So how about that oil ...

[Quiksilver]

Anyone here from the gulf coast?

 

[Sir Psycho Sexy]

Every time I read or see it on the news im thankful I dont live on the Gulf. It will eventually affect me but at least not directly.

They are saying it may not be stopped till August. What a disaster.

 

[Plinco]

How Oil Breaks Down in Water - Deepwater Cleanup Efforts - Popularmechanics.com

Initiatives to scrub the Gulf of oil are moving forward. One method includes spraying chemicals to break up and sink globs of oil before the slick spreads to the shorelines—but using chemicals to clean up the ocean is controversial because the environmental consequences are unknown. The sea has its own way of handling the problem, but researchers worry that the water's processes won't act fast enough to save coastal shores from damage. Of course, science informs the debate. Here's what happens on a molecular level when oil hits ocean water.

As soon as oil hits water, the ocean begins its deconstruction. In fact, the marine environment handles oil much like a human body handles alcohol: destroying, metabolizing and depositing the excessive compounds —in oil's case, hydrocarbons—then transforming the compounds into safer substances, says Stanislav Patin, chairman of the Aquatic Toxicology Committee under the Russian Academy of Sciences and international expert on marine pollution.

Here's how it breaks down.

In a 10-minute span after spilling into the sea, 300 gallons of oil can spread to a radius of 160 feet and create a slick a fourth of an inch deep. After that, how far and fast the oil spreads depends upon the water's surface tension—how much the molecules in the water are attracted to one another—and the oil's thickness.

The day after it enters the water, chemicals in the oil begin to transform, both at the water's surface and farther into the water column. Trace elements lurking in water can speed or slow the process while the sun fuels the breakdown, decomposing even the most complex of oil's components over time. The warmer the water temperature and the more sun exposure, the faster the oil breaks down.

During the first few days after a spill, between 20 to 40 percent of oil's mass turns into gases, and the slick loses most of its water-soluble hydrocarbons—what's left are the more viscous compounds that slow down the oil's spread across the water.

When components of crude oil evaporate and its lighter fractions dissolve or are chemically transformed, oil clumps form. These sticky masses are found in all types of water environments, in open and coastal waters and on beaches. They have an uneven shape and can measure tenths of inches to 4 inches in length. The oily masses serve as a base for developing bacteria and one-celled algae, while invertebrates such as crustaceans, resistant to the impact of oil, use them as shelter. These clumps can exist from months to years in enclosed seas and for years in the open ocean—eventually, they degrade.

But not all oil lives and dies at the surface. Between 10 and 30 percent of the oil is absorbed by sediments and suspended materials and deposited on the bottom of the sea. This generally occurs in coastal zones and shallow waters where water mixes readily and more particles float. Usually, oil drifts in the same direction as the wind, though storms and water turbulence can speed up the spread of the oil. This movement in turn can degrade parts of the oil into separate fragments that spread far away from the initial spill. As these fragments move further offshore and into deeper areas, sediment absorption becomes a much slower process. While sediments latch onto oil components, so do filter feeders and plankton. Planktonic organisms absorb the oil/water mix and dump it at the bottom of the ocean when they excrete other metabolites. Once at the bottom, though, the decomposition rate of the oil halts almost completely because of lack of oxygen, and heavy oil fragments can be preserved inside sediments for years.

From deep-sea sediment to bobbing clumps, oil quickly loses its original properties and breaks off into hydrocarbon components, with many different chemical compositions and existing in different forms. These forms can prove toxic to marine life, but after a time—with weathering, feasting micro-organisms and solar decomposition—the water self-purifies, as intermediate compounds gradually disappear and water and carbon dioxide reform.

To speed the process, researchers use oil dispersants, specialized chemical agents, to change the physical and chemical composition of oil. Basically, these chemicals work to mix oil and water better than normally possible so that the oil sinks deeper into the water column. Burying the oil a little deeper means that surface slicks won't float toward shorelines as readily. However, mixing these chemicals into water has long been a controversial process, as they have proved toxic to some marine organisms.

 

[Plinco]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/goldman-sachs-sold-250-million-of-bp-stock-before-spill.html

Firm’s stock sale nearly twice as large as any other institution; Represented 44 percent of total BP investment

John Byrne
Raw Story
Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The brokerage firm that’s faced the most scrutiny from regulators in the past year over the shorting of mortgage related securities seems to have had good timing when it came to something else: the stock of British oil giant BP.

According to regulatory filings, RawStory.com has found that Goldman Sachs sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman’s sales were the largest of any firm during that time. Goldman would have pocketed slightly more than $266 million if their holdings were sold at the average price of BP’s stock during the quarter.

If Goldman had sold these shares today, their investment would have lost 36 percent its value, or $96 million. The share sales represented 44 percent of Goldman’s holdings — meaning that Goldman’s remaining holdings have still lost tens of millions in value.

The sale and its size itself isn’t unusual for a large asset management firm. Wall Street brokerages routinely buy and sell huge blocks of shares for themselves and their clients. In light of a recent SEC lawsuit arguing that Goldman kept information about a product they sold from their clients, however, the stock sale may raise fresh concern among Goldman’s critics. Goldman is also a frequent target of liberals and journalists, including Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, who famously dubbed the firm a “vampire squid.”

Two calls placed to Goldman Sachs’ media office in New York Wednesday morning after US markets opened were not immediately returned, though Raw Story decided to publish the story quickly after the calls since the stock sale had been already noted online.
Others also sold stock

Other asset management firms also sold huge blocks of BP stock in the first quarter — but their sales were a fraction of Goldman’s. Wachovia, which is owned by Wells Fargo, sold 2,667,419 shares; UBS, the Swiss bank, sold 2,125,566 shares.

Goldman Sachs sold $250 million of BP stock before spill

Wachovia and UBS also sold much larger percentages of their BP stock, at 98 percently and 97 percent respectively.

Wachova parent Wells Fargo, however, bought 2.3 million shares in the quarter, largely discounting Wachovia’s sales.

Those reported buying BP’s stock included Wellington Management, a large asset firm, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

BP is struggling to cap a massive oil leak at one of its drill sites in the Gulf of Mexico. The firm’s myriad safety violations over the years have come to light in lieu of the Gulf disaster.

BP traded on average at $56.86 in the first quarter, according to GuruFocus, a site that monitors the major trading moves of prominent investors. A list of major institutions’ sales of BP stock are available at the market research website Morningstar.

It’s certainly unknown as to why the firms sold their holdings. In its analysis of the company in mid-March, Morningstar, the market research site, gave the company an average rating of three out of a possible five stars.

“BP’s valuation carries more uncertainty than ExxonMobil’s or Shell’s because the firm is less integrated, with more of its earnings coming from the [exploration and production] business than from potentially offsetting refining operations,” the site’s analyst wrote. “Like its peers, a sustained drop in oil and gas prices can hurt upstream earnings. Lower crude-oil feedstock costs could help refining margins, but refined product pricing lags could quickly swing refining profits to losses. BP’s global business faces potential disruptions caused by political risks, particularly with its heavy exposure to Russia. Disruptions caused by environmental and operational constraints could further limit earnings potential.”

The transnational oil company, like other energy giants, was hit with lower oil and gas prices in the past year after the price of oil surged in 2008.

“BP’s fourth quarter marked another quarter of year-over-year production gains, with a 3% increase thanks to new field startups,” Morningstar’s analyst wrote in another note, after BP turned in better than expected fourth quarter results in February. “BP reported fourth-quarter replacement cost profit of $3.4 billion, up 33% from year-ago earnings of $2.6 billion, as upstream earnings growth was more than enough to offset downstream weakness. For the full year, BP’s earnings of $14 billion were 45% below year-ago earnings of $26 billion, in part because of lower oil prices earlier in the year. We’re encouraged by BP’s sequential earnings gains as new projects and cost-cutting efforts drive upstream results.”

The SEC filed a civil lawsuit against Goldman Sachs and one of its vice presidents in April, asserting that the firm had committed fraud by misrepresenting a mortgage-investment product inherently designed to fail. The company helped a hedge fund trader create a mortgage investment that gained value as mortgage borrowers defaulted en masse.

In response, Goldman said the SEC’s charges were “completely unfounded in law and fact” and averred that it would “vigorously contest them and defend the firm and its reputation.”

The firm has also faced criticism over giant bonuses paid to staff amidst the US financial crisis. Goldman reduced the sizes of its staff bonuses this year to $16.9 billion, and said it would pay its chief executive $9 million, far less than the previous year.

Goldman also announced it would create a $500 million program to help small businesses. Critics noted that the figure represented just 3% of the bonus pool.

 

[Bluntmaster]

Every time I read or see it on the news im thankful I dont live on the Gulf. It will eventually affect me but at least not directly.

They are saying it may not be stopped till August. What a disaster.

August? They are saying it might be gushing until Christmas.

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc’s failure since April to plug a Gulf of Mexico oil leak has prompted forecasts the crude may continue gushing into December in what President Barack Obama has called the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history.

BP’s attempts so far to cap the well and plug the leak on the seabed a mile below the surface haven’t worked, while the start of the Atlantic hurricane season this week indicates storms in the Gulf may disrupt other efforts.

“The worst-case scenario is Christmas time,” Dan Pickering, the head of research at energy investor Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. in Houston, said. “This process is teaching us to be skeptical of deadlines.”

Ending the year with a still-gushing well would mean about 4 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, based on the government’s current estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels leaking a day. That would wipe out marine life deep at sea near the leak and elsewhere in the Gulf, and along hundreds of miles of coastline, said Harry Roberts, a professor of Coastal Studies at Louisiana State University.

So much crude pouring into the ocean may alter the chemistry of the sea, with unforeseeable results, said Mak Saito, an Associate Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

No Guarantee

BP, based in London, says it can’t guarantee the success of its attempt now underway to capture the flow of oil and divert it to a ship at the surface. Thad Allen, the U.S. government’s national commander for the incident, said operations may need to be suspended to allow for an evacuation ahead of a tropical storm or hurricane, during which oil would continue to gush into the Gulf.

The so-called relief well being drilled to intercept and plug the damaged well by mid-August might miss -- as other emergency wells have done before -- requiring more time to make a second, third or fourth try, Dave Rensink, President Elect of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, said.

Robert Wine, a spokesman for BP, declined to detail the company’s own worst-case scenario.

In its original exploration plan for the Macondo well about 40-miles from the Louisiana coast, BP estimated the worst-case scenario for an oil spill was 162,000 barrels of crude a day, according to a filing with the U.S. Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service.

Hurricane Season

BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward has more recently put the maximum potential leak rate at 60,000 barrels a day.

Wine reaffirmed BP’s estimate that it will take 90 days to stop the leak with a relief well, which would be the first half of August. He said an early, vigorous hurricane season could have an impact on the schedule.

The ultimate worst-case scenario is that the well is never successfully plugged, said Fred Aminzadeh, a research professor at the University of Southern California’s Center for Integrated Smart Oil Fields who previously worked for Unocal Corp. That would leave the well to flow for probably more than a decade, he said in a telephone interview.

More likely, the relief wells will eventually succeed, though it might take longer than the three months predicted by BP, he said.

Pemex Spill

It took Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, nine months to plug its Ixtoc I well after an explosion and fire in 1979.

The company’s first attempt with a relief well failed, so it had to drill a second. Eventually, more than 140 million gallons of crude spilled into the Gulf of Mexico -- the biggest offshore oil spill on record.

Last year, an explosion at a well off the Australian coast owned by Thailand’s national oil company, PTT Exploration & Production Pcl, required five attempts before it could be plugged by a relief well 10 weeks after the spill began.

BP has improved its odds by drilling two emergency wells at once. If a first attempt fails, it will have the second well ready to try again. The company is using techniques such as a larger well bore, raising its chances of hitting its mark, said Robert MacKenzie an analyst with FBR Capital Markets in Arlington, Virginia.

Plugging the well is another challenge even after BP successfully intersects it, Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor, said. BP has said it believes the well bore to be damaged, which could hamper efforts to fill it with mud and set a concrete plug, Bea said.

Evacuating Ships

While these efforts are underway, BP could face delays if a hurricane enters the Gulf, forcing an evacuation. BP says it is developing a mechanism to quickly disconnect the ship collecting oil from the well so that it can evacuate ahead of a storm. That would leave the well gushing oil, Bea said.

Ocean biologists are concerned the oil could linger in deep layers in the sea, generating oxygen-depleted “dead zones” that kill marine life.

Plumes of oil spinning off of the spill have been detected in two directions, and researchers suspect there are more.

“Clearly, oxygen levels are going to be decreased in the vicinity of the plume area, and it looks like it could be a very large plume area,” said Saito, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Birds, Oysters

The crude oil could enter a current that would draw it out of the Gulf and up along the East Coast of the U.S. all the way to Nantucket, Roberts, of Lousiana State University, said.

The American Bird Conservancy has identified 10 key regions on the Gulf Coast where birds could be harmed. If the oil is spread widely by a hurricane, there could be long-term damage to bird populations, the non-profit organization has said.

“What is difficult to measure is the loss of future generations of birds when birds fail to lay eggs or when eggs fail to hatch,” George Fenwick, the organization’s president, said in a statement on at-risk areas in the Gulf Coast.

Marine life may take decades to recover, wiping out businesses along the coastline that depend on the fishing and seafood industry.

Al Sunseri, who runs P&J Oyster Co., the oldest continually operated oyster dealer in the U.S., said he could end up out of business:

“This could be the end of our 134-year-old business,” he said. “I’ve been doing this 30 years. I have a son and I don’t know if he’ll be able to carry on this next generation.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aPfFTgqayIKY&pos=9

 

[squirrels]

This is our Chernobyl.

It's that bad. And if you read about the Chernobyl disaster, this rig explosion looks a lot like it...it's a comedy of errors combined with a lack of regulation/oversight.

I mean, you think about all those goons talking about what we were doing to the Earth with "climate change"...this tops that like 10x.

 

[f283000]

This has already been exposed as an inside job.

The movie "knowing" predicted this event

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmgeA3dr2uY

 

[j0n24]

I'm from the gulf....well maybe an hour away from the coast.

Almost everyone here doesnt really seem to care all that much anyways....blissful ignorance if you ask me.

But most of the people here are more interested in that whole drug cartel crap going on down here anyways.

I havent gone to the coast lately but I will go by next weekend to see if any authorites dont let people into the water yet.

 

[mpimpin]

Fairly close 1-2 hours away. Local seafood places are very worried and I've talked to one owner who wants a class action suit. They will just have to adapt. This is going to be happening for awhile and who knows what lasting damage

 

[EA Gold]

I'm completely oblivious of this oil spill and news, no concern whatsoever.

 

[Slickster]

People are seriously underestimating how devastating this will be to the entire planet.

This will be the year that we officially killed our oceans.

I'm afraid of what this means for our future.

 

[kingsam]

People are seriously underestimating how devastating this will be to the entire planet.

This will be the year that we officially killed our oceans.

I'm afraid of what this means for our future.

no
its already happened in lots of places with overfishing (think cod, tuna, sharks) and bleaching of coral reefs

it means no fish !

 

[gösta berling]

Live Oil Spill:
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_int...AGING/local_assets/html/Enterprise_ROV_2.html

 

[Bluntmaster]

Live Oil Spill:
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_int...AGING/local_assets/html/Enterprise_ROV_2.html

They said they capped it and were funneling some oil to the boat? Damn liars.

 

[EA Gold]

You have to look at the big picture.

How hard is it to plug a hole? Bp has been in business for several decades, they know exactly what to do in this type of situation. The reason they continue to let the oil flow out because they know the news will cover it non stop.

Which in turn will have a large amount of people angry and frustrated about the situation. People will then turn to the government for answers in which gives them more power over the people, to create taxes, policies, and more laws.

I've learned to forgive, and put these people in God's hands. He will provide true justice.

 

[horaholic]

You have issues.

 

[Dust 2 Dust]

Oil Spill = Illuminati's Covert War on America

May 24, 2010
Henry Makow, Ph.D.


We think of war in terms of missiles and tanks and bombs. But a far superior form of war is to disguise attacks as false flag terrorism like 9-11, natural disaster like Katrina or an accident like the April 20 BP oil spill.

This way the victim is not aware of his attacker, and cannot take countermeasures.

The parallels between the oil spill and Katrina are uncanny. In both cases, the American Gulf coast was attacked, and the Presidential response was deemed tardy and ineffective. In the case of Katrina, the levees were blown up 12 hours after the hurricane had passed.

The "tell" is the failure of the Obama Administration to declare a State of Emergency and take immediate action to stop the gusher. It is hard to believe that an Administration facing a national election in six months would sit on its hands while oil poured onto America's Gulf coast. Last week, Obama was announcing a commission to study the causes while failing to address the blow-out itself.

It is hard to believe that an industry which hosts hundreds of deep sea oil wells has not developed a contingency plan. Hard to believe that the richest and most technologically advanced country in the world appears helpless in the face of this disaster.

The optics for Obama are terrible. Even the Huffington Post, which is a Murdoch-sponsored Obama puff sheet could not hide its exasperation and impatience with Obama's tepid response.

But the Rothschilds treat Presidents like Kleenex -- use and throw away. Every President in my lifetime has left office in some kind of disgrace. The purpose is to demoralize Americans and make them lose faith in their government and democracy.

Who owns BP? The Rothschilds. Who owns Barack Obama? The Rothschilds. How hard would it be to stage this accident and then ensure a failed response?

The BP oil spill must be seen in the context of an ongoing covert war against America waged by the Illuminati, i.e. the Masonic Jewish central banking cartel led by the Rothschilds.

Concurrent with the BP blow-out, world financial markets are gyrating because European banks again are being bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of over a trillion dollars. The loans are to Greece, Portugal etc. but the creditors are the German and French banks owned by the Rothschild etc. whose stocks are soaring again. The loans were created out of thin air but the taxpayers will repay them with their freedom and prosperity.

Just six months ago, we were in the throes of a man-made swine flu pandemic that required mass inoculation.

Just 14-20 months ago, we were wrestling with the world financial crisis caused by the banks deliberately giving inflated mortgages to insolvent people.

Lest we forget, on Sept. 11 2001, the Illuminati attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and blamed it on "Muslim terrorists." How stupid do they think we are? Again, the government response was tardy and inadequate, on purpose.

We are under constant attack by Illuminati bankers and their lackeys in government and media. The two world wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, are all forms of Illuminati attack on America.

They also attack our moral and social fabric by promoting sexual "liberation" (promiscuity), feminism, homosexuality, public obscenity, violence, pedophilia and porn in music and in the mass media in general.

So why do we look at an ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico as if it were occurring in isolation?


THE KEY TO OUR EXASPERATION

The explanation can be found in a book that we have been trained Pavlov-style to reject. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the work of a Jewish Masonic secret society. Caught red-handed, they attempted to confuse the issue of world domination with anti-Semitism. The vast majority of Jews is not aware, let alone in favor of this plot for world government dictatorship by a small "Jewish" financial elite and their Masonic allies.

In the Protocols, the author, who I suspect was Lionel Rothschild (1808-1879) writes that their goal is: "To wear everyone out by dissensions, animosities, feuds, famine, inoculation of diseases, want, until the Gentiles see no other way of escape except by appeal to our money and our power." (Protocol 10)

"We will so wear out and exhaust the Gentiles by all this that they will be compelled to offer us an international authority, which by its position will enable us to absorb without disturbance all the governmental forces of the world and thus form a super-government." (Protocol 5)


CONCLUSION

We will continue to be pummeled until we acknowledge this long-term undeclared war and expose and neutralize the enemy.

Desperate times require desperate measures. The only solution to this mess is to nationalize the Fed, and disown that portion of the national debt that was created out of thin air. Then, we must break up the media cartels and ensure that elections are publicly funded. The power of the Israel lobby must be broken and all pro-Zionist candidates renounced. (Zionism is a tool of the bankers.)

Frankly, I am not optimistic. Our leaders -- political, cultural and economic -- are all beholden to the current self- destructive system. And we are not in the habit of taking strong medicine.

But if we don't, we will sink deeper into a malignant web fashioned by Satanists.

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

Never would have happened had the environmentalists forced them to drill in such deep water, so far off shore.

Seems they got exactly what they were trying to avoid.