Gulf Oil Disaster Is Not Over

By James Donahue

“Strange waters are not clearing. They are not living anymore. Deadly black that lingers stops all life there, never to return,” –The Abba Father, June 8, 2010

An e-mail from a reader filled with links to various news reports of a U. S. Coast Guard investigation of a massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, in the area of the Deepwater Horizon disaster nearly one year ago, suggests that all of the prophecies of doom and gloom associated with the event may be coming to pass.

While the Coast Guard has written off the slick as the result of residue from a dredging operation on the Mississippi River, other researchers are saying the massive volume of raw crude oil plus the gallons of COREXIT dumped into the oil are working together to kill not only the Gulf of Mexico, but spread toxins via the Atlantic current throughout the oceans of the world.

Some researchers are suggesting that the disaster may even be linked to the swarm of earthquakes that have been occurring along the New Madrid fault along the Mississippi River basin and through the heartland of the nation.

Yet in spite of the aftermath of what many scientists warn may have been the worst ecological disaster in the nation’s history, the U.S. regulators have just approved a new plan for deep-water exploration in the Gulf by Royal Dutch Shell. It appears that America’s quest for oil overshadows concerns about the health of the waters of not only the Gulf, but the world.

How can we claim that the effects of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent spill have not gone away? Scientists on two research vessels that studied the impact the spill had on marine life in the Gulf found that the bottom of the Macondo basin, surrounding the site of the spill, remains covered with oil and chemicals.

Kevin Yeager, professor of marine sciences at University of Southern Mississippi, who acted as chief scientists on the trip, said oil was found in a 140-mile radius surrounding the disaster site. The findings contradicted assurances earlier last year by federal officials that the oil had largely disappeared.

So what happened? One researcher reports that in spite of what we were told by British Petroleum, the chemical COREXIT is not a dispersant of crude oil. It is a suppressant. It coagulates the oil into a dense material that sinks, thus the millions of gallons of crude from the Deepwater Horizon spill are now blanketing the sea floor. And this is causing massive suffocation of the Plankton, algae and all other life forms that exist there.

Dr. Tom Termotto, National Coordinator of the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference, who has studied the gulf disaster, warns that the crisis created by the April explosion and subsequent 87-days of gushing of oil and methane gasses at the Deepwater Horizon site, is not over and will be with us for a long time to come.

In a scathing report published by Global Research Termotto charges that the public has been the victim of “a corporate-created illusion – a web of fabrication spun in collaboration with the US Federal Government and mainstream media. Big Oil, as well as the Military-Industrial Complex, have aided and abetted this whole scheme and information blackout because the very future of the oil and gas industry is at stake, as is the future of the US Empire, which sprawls around the world and requires vast amounts of hydrocarbon fuel.”

Termotto believes the British Petroleum disaster, and possibly other deep water well sites, have collectively fractured the salt dome that contained vast quantities of oil and gas, and that both substances are now seeping out of control throughout the Gulf of Mexico. The problem is especially severe around the Deepwater Horizon disaster site where “the geology around the well bore has been blown.

“This occurred because of drilling contiguous to a salt dome as well as because of the gas explosions which did much damage to the integrity of the well casing, cementing, well bore, wellhead and foundation around the well head. Eighty-seven straight days of gushing hydrocarbon effluent under great pressure only served to further undermine the entire well system.

“Finally, when it was capped, putting the system back under pressure forced the upsurging hydrocarbons to find weaknesses throughout the greater system, which revealed all sorts of compromised, fractured and unsettled geology through which the hydrocarbons could travel all the way to the seafloor and into the Gulf of Mexico,” Termotto wrote.

He believes there may be numerous seeps of oil and gas occurring within a five to 10 square mile radius of the BP well site plus “countless gushers and spills, leaks and seeps throughout the Gulf of Mexico where drilling has been conducted for many decades with an aggregate outflow that cannot be estimated.”

All of this, Termotto warns, is bringing about “the slow and steady demise of the Gulf of Mexico.”

In his article, he states that the technology to repair the damage to the gulf floor does not exist and consequently, “those leaks and seeps will only continue to get worse.”

Termotto notes that the gulf “does not exist in isolation and is, in fact, connected to the Seven Seas” where similar deep water drilling operations are occurring all over the world. Thus, he believes similar disasters and the ultimate destruction of all sea life and the very life of the world oceans are severely threatened by humanity’s constant quest for oil.