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by Nordic » Thu Jun 17, 2010 3:27 am
The Consul wrote:no kidding...the speech...it was like pushing in 911 and getting Dial-A-Prayer on the other end...guess that is what we've come to
by ninakat » Thu Jun 17, 2010 3:44 am
Julia W wrote:2 more stories from businessinsider....
http://www.businessinsider.com/matthew- ... ulf-2010-6
Matthew Simmons: The Relief Well Will Fail, And An Undersea Oil Lake May Be Covering 40% Of The Gulf
Joe Weisenthal | Jun. 15, 2010, 2:21 PM | 3,881 | 30
Image: AP
Matthew Simmons is on Bloomberg, living up to his moniker as the "Dr. Doom" of the oil spill.
He confidently predicts that the relief well will fail (due to structural problems with the pipe) and that unless we're content with having 100K+ barrels spill each day, then we have no choice to nuke the well.
Beyond that, he suspects that a giant undersea oil lake may already be covering 40% of the Gulf.
Update: And he just said he's embarrassed by his old firm, Simmons & Co, for upgrading shares of BP, which he think will go to 0.
http://www.businessinsider.com/governme ... day-2010-6
Government Doubles BP Leak Estimate To 60,000 Barrels Per Day
Gus Lubin | Jun. 15, 2010, 5:09 PM | 713 | 16
The government just upped the Deepwater Horizon leak estimate to 60,000 barrels per day:
Secretary Chu, Secretary Salazar, and Dr. McNutt convened a group of federal and independent scientists on Monday to discuss new analyses and data points obtained over the weekend to produce updated flow rate estimates. Working together, U.S. government and independent scientists estimate that the most likely flow rate of oil today is between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels per day. The improved estimate is based on more and better data that is now available and that helps increase the scientific confidence in the accuracy of the estimate.
Just last week the official estimate was 20,000 to 40,000 barrels per day; up from BP's long-standing estimate of 5,000 barrels per day; up from the original estimate of 1,000 barrels per day. At this point Cassandras like Matthew Simmons are starting to look a lot more credible.
by lupercal » Thu Jun 17, 2010 3:47 am
From 1953 to 1979, Iran was a BP prison, polluted and poor, run with an iron fist by the company and its puppet, the shah.
Now it is drilling offshore near the US in the Gulf of Mexico. Many Americans in the region are beginning to feel the pain and outrage Iranians endured for 70 years—getting a small taste of how BP goes Beyond Politics.
by American Dream » Thu Jun 17, 2010 3:55 am
by Nordic » Thu Jun 17, 2010 5:02 am
More Dirty Details From My BP Mole
— By Mac McClelland| Wed Jun. 16, 2010 3:02 AM PDT
You know the story: Boy calls girl, girl goes to pick up boy, boy and girl go sit on a beautiful beachside deck to enjoy the night breeze and listen to the waves crash as he tells her a bunch of terrible things that are going on at an oil-spill cleanup site. Yes, I had a date with Elmer, my mole inside BP's cleanup operation, and he painted a grim picture of the conditions for both workers and wildlife at Louisiana's Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge.
First, the workers: The men on Elmer's Island don't wear respirators since BP and OSHA have thrown precaution to the wind and deemed them unnecessary. But the only type of air-monitoring equipment Elmer's ever seen on the island are little multigas meters that are not up to the job: They're designed for indoor use, clog easily, and only measure limited types of pollutants. And despite the known dangers of dispersants and the toxic chemicals in crude (I can attest that contact with the stuff washing up on the beach can burn), workers aren't even wearing protective Tyvek suits anymore. Of course, there are medics on hand to treat anyone who gets hurt or sick. Unfortunately, any worker who asks for a medic's help is automatically drug tested, which, for some, can be a powerful incentive to not report injuries. (Not that keeping a cleanup job necessarily equals getting paid: Elmer says the contractors continue to lose workers' paychecks, a problem he told me about the last time we talked and that has since been confirmed by the local papers.)
Cleanup workers on these South Louisiana beaches aren't the only ones who could use more protections. What Elmer told me echoed the reports that BP isn't exactly doing everything in its power to keep track of the toll the spill is taking on wildlife. In nearby Port Fourchon, where he has also worked, there are markers to denote wildlife nesting areas, but they aren't clearly labeled and no one knows what they mean, so workers drive and trample over sensitive habitats. One day last week, Elmer and his coworkers came upon eight oiled pelicans, but though they called the official number to report their findings, no one had come to collect the birds by the time his shift ended many hours later. (A representative from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has yet to respond to my request for comment.) Workers on Elmer's have not been instructed to report dead animals for collection or autopsy. Elmer said he'd recently come upon a dead crab and, knowing no one was going to come to examine it, decided to slice it open himself. Black oil poured out.
I've seen some pathetic excuses for cleanup out here—were the workers on Elmer's at least making some progress? "They're not being effective out here," Elmer said. "Two days after your article, they bused in twice as many workers, so they're up to 120 guys on Elmer's now, but I can't see any considerable difference. They're only working five sites and it's eight miles of beach. No one seems concerned about cleaning it up. The contractors are getting their money; they don't care. They've got all these people out there, but they're not accomplishing anything."
Oh, wait. Not nothing: "They've brought in prostitutes." No one knows who the "they" that brought in the pack of hookers is, but the gals have definitely arrived, and you can buy time with one for $200. It only took someone a whole month even to figure out that it would be lucrative to sell sex to guys earning 44 hours of overtime a week and living in camps and converted 18-wheelers.
by hanshan » Thu Jun 17, 2010 7:50 am
lupercal wrote:From Riddler's CounterPunch article at the top:From 1953 to 1979, Iran was a BP prison, polluted and poor, run with an iron fist by the company and its puppet, the shah.
Now it is drilling offshore near the US in the Gulf of Mexico. Many Americans in the region are beginning to feel the pain and outrage Iranians endured for 70 years—getting a small taste of how BP goes Beyond Politics.
That's crossed my mind too. Also that BP is getting a touch impatient with Obama's money grubbing. Doesn't he realize he can go the way of Mossadeq if necessary? No doubt the CIA would be glad to help their old friends in the oil business, just like in 1953, also like in 1963.
I think this is why Obama's speech got panned on the chat shows, also on DU, which surprised me -- as weak and overdue as it was, he pushed back ever so gently and wrung a few bil in damages out of BP, so he got slammed. Few on DU seem to get this, and the media aren't going to tell them, so the first time Obama shows his teeth, however feebly, they eviscerate him. Chickens coming home to roost, I guess.
by stickdog99 » Thu Jun 17, 2010 12:58 pm
by stickdog99 » Thu Jun 17, 2010 1:10 pm
by Elvis » Thu Jun 17, 2010 2:09 pm
Beyond Petroleum, Beyond Pollution, Beyond Politics
A Short History of BP
By M. KAMIAR
[...]
Gradually the nationalization forces began to coalesce about a strange figure, Dr. Muhammad Mossadegh of an old, wealthy, landed family which had served the Qajar dynasty as ministers of finance since the eighteenth century. Mossadegh was a Westernizer with an earned doctorate in economics from a Swiss university, a man of great personal courage and few personal ambitions or desires, who was convinced that national independence could be established and the obvious corruption of Iranian political life eliminated only by the recovery of Iranian control of its own economic life by nationalization of AIOC. Politically he was a moderate, but his strong emotional appeal to Iranian nationalism encouraged extremist reactions among his followers.
Long and fruitless discussions between AIOC and the Iranian government, with constant interference by the British government led to stalemate. The company insisted that its status was based on a contractual agreement which could not be modified without its consent, while the British government maintained that the agreement was a matter of international public law, like a treaty, which it had a right to enforce. The Iranian government declared that it had the right as a sovereign state to nationalize an Iranian corporation operating under its law on its territory, subject only to adequate compensation and assumption of its contractual obligations.
The Iranian nationalist arguments against the company were numerous and detailed:
1. It had promised to train Iranians for all positions possible, but instead had used these only in menial tasks, trained few natives, and employed many foreigners.
2. It had reduced its payments to Iran, which were based on its profits, by reducing the amount of its profits by bookkeeping tricks. For example, it sold oil at very low prices to wholly owned subsidiaries outside Iran or to the British Navy, allowing the former to resell at
world prices so that AIOC made small profits, while the subsidiaries made very large profits not subject to Iranian royalty obligations. Iran believed that the profits of such wholly owned subsidiaries were really part of AIOC and should fall under the consolidated balance sheet of AIOC and thus make payments to Iran, but as late as 1950 AIOC admitted that the accounts of 59 such dummy corporations were not included in the AIOC accounts.
3. AIOC generally refused to pay Iranian taxes, especially income tax, but paid such taxes to Britain; at the same time, it calculated the Iranian profit royalties after such taxes, so that the higher British taxes went, the less the Iranian payment became. In effect, thus, Iran paid income tax to Britain. In 1933 AIOC paid £305,418 in British taxation and £274,412 in Iranian taxes; in 1948 the two figures were £28,310,353 and £1,369,328.
4. The payment to Iran was also reduced by putting profits into reserves or into company investments outside Iran, often in subsidiaries, and calculating the Iranian share only on the profits distributed as dividends. Thus in 1947, when profits were really £40.5 million, almost £14.9 million went to British income tax, £11.5 million went to reserves, over £7.1 million went to stockholders (of which £3.3 million to the British government), and only £7.1 million to Iran. If the payment to Iran had been calculated before taxes and reserves, it would have been at least £6 million more that year.
5. Moreover, AIOC was exempt from Iranian customs tariffs on goods necessary to its operation brought into the country. Since it considered everything it brought in, whatever it was, to be necessary, it deprived Iran of about £6 million a year by this.
6. The company paid only a very small portion of the social costs of its operations in Persia, drawing many persons to arid and uninhabited portions of the country and then providing very little of the costs of housing, education, or health.
7. The AIOC, as a member of the international petroleum cartel, reduced its oil production in Iran and thus reduced Iran's royalties.
8. The AIOC continued to calculate its payments to Iran in gold at £8.10s. per ounce for years after the world gold price had risen to £13 an ounce, while the American corporation, Aramco, in Saudi Arabia raised its gold price on demand.
9. The AIOC's monopoly on oil export from Iran prevented development of other Iranian oil fields in areas outside the AIOC concession.
As a consequence of all these activities, the Iranian nationalists of 1952 felt angered to think that Iran had given up 300 million tons of oil over fifty years and received £105 million, while Britain had invested only £20 million and obtained about £800 million in profits.
The Iranian opposition to nationalization was broken in March 1951, when the prime minister, All Razmara, and his minister of education were assassinated within a space of two weeks. The nationalization law was passed the following month and, at the same time, at the request of the Majlis, the shah appointed Mossadegh prime minister to carry it out. This was done with considerable turmoil, which included strikes by AIOC workers against mistimed British wage cuts, anti-British street riots, and the arrival of British gunboats at the head of the Persian Gulf. Rather than give up the enterprise or operate it for the Iranian government, AIOC began to curtail operations and ship home its engineers. On May 25, 1951, it appealed to the International Court of Justice in spite of Iranian protests that the case was a domestic one, not international. Only on July 22, 1952, did the court's decision uphold Iran's contention by refusing jurisdiction.
At first the United States, and especially its ambassador in Tehran, supported the Iranian position. It feared that British recalcitrance would drive Iran toward Russia, and was especially alarmed at the possibility of any landing of British forces, since this would allow the Soviet Union to invade the North Iranian provinces as provided in the Soviet-Iran Treaty of 1921. However, it soon became evident that the Soviet Union, while supporting Iran's position, was not going to interfere. The American position then became increasingly pro-British and anti-Mossadegh. This was intensified by the shift in administration from Truman to Eisenhower early in 1953, and by the pressures on the American government by the international petroleum cartel. At the same time, the American oil companies, which had bricflv hoped that they mi«ht replace AIOC in the Persian area, decided that their united front with AIOC in the world cartel was more valuable to them.
This world oil cartel had developed from a tripartite agreement signed on September 17, 1928 by Royal Dutch-Shell, Anglo-Iranian, and Standard Oil. The three signers were Sir Henri Deterding of Shell, Sir John (later Lord) Cadman of AIOC, and Walter C. Teagle of Esso. These agreed to manage oil prices on the world market by charging an agreed fixed price plus freight costs, and to store surplus oil which might weaken the fixed price level. By 1949 the cartel had as members the seven greatest oil companies of the world (Anglo-Iranian, Royal Dutch-Shell, Esso, Calso, Socony-Vacuum, Gulf, and Texaco). Excluding the United States domestic market, the Soviet Union, and Mexico, it controlled 92 percent of the world's reserves of oil, 88 percent of the world's production, 77 percent of the world's refining capacity, and 70 percent of the world's tonnage in ocean tankers.
As soon as Britain lost its case in the International Court of Justice and it became clear that Iran would go ahead with its nationalization, Britain put into effect a scries of reprisals against Iran which rapidly crippled the country. Iranian funds in Britain were blocked; its purchases in British-controlled markets were interrupted; and its efforts to sell oil abroad were frustrated by a combination of the British Navy and the world oil cartel (which closed its sales and distribution facilities to Iranian oil). These cut off a substantial portion of the Iranian governent's revenues and forced a drastic curtailment of government expenditures.
To deal with this situation, especially to cut the military budget, Mossadegh, in July 1952, asked for full powers from the Assembly. He was refused and resigned, but the Ahmad Ghavam government which replaced him lasted only six days, resigning under pressure of pro-Mossadegh street riots. Back in office, Mossadegh obtained dictatorial power for six months. He broke off diplomatic relations with the British, closed down nine British consular offices, deported various British economic and cultural groups, and dismissed both the Senate and the Iranian Supreme Court, which were beginning to question his actions.
By that time (summer, 1953) almost irresistible forces were building up against Mossadegh, since lack of Soviet interference gave the West full freedom of action. The British, the AIOC, the world petroleum cartel, the American government, and the older Iranian elite led by the shah combined to crush Mossadegh. The chief effort came from the American supersecret intelligence agency (CIA) under the personal direction of its director, Allen W. Dulles, brother of the secretary of state. Dulles, as a former director of the Schroeder Bank in New York, was an old associate of Frank C. Tiarks, a partner in the Schroedcr Bank in London since 1902, and a director of the Bank of England in 1912-1945, as well as Lazard Brothers Bank, and the AIOC. It will be recalled that the Schroeder Bank in Cologne helped to arrange Hitler's accession to power as chancellor in January 1933.
Managing Mossadegh's fall in August, 1953, was considerably easier, since he left his defense wide open by an attack on the prerogatives of the Iranian Army, apparently in the belief that the army would be prevented from moving against him by his influence over the mobs in the streets of Tehran. But throughout the Near East, street mobs are easily roused and directed by those who are willing to pay, and Dulles had the unlimited secret funds of the CIA. From these he gave $10 million to Colonel H. Norman Schwartzkopf, former head of the New Jersey State Police, who was in charge of training the Imperial Iranian Gendarmerie, and this was judiciously applied in ways which changed the mobs' tune considcrablv from July to August 1953. The whole operation was directed bv Dulles himself from Switzerland where he was visited by Schwartzkopf, the American ambassador to Tehran, Loy Henderson, and messengers from the shah in the second week of August 1953.
Mossadegh purged the army of opposition elements without complete success in the spring of 1953, going so far as to arrest the chief of staff on March 1st. In July he sought to bypass the Assembly and demonstrate his irresistible popular support by having all his supporters resign from the Majlis (thus paralyzing its operations), and held a plebiscite in August to approve his policies. The official vote in the plebiscite was about two million approvals against twelve hundred disapprovals, but Mossadegh's days were numbered. On August 13th the shah precipitated planned anti-Mossadegh coup by naming General Fazlollah Zahedi as prime minister, and sent a messenger dismissing Mossadegh. The latter refused to yield, and called his supporters into the streets, where they rioted against the shah, who fled with his family to Rome. Two days later, anti- Mossadegh mobs, supported by the army, defeated Mossaegh's supporters in Tehran, killing several hundred. Mossadegh was forced out of office and replaced by General Zahedi. The shah returned from Italy on August 22nd.
The fall of Mossadegh ended the period of confusions which had ensued since the forced abdication of Reza Shah in 1941. From 1953 on, the shah and the army, backed by the conservative elite, controlled the country and the docile Majlis. Two weeks after the shah's counter-coup, the United States gave Iran an emergency grant of $45 million, increased its annual economic aid payment to $23 million, and began to pay $5 million a month in Mutual Security Funds. These payments reached a total of a quarter of a billion dollars over five years. In return Iran became a firm member of the Western bloc, joined the Baghdad Pact (Central Treaty Organization) in 1955, and provided a close base for surreptitious actions (such as U-2 overflights) against the Soviet Union. The Communist-controlled Tudeh Party, the only political party in Iran with the established doctrine and organized structure of such a party in the Western sense, had been officially banned in 1949 but had supported Mossadegh from underground, where it was relentlessly pursued after 1953.
By 1960 the shah felt his position sufficiently strong to try to pursue a policy of his own, and began to shift his alignment from the older elite group of landlords and army toward the more progressive groups of urban middle-class professional peoples which had supported Mossadegh. The chief evidence of this was an effort to adopt, more or less as his personal policy, a program of agrarian reform which sought to restrict each landlord's holdings to a single village, taking all excess lands over for government payments spread over ten years and granting the lands to the peasants who worked them in return for payments spread over fifteen years. The shah's own estates were among the first to be distributed, but by the end of 1962 over five thousand other villages had also been granted to their peasants.
In the meantime the oil dispute was settled by a compromise in Ocober 1954. The exploitation and marketing of Iran's oil was taken over by a consortium of existing petroleum companies from the world cartel and some American "independents," with a 40 percent interest held by AIOC itself. The previous disputes were compromised without too much difficulty once it was recognized that both sides had a common interest in preserving the world structure of managed oil prices in order to ensure substantial incomes to both. The incomes, to Iran were considerably increased, averaging about $250 million or more a year.
by Belligerent Savant » Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:18 pm
by lupercal » Fri Jun 18, 2010 12:31 am
hanshan wrote:There is no end to the blinders of naivete; & no, he hasn't yet realized he's just a tool.
DU? Surely you jest.
by Jeff » Fri Jun 18, 2010 10:30 am
Gulf oil full of methane, adding new concerns
NEW ORLEANS – It is an overlooked danger in oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well contains vast amounts of natural gas that could pose a serious threat to the Gulf of Mexico's fragile ecosystem.
The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill.
That means huge quantities of methane have entered the Gulf, scientists say, potentially suffocating marine life and creating "dead zones" where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.
"This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history," Kessler said.
Methane is a colorless, odorless and flammable substance that is a major component in the natural gas used to heat people's homes. Petroleum engineers typically burn off excess gas attached to crude before the oil is shipped off to the refinery. That's exactly what BP has done as it has captured more than 7.5 million gallons of crude from the breached well.
A BP spokesman said the company was burning about 30 million cubic feet of natural gas daily from the source of the leak, adding up to about 450 million cubic feet since the containment effort started 15 days ago. That's enough gas to heat about 450,000 homes for four days.
But that figure does not account for gas that eluded containment efforts and wound up in the water, leaving behind huge amounts of methane.
...
Dallas Law Firm Cautions Spill Workers about Benzene Exposure
Jun 18, 2010
While Gulf of Mexico coast fishermen and others have lost their livelihoods due to the spill, some who have been hired to clean up the oil washing up on beaches and marshes risk toxic exposure.
"Workers helping with the cleanup will likely be exposed to benzene through crude oil,” said Allen Vaught, an attorney with Dallas law firm Baron & Budd, P.C. “Benzene exposure can cause certain cancers like leukemia and lymphoma, and children are especially susceptible. Cleanup workers need to be monitored or warned about the hazards of benzene exposure. The latency period of benzene can be anywhere from 2 to 50 years. That's a serious health impact that can last for half a century.”
...
Volunteers who helped clean up the Exxon Valdez oil spill 20 years ago are now feeling the long-term effects of exposure to oil. What some medical experts originally diagnosed as a case of the flu turned out to be more serious.
"This is very different than in the Exxon Valdez case when the crude was more centralized, which made the exposure easier to control,” Vaught said. “Instead, we're dealing with multiple plumes spread over a larger area that could take years to clean up.”
by ninakat » Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:30 pm
by justdrew » Fri Jun 18, 2010 5:05 pm
justdrew 01 May 2010 12:48 wrote:they need to bomb and plug the well today
by Julia W » Fri Jun 18, 2010 5:07 pm
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