More from oil expert on "doomsday" situation in Gulf

[Clancy]

Breaking News BP Gulf Oil Disaster, Blown a Hole in the Sea Floor?
https://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article20119.html
Talked to Matt Simmons today. He had just appeared on the MSNBC Dylan Ratigan show where he told a similar tale. Here’s his story:

There are not cracks in the sea floor. The Thomas Jefferson, deployed from Woods Hole, will end up finding an open hole where the well and casing used to be, some miles away from where BP is working. It is putting out 100,000 to 150,000 bpd.

The explosion blew the Blowout Preventer off and left the riser on the sea floor. The recovery effort is just coming from the riser. The gas plumes you see in the videos are only 3 to 4 feet high. That’s not the main oil source.

The claims of 11,000 bpd recovery is just lies.

We don’t know where the BOP is. That’s just the riser you’re seeing.

The well must have blown at 50,000 psi.

When they find the oil well, it will be without any casing. All the casing blew out of the well. This is common occurrence. It was a bad cementing job. That is why relief wells cannot possibly work.

The Soviets put their bombs down the open hole (not true, of course). The Navy needs to come in with a device that can force a 7” A-bomb 18,000 feet down the well and detonate it.

You have to stop the gusher. It may cover 40% of the Gulf of Mexico 400 to 500 feet thick.

We should be deploying tankers to suck up the oil from the bottom.

Oil men have agreements with BP so they don’t talk. Many oil service companies are under confidentiality agreements with BP, so they can’t talk.

Oil pollution in the intake water will cause Gulf oil refineries to shut down. it takes 3 gallons of water for every gallon of gasoline produced. If they can’t get clean intake water, they’ll have to shut down. The price of oil and gas will go up. We don’t have much refined gas on reserve.


Matt Simmons, Dr. Doom of the Gulf Coast spill - Jun. 9, 2010

FORTUNE -- As an oil and gas industry insider, Matt Simmons speaks with a bold voice and makes even bolder predictions. His 2005 book, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, which argued that Saudi Arabia's oil supplies are way more limited than most people think, raised his profile as an authority on the industry.

For more than 35 years, Simmons has run a Texas-based boutique investment bank, Simmons & Co., which specializes in the energy industry. At times, with his somewhat doom-and -loom-like take on things, there's a hint of conspiracy theorist in his tone. But it's hard to ignore that Simmons is deeply connected and has been pretty much right on in the past: When oil was $58 a barrel the year Twilight was released, Simmons predicted prices would be at or above $100 within a few years. By 2008, when Fortune profiled Simmons, the price of crude had hit $147 a barrel.

As a big believer that wind power is the way of the future, Simmons says the era of easy oil is over and that world oil production will eventually fail to meet expected future demands.

These days, Simmons has been weighing in on BP (BP) and the worst oil spill in U.S. history, following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. As BP struggles to permanently stop the gush of oil, Simmons has been warning that the scale of the spill is much bigger and that there's a larger leak several miles away.

Simmons also thinks that perhaps the only way to seal the gush of oil is by doing what the Soviet Union did decades ago -- setting off a bomb deep underground so that the fiery blast will melt the surrounding rock and shut off the spill.

Fortune caught up with Simmons this week to hear his thoughts on the Gulf Coast oil spill, the future of BP and what's ahead for offshore drilling.

Experts forecast an active hurricane season this year. We know it could disrupt efforts to stop the spill, but how else do you think storms could impact the Gulf Coast?

We've got to stop the gusher first. Then we have to deal with the other issues. There's a lake at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico that's over 100 miles wide and at least 400 to 500 feet deep of black oil. It's just staying there. And only the lightest of that is what we're seeing hitting the shores so far. If a hurricane comes and blows this to shore, it could paint the Gulf Coast black. We should have been pumping this oil out onto other tankers weeks ago.

How do you think the U.S. government should handle this disaster?

I think the government should ask BP to leave the United States and turn its operation over to the military. Put the U.S. Navy in charge. Have all the contractors report to the Navy -- the cleanup efforts, the whole nine yards. Because as long as it's in BP's hands, they're going to spin the information as long as they can.

What do you think is in store for the future of BP?

They have about a month before they declare Chapter 11. They're going to run out of cash from lawsuits, cleanup and other expenses. One really smart thing that Obama did was about three weeks ago he forced BP CEO Tony Hayward to put in writing that BP would pay for every dollar of the cleanup. But there isn't enough money in the world to clean up the Gulf of Mexico. Once BP realizes the extent of this my guess is that they'll panic and go into Chapter 11.


There's currently a ban on new deepwater oil projects for six months to prevent other disasters. What lies ahead for offshore drilling?

First of all, to the industry's credit, we went 41 years in the United States without an oil spill. In a minor sense, this is what happened to the Challenger. We had so many successful shuttle takeoffs that the space station got kind of casual about this. But this is worse. BP was so certain that there wasn't any risk that three years ago they thought the insurance industry was ripping them off, so they're self-insured on this. How stupid! It was the best thing that ever happened to the insurance industry.

How do you think the Gulf Coast oil spill will change the energy business, if at all?

Profoundly. We're going to have to go back and re-examine all of our regulatory rules and realize the easy stuff is imminent and the rest of the stuff we do is really risky. We have to start questioning whether it's worth the risk, and do we need to get really serious about developing some alternative energy sources? Now I'm working on a big project in mid-coast Maine called the Ocean Energy Institute, and we're hoping that within the next year we can actually create 50 megawatt offshore wind turbines -- one every five miles a part -- and turn that offshore electricity into desalinated sea water and liquid ammonia. It could replace motor gasoline and diesel fuel.

What are the lessons learned from this environmental disaster?

That oil peaked. The easy stuff is over. We have to continue drilling in shallow water, but we probably need to take a deep breath and step back. Until we develop a new generation of equipment that can respond to these accidents, just don't go into the ultra-deep water and deep formations because it's just too risky.

[Summer B]

Thank you for posting this. Matt Simmons was right, may he rest in peace.

New oil slicks have been found at the Macondo site, because the seafloor is cracked and broken. The below link shows pictures from August 2011.
https://www.onwingsofcare.org/protec...exico-oil.html

There are also other leaks not related to this disaster, which should be all over the news as well, but the big story is that this one can't be contained. They are still spraying Corexit every night, people getting sick and dying, miscarriages have spiked all along the coast, oysters and crabs and shrimp are either nonexistent or deformed or oily, and dead dolphins are washing up everywhere.

What can we do? Let's start with the 28th Amendment for the Separation of Corporation and State. https://movetoamend.org/

[sambacat]

Thank you, Summer. I just wrote Boxer, Feinstein and Woolsey about the BP oil and Corexit situation as well as the amendment to separate Corporation and State. Let's all do this (relentlessly). If we don't, no one else will. Thanks!