Get the Brits Out of Our Gulf;
Send Obama to the Queen!
by Laurence Hecht
May 30—Emergency expropriation of BP, government takeover of the well-closure and cleanup effort, and the arrest and indictment of CEO Tony Hayward and other top officers of the British company, are the immediate emergency actions required in response to the ongoing crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. However, unless President Obama is gotten out of the way immediately, no solution to this or any other aspect of the crisis now threatening civilization is possible.
BP is running a criminal operation within the borders of the United States, corrupting institutions of government, running their own fleets and contract police forces, and employing local populations as their virtual slaves. Any reasonably educated American patriot can immediately recognize in BP, the earlier model of the British East India Company, and thus recognize, almost instinctively, the face of the enemy.
The proper role for BP vessels, equipment, and personnel is that of a commandeered vessel, as in wartime, directed under the emergency authority of a competent government agency, acting in the U.S. national interest, not that of a foreign corporation serving a foreign power.
The failure of the Obama Administration to take action against BP is simply further evidence that this President is a bought-and-paid-for asset of the British imperial interests intent on wrecking our nation, who must go now. As Lyndon LaRouche put it today: "It is just one more indication of why he must be immediately removed from office. If you want to save the nation, get him out of there. People who are not moving to get him out of office are not real." LaRouche suggested that the best solution would be to "take the President, put him in a basket tied up in a pink ribbon, and leave him on the doorstep of Buckhingham Palace." The attached message could read "Merry Christmas. He's all yours—Greetings from Chicago."
Criminal Negligence
Sufficient evidence to indict BP CEO Tony Hayward and other top officials for criminally negligent homicide in the April 20 death of 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig is already in the public record. Evidence gathered as a result of an emergency takeover of BP by the U.S. government may lead to more serious charges, not excluding the possibility of acts of sabotage by personnel of BP, or higher ranking officials of the relevant foreign government. The protection of such evidence is one among the compelling reasons for the immediacy of such emergency action.
The testimony of the chief electronics technician of the sunken oil rig, Mike Williams, in a May 16 CBS "60 Minutes" interview, was already sufficient to open a homicide investigation. Since then, Williams' assertions have been corroborated and supplemented by testimony from relevant personnel and outside experts. Williams, one of the last men off the rig, who survived by jumping ten stories into the water and swimming through burning oil, had asserted the following points:
- BP had been putting pressure on the drilling crew for several weeks before the accident occurred to make up for time lost after the failure of a first drilling effort which was pursued with too much speed.
- BP overrode the decision of the Transocean drilling rig captain, and ordered premature removal of drilling mud from the well, allowing the gas to escape, which caused the explosion.
- BP ignored evidence of a damaged rubber annular, which was crucial to correctly measuring pressure at the wellhead, and to containment in case of explosion.
- BP failed to replace one of two electrical controllers, known to be damaged, on the submerged blow-out protector.
Subsequently, at hearings by the Minerals Management Service and U.S. Coast Guard in New Orleans, the evidence of BP criminal negligence was further documented. In addition to the points already made by Williams, it was also noted that:
- BP skipped a quality test of the cement around the pipe, despite warnings from cement contractor Halliburton.
- Halliburton specialists also warned BP, in an April 18 report, that if BP didn't use more centering devices, the well would likely have a severe gas-flow problem. Halliburton recommended installation of 21 such devices, but BP decided to install only 6.
- Jimmy Harrell, a manager for Transocean, who was in charge of the rig, testified in New Orleans, that he had had disagreements with BP officials on the rig before the explosion, and expressed concern that BP did not plan to conduct a pressure test before sealing the well.
According to other testimony on the same subject, at a meeting 11 hours before the blowout, Transocean's crew leaders, including Harrell, strongly objected to a decision by BP's top representative Donald Vidrine, over how to remove heavy drilling fluid, which acts as a damper on the oil and gas pressure, and to replace it with lighter seawater. The rig's primary driller, Dewey Revette, and another worker also disagreed with BP.
- Congress released a memorandum on May 25 showing that BP's internal investigation indicated that there were warning signs immediately before the explosion that gas was bubbling into the well, a sign of a potential blowout.
- Drilling experts also testified in hearings before Congress the previous week, that BP chose not to use a second layer of pipe, known as liner, a more expensive, but safer procedure.
Almost a year ago, on June 22, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure, according to BP internal documents. The company went ahead with the casing after getting special permission from BP colleagues.
It is also to be noted that BP officials were never held accountable for their criminal negligence in a 2005 explosion at the Texas City refinery which killed 15 workers and injured more than 170 others. Investigation showed that equipment at the site of the fire in the 50-year-old plant was rusted and unsafe, monitoring devices were improperly maintained, and, instead of a safety culture, plant operations were characterized by sloppiness and employee discontent. Despite a book-length report by an independent panel of experts, BP got away with fines and a slap on the wrist. Ironically, the bad publicity led to the replacement of former CEO Lord Browne with the present occupant, Tony Hayward.[1]
Were BP not a protected asset of a President and Congress in the hands of the same British interest which rammed through a Nazi-like health-care bill, and a sellout of the Glass-Steagall protections against financial looters, the criminal indictment of Hayward and other BP officials would already have been served.
Energy Policy
Most errors relating to evaluation of the present situation can be avoided by understanding that BP is not primarily an energy company, but an asset of the British imperial interest, carrying out the stated policy of reduction of the world's population from the present 6.8 billion to 2 billion or below. Once the power behind that unspeakably criminal intention is overthrown—as it now appears we may have it in our power as a nation to accomplish—we shall still face the physical economic problem, the inherited legacy of a half-century-long policy of suppression of the application of science to the betterment of the common interests of mankind. The relevance of the oil question to that problem is best viewed in terms first employed nearly a century ago, by Russian Academician and founder of the science of biogeochemistry, Vladimir Vernadsky.
Vernadsky defined three domains of universal action corresponding to the non-living, living, and cognitive processes, also cognate with the terms lithosphere, biosphere, and nöosphere. Mankind, which, as Vernadsky noted, has become a geological force, presently depends for its existence upon the mining of concentrated deposits of minerals, which are mostly the remains of dead organisms, or the result of the action of ancient living organisms upon the lithosphere. The exhaustion of the richest deposits requires that we apply higher powers of technology, generally of higher energy flux density and intellectual content, to the tapping of remaining ores.
The point is illustrated, for the case of oil, by the requirement to drill deeper to find deposits such as those under the Gulf. Theoretically, it is no longer necessary that we depend upon ancient deposits of oil, as the requirements for liquid and gaseous fuels can be met by nuclear-generated hydrogen and hydrogen-based synfuels, development of electric vehicles, and development of a national maglev rail grid.
However, the willful sabotage of nuclear development, by that same British interest behind BP and the environmental movement which it sponsors, has meant that it will be 10 to 20 years before replacement of crude oil-based fuels can become a significant economic factor. In the meantime, the urgent immediate requirements for economic development to save an imperiled humanity, which include the buildup to a production capability of at least 6,000 nuclear plants within the next generation, will require an increase in demands upon presently dwindling oil resources. That will mean the need for deeper, and thus potentially more dangerous, offshore drilling in the immediate future. It can be accomplished under proper scientific guidance, removed from the control of the empire's looting operations.
Without minimizing the damage to local industries and beaches, there is no need to give credence to environmentalist disaster-mongering about the ultimate catastrophe, and calls for an end to offshore drilling. We do not defend looting by BP or any oil plunderer. We defend the right of the human species to exploit the necessary resources to advance its mission to go forth and have dominion over the Earth, the Solar System, and the Galaxy.
The World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace are the same thing as BP—branches of the British imperial power intent upon reducing human population and progress. The environmentalist proposals to ban offshore or deepwater drilling must be understood as nothing more than the implementation of a global genocide policy which is their raison d'être. The need to carry out a scientifically controlled deepwater drilling program is one of the compelling reasons why the United States must assert its sovereign national power to bring criminal operations such as BP under control.
Can the Hole Be Closed?
As of this writing, BP has conceded failure with the "top kill" measures, and is preparing for the next fallback option, the installation of a new cap on the blowout preventer which covers the wellhead. "Top kill" refers to the high-pressure pumping of heavy drilling fluid ("mud") down the well to counteract the upward pressure of oil and gas. As in nearly all aspects of the effort, BP had said one thing and done another. Early, on Thursday, May 27, BP and Coast Guard Commander Thad Stevens created the impression that the top kill was working. Later that day, BP officials revealed that the pumping had stopped the night before, when it became evident that much of the drilling fluid was not going down the well, but escaping out holes in the damaged blowout preventer which caps the well.
At the present, viewing of the live video feed from BP's remotely operated undersea vehicle shows a huge plume of oil and gas rising from the damaged wellhead. Experts point to the danger that the pumping of the heavy mud may have caused more damage, and could possibly cause another blowout.
BP will now attempt to place a new cap, known as the Lower Marine Riser Package (Figure 1), at the point where the original riser pipe, damaged by the explosion, connects to the top of the blowout preventer. Such a procedure has never been attempted before under 5,000 feet of water. If successful, it remains a partial fix, because an unknown amount of gas and oil will continue to escape from damaged parts of the blowout preventer below the cap.
BP's ultimate fallback solution is two relief wells with an earliest scheduled completion date of August. However, to complete the relief wells, drillers must intersect the existing pipe casing at a depth of 18,000 feet. Because some of the run is horizontal, the task amounts to hitting an invisible, 7.5-inch wide target through 5,000 feet of water and about 20,000 feet of rock.
It is possible that the overall evaluation of the undersea situation put out by BP is wrong, either due to ignorance or willful misdirection. A former energy advisor to President George W. Bush, Matt Simmons, suggests that the hole BP is trying to close may not be the main source of oil escaping into the Gulf. He and another independent oil expert appeared on MSNBC last week, suggesting that a collapse of the casing deep in the well may have permitted the release of high-pressure gas and oil, which found its way to the surface through natural fissures, and blew out a hole miles away from the drilling site. Simmons calls for putting BP out of the picture, and bringing in the Navy to work with consultants to evaluate the true situation. He also suggests that an explosive device might ultimately be required to close the underground cavities, citing Soviet use of small nuclear charges to seal runaway gas wells.
Whether these are self-serving proposals, or legitimate suggestions, this and other independent evaluations must be sorted through—not by BP—but by an agency of the U.S. government given emergency powers to act in the sovereign interest of the United States. Expropriate BP, indict its deserving officers, and take over the seal-off and cleanup efforts, and we will be well on our way to resolving this and other problems caused by our British enemy. But to do that, we must first send Obama back to the Queen.
[1] Lord Browne's removal occurred in typically British fashion. His denial of a longstanding relationship with a young Canadian, contracted though the gay escort website Suited and Booted, served as the convenient pretext to force him out. Nine days after his May 1, 2007 resignation from BP, Browne was forced to resign his position as non-executive director of Goldman Sachs. Hayward now enjoys among his perks, a membership in the Bilderberger Society and World Economic Forum at Davos.
