[THS] Expert calls oil spill doomsday scenario

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

Expert calls oil spill doomsday scenario -

http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=8396

What is going on down there?



There is growing evidence that the BP oil spill may be impossible to plug, because
there is a leak in the well casing 1,000 feet beneath the ocean floor. If so, not even
relief wells are likely to stop the flow in the foreseeable future. If the flow continues
for more than a few more months it could turn into an extinction event of millennial
proportions.

On the Canadian website Global Research, the writer of "Washington's Blog" writes
that the May 31st edition of the Washington Post reported that, "Sources at two
companies involved with the well said that BP also discovered new damage inside the
well below the seafloor and that, as a result, some of the drilling mud that was
successfully forced into the well was going off to the side into rock formations." The
Post quotes a BP official who, insisting on anonymity, said, "We discovered things that
were broken in the sub- surface." He said that the mud plug was taking the oil "out
to the side, into the formation."

The broken underwater casing may have been what prevented the mud that was
injected into the well from getting far enough down the well to overcome the
pressure from the escaping oil and gas.

The website quotes Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) as saying, "We're looking into
something new right now, that there's reports of oil that's seeping up from the
seabed, which would indicate, if that's true, that the well casing itself is actually
pierced underneath the seabed. So, you know, the problems could be just enormous
with what we're facing."

This statement was part of an interview with Nelson by Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC,
who said, "Now let me understand better what you're saying. If that is true that it is
coming up form that seabed, even the relief well won't be the final solution to cap
this thing. That means that we've got oil gushing up at disparate places along the
ocean floor." And this gushing oil will be likely to kill whatever marine life it comes in
contact with.

Global Research quotes oil industry expert Rob Cavner as saying, "The real doomsday
scenario here is if that casing gives up, and it does come through the other strings of
pipe. Remember, it is concentric pipe that holds this well together. If it comes into
the formation, basically, you've got uncontrolled [oil] flow to the sea floor. And that is
the doomsday scenario."

Nobody knows the extent to which toxic chemicals will rise into the air and be
deposited in rain, or the degree to which the alteration of the oceans will change the
weather, or how much oceanic oxygen exchange will be destroyed by the spill. But all
of these things must happen, and if the spill cannot be stopped even by relief wells,
then these effects will cause profound but immeasurable changes in the ecosystems
of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.