Sir Burton's Blog: The current Gulf of Mexico Mega-Disaster

Excerpt From: Sir Burton's Blog

Anatomy of oil spill / dispersant in the Gulf of Mexico

June 26, 2010

"Several of my readers have asked for my take on the current Gulf of Mexico mega-disaster, so though I haven’t full access to my usual research resources at the moment, I’ll try to give you a summary of my conclusions about this whole horrible fiasco. I’ve been following it more or less since day one, as I had a very bad feeling from the start – this has been justified, much to my sadness, over the last few weeks. I’ve talked to people in the oil industry and done my usual hunting around the net. I’ll put some links and sources at the end of the article, not throughout the text as I usually do, to make things clearer – there is a lot of info to digest to get a clear picture. I will add links later as time permits, so come back and check for developments over the next days and weeks.

"Deep sea drilling into the earth’s crust is a relatively new approach to the acquisition of the black gold that has been used for so long by our financial oligarchy to maintain their stranglehold on mankind’s energy use. Pioneered by Russian energy consortiums, who had little choice on a geo-political level but to find a way to exploit such hazardous sources to maintain their energy independence, western multinationals have been quick to use these new technologies, and the search for access points around the planet for deep oil reserves has accelerated worldwide since the Falklands war. Over the last few years, wells have been opened up around the planet that were previously inaccessible because, quite simply, the technology was just not available to go so deep until recently. The main problem with this, admitted by many oilmen and concerned scientists, is that although the technologies to access the oil have been perfected somewhat, our know-how is totally insufficient when it comes to the security and control of these wells if something goes terribly wrong. The forces at play in the depths of these wells surpass all the capabilities of our current technologies if the need occurs to actually contain them when something goes very wrong and the basic fail-safes, well.. fail! The pressures are just too high for any human technology to contain once they get out of hand. The Russians have in the past had to resort several times to nuclear weapons to vitrify wellheads of deep wells that escaped from their control. Luckily for them the wells they were sealing were mostly on dry land in optimal conditions…"

Over a million tons of Corexit

"In fact the one they use the most – the infamous Corexit – is banned in most places because it is a known neuro-toxin that is lethal to all life in concentrations just over 2 parts per million. Since they have dumped over a million tons of this disgusting stuff on the – already highly toxic – crude oil to force it down into deep water away from prying cameras, they have only contributed to make a huge toxic soup where nothing can survive except for petroleum-eating bacteria that also consume all the surrounding oxygen. So each of these “underwater oil plumes” the scientists are worried about is in effect a huge underwater anaerobic toxic death-cloud, slowly being dragged by underwater currents towards the atlantic and the gulf stream, killing absolutely everything in their path. Numerous sailors and fishermen have fallen violently sick just sailing over these plumes. Most haven’t recovered weeks later. Shoreline communities all around the gulf are in danger from toxic emanations from these poisonous substances. Children and adults are succumbing to rashes, respiratory ailments, and other complications that will get more serious as time goes by unless they evacuate the coast. There are reports of oil in the rain inland – and the rain smells very unpleasant – hardly surprising, really… "

Read the rest of the story and join the discussion here.