Will the oil gusher in the Gulf eventually destroy all marine life, as oilman Matthew Simmons asserts, or will the disaster instead be contained once BP’s relief well comes online sometime in July or August? Simmons, a peak-oil proponent and no stranger to controversy, has been warning that a second well cannot alleviate the problem because most of the oil, now estimated to flow at around 60,000 barrels per day, is coming not from the well bore but from innumerable ruptures in the sea bed around the Deepwater Horizon site. Because of this, he says, there are only two possible options: allowing the well to run dry — a process that would take 30 years and destroy the Gulf of Mexico and the ocean; or nuking the site, melting the fissured seabed into a glassy cap.
We have been attempting to verify his claims using our own sources. One of them is Dave Patterson, a petroleum reservoir and operations engineer who works for Moyes Co., a Houston-based energy consulting firm with no direct involvement in the BP project. In contrast to Simmons’ end-of-the-world talk, Patterson says he has “absolute confidence” that the relief well will work. Based on everything he has read, seen and heard, Patterson, a Moyes director, says there’s little evidence to support Simmons’ worst-case scenario. “Yes, it is a delicate operation, “ he notes. “Hitting a target 17 inches wide at 18,000 feet is always going to be difficult. But the people who are doing it have a 100% track record,” and there are two wells being drilled for redundancy. Patterson says that all the evidence he’s seen indicates that the main leakage is straight up the well-head and not through fissures. And although capping the gusher posed a risk of rupturing the casing and losing control of the shutdown, that’s why BP wasn’t more aggressive about it to begin with, he explained. Patterson also noted that the increased flow over time is attributable, not to a widening network of fissures, as Simmons has claimed, but to the severing of a bent “riser” pipe that had restricted output.
The Russian Connection
Which narrative are we to believe? It does seem odd that no one has either confirmed or refuted Simmons’ most frightening claims. It is also difficult to believe that, two months into the disaster, only he and few others are privy to facts that imply, essentially, that the world is doomed. Simmons’ information reportedly came from some Russian scientists who were brought in by BP to inspect the sea floor. The Russians not only have expertise in using nuclear devices to cap blown-out gas and oil surface wells, they also have bathyscaphes capable of exploring the Deepwater Horizon site a mile down. Supposedly, the Russians were allowed to view the site only after signing government documents that forbade them from reporting their findings to the American public or the news media. Their inspection tour a couple of weeks ago resulted in a “dire report” prepared for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin by Anatoly Sagalevich of Russia’s Shirshov Institute of Oceanology.” These details were noted in a news story by one Sorcha Faal at a web site called “Before It’s News.” According to Ms. Faal, the report warns that “the Gulf of Mexico sea floor has been fractured ‘beyond all repair,’ and the 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.”
Renegade Engineer
We have recollections of similarly grave warnings being shouted from the rooftops by the CEO of a Bay Area failure-analysis company in the thick of efforts to head off a Y2K computer disaster that never came. At the time, working as a senior reporter for a firm called Off-the-Record Research, we covered the Y2K story for institutional investors who paid upwards of $100,000 a year for OTR’s customized reports. The publicity-hungry CEO insisted that a global disaster lay ahead and that no amount of remediation could prevent it. Being an engineer himself, he had some impressive facts, figures and stories to back up all of the fear-mongering. One story he told concerned a fatal fire on a deep-sea drilling platform that supposedly occurred when an embedded sensor far below the water’s surface malfunctioned. But when the Y2K episode failed to produce even a mote of real trouble, the CEO was forced to resign in disgrace. He wasn’t the only “expert” on the wrong side of the Y2K story, either. The high-powered Gartner Group hyped some stunning damage predictions that proved to be as fantastic as those of the bloviating CEO. Gartner was so egregiously wrong about Y2K that it’s a wonder the company did not become the laughing stock of the consulting world.
And now, with no malice intended toward Matt Simmons personally, we pray that two months from now, we are asking ourselves why we even bothered to pay him any attention.
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I’ve been researching some claims and came across that name- Sorcha Faal. Apparently it’s not a she it’s a he, and he’s a computer programmer, Psy Op extraordinaire. Here is a site that has documentation on it (he/she) http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread304918/pg1
on the other hand what is happening in the gulf is of great importance. I think it’s going to be very dangerous to live in the area. I just saw a youtube video that grieved me, you can check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvXd49G3daQ