. There was to be a gesture towards cutting emissions, sure there was… on condition that the natural order and balance of the world remains unaffected, that the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor, that growth and accumulation continue unhindered. The proposal would have sidelined the UN by handing power and control to the rich countries themselves; it would have entrenched global inequality by allowing the rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes of CO2 per capita while granting developing countries only 1.44 tonnes; it would have handed control of climate change finance to the World Bank; it would have locked the world into a disastrous system of carbon trading; it would have attached tight strings to any financial aid; and it would have abandoned any interim 2020 targets. All in all, the ‘deal’ would have condemned the world, and the South in particular, to a climate catastrophe of unimaginable horror."

Big thanks to Harpymarx, Socialist Unity, Liberal Conspiracy and Sunny at Pickled Politics.

The BBC says

John Prescott on China at Copenhagen

Martin Khor in the Guardian on the Copenhagen failure

George Monbiot on what the US has to offer

Global Comment with something useful to say on sinophobic hypocrisy

Madam Miaow banned in the Guardian, Comment is Free. Free speech, much? Here's another stunt they pulled when I was shortlisted for the 2010 Orwell Prize — read the thread.

Anna Chen on BBC World TV on the opening day and the final day of the Copenhagen summit

Ed Miliband accuses China.

Guardian admits China's green plans leave US red-faced.

March 2012 and the Guardian acknowledges huge investment in renewables.

NOTABLE CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE (CCS) PROJECTS IN CHINA

China, Copenhagen and climate change

Monday sees the start of the Copenhagen climate conference, marking the end of a two-year period which aims to see a far-reaching and legally binding global agreement on how to combat climate change.

China is widely regarded as the Big Bad in this scenario, called “the world's biggest polluter”, and yet the West has been belching out carbon emissions for 160 years with no serious sign of abatement. The US is still the biggest polluter per capita with Americans still consuming a huge proportion of the world’s resources. I don’t know whether the figure of one American kid consuming the same as 100 Bangladeshi children still holds true, but the nation that wants gas at ten cents a gallon and persists in its divine right to drive Humvees is telling China to shut the fridge door.

That is not to say that China isn’t storing up some massive problems for itself if things stay the same. When I was taken around China with my family in the 1970s, everyone rode bicycles and the air of the cities was pristine. Now it’s so bad that one Chinese filmmaker was telling me that she had to get out of Shanghai after three weeks because her lungs were packing up.

But, no, China is whipping boy for the failures of the developed world to sort out the mess they made. Never mind that one of the G8 group of industrialized nations is doing its best to sink any agreement. Canada is currently sitting on the planet’s second largest oil reserves which it plans to release into the markets and the atmosphere, and is the first Kyoto signatory to renege on the deal. Also implicated in these Canadian plans are Shell, BP and RBS. Our RBS.

In contrast, Chinese President Hu Jintao signaled a change in policy in September, promising a "notable" decrease in the carbon intensity of China's economy by 2020.

"At stake in the fight against climate change are the common interests of the entire world," Hu said. "Out of a sense of responsibility to its own people and people across the world, China fully appreciates the importance and urgency of addressing climate change."

Hu added that his country would plant forests across an area the size of Norway, and generate 15% of its energy needs from renewables within a decade.

China hasn’t given detailed figures as to how this will be achieved and I trust that environmentalists within and without will keep up the pressure until it does. I am, however, optimistic that China will end up leading the world in renewables technology if only for the reason that this is going to be a major global industry and fortunes stand to be made.

China has introduced a whole slew of newly released renewable energy and clean technology regulations, while all the West can come up with are delusional carbon market exchanges where rich nations buy carbon allowances from poor nations. Over five million people in the city of Dezhou, Shandong, use electric appliances powered by solar energy.

Each Chinese household will be expected to pay the annual equivalent of $64 to contribute towards the $30 billion dollars per year China needs to invest to meet its climate aims.

Let’s hope they succeed where we’ve failed. If not, China will have let us all down and helped finish the global destruction we started 160 years ago with the industrial revolution.

Ultimately, production based on need not greed is the only way out.

UK flood map here

Babeuf has just sent me the Wikipedia list of countries by carbon emissions per capita showing that Qatar is number 1, the US is number 9, and China is number 96.

UPDATE: George Monbiot on the climate change deniers.

Madam Miaow (Anna Chen) appears on BBC World Service TV tomorrow (Monday 7th December 2009) to discuss Copenhagen on "World Have Your Say" at 15:30-16:00. Also on World Service radio later in the evening. Can't watch it live in theUK but the BBC will be putting it on YouTube in a few hours, linked at worldhaveyoursay.com. The radio can be listened to on BBC iPlayer.

Sinophobia and the media following Copenhagen

Madam Miaow banned in the Guardian, Comment is Free. But speech isn't.