Gulf Oil Spill: Ties to Cheney and Acoustic Switch Not Installed

Vatic Note:   While I considered this a good article and commentary, I did not include the one he references at the end of his article.   The reason is all blame was passed on in a "partisan" fashion to one party which is blatantly irresponsible.  The same Gov dept that was staffed under Cheney, was kept by Obama similar to the Sec of defence and all officers under Bush, so some responsibility resides with the Commander in Chief and as Truman said "The Buck Stops Here".   Obama and his people knew what was going on in the White House during all that time and the raping and pillaging the oil companies and energy companies did to the public during that time.   No changes were ever made so blame belongs in both places.  Now its imperative it gets stopped and cleaned up.   Whatever happened to the executive order Obama was to sign banning all offshore fishing both commercial and sports in favor of imports from asia on our fish???? That is something no one talks about, now do they, except Vatic did right after the blow out and about the executive order as well.  

SOLUTION:  This is one of those times that we must face the fact that we, united, cannot  fix this problem in the traditional way except through straw to mop up the oil, however it doesn't help with the continued flow of oil from the giant hole that exists.   So its time to go back and revisit our strategy #1 and begin imaging the hole plugged and waters clean and fish returning.  Its something we each can do and do together even though we are apart.  So please read it again and lets give that a real serious shot.  I firmly believe that praying, or imaging or whatever your preference will work to help make this heal.  Such prayers or imaging can aid those who are serious about fixing it, can provide  them with the creative ideas they need to do this job.  So lets all pitch in and prosecute later.  

http://www.salem-news.com/printview.php?id=14500

Salem-News.com (May-14-2010 22:30)

Gulf Oil Spill: Ties to Cheney and Acoustic Switch Not Installed
Robert O'Dowd Salem-News.com
Provided to Vatic by Graham Junks, Britian

Ground work for Gulf disaster was established with a permissive tone with oil industry set in secret meetings in 2001. An acoustic switch to automatically shut down oil wells was reversed by Federal agency in 2003 may be a major factor in blowup.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - In secret meetings with the oil company officials in 2001, incoming Vice President Cheney set the foundation for a permissive, welcome mat with the oil industry.

After stocking the Federal government’s Material Management Service with his cronies, this agency reversed an earlier 2000 decision requiring a mandatory accusatorial regulator, allowing BP and others not to install a $500,000 acoustic switch to automatically shut down oil gushers.

For BP, this had to be a dumb business decision. BP’s $650 million dollar well may have been saved by a half million investment in an acoustic switch (VN: Not to worry, I am sure one of the BP investors, Goldman Sachs will share some of the billions they made shorting the owner company of the rig, since the 650 million is just a drop in the bucket compared to what they made with their "psychic" vision of the future). For the country and those living and working in the Gulf region, the final tab may very well be in the billions.

Cheney’s Halliburton is connected to the April 20th explosion. The investigation of the cause of the blowup is not completed. As it turned out, Halliburton completed an operation to reinforce the drilling hole casing with concrete before the explosion. Halliburton is currently under investigation for a blowout in the Timor Sea caused by a faulty concrete casing (VN: They should be under investigation for the coincidence of buying an oil rig fire fighting company on the 12th of April just before the blow out).

The Material Management Service reported that 18 of 39 blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico were due to poor workmanship in injecting the cement around the well casing. Was Cheney’s Halliburton responsible for the April 20th blowout? Stay tuned. In the end, responsibility for the explosion and the extensive damages from it may well be decided by a jury.

On April 20th, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig went up in flames some 50 miles southeast of Louisiana, killing 11 men. It’s May 14th and BP hasn’t capped the gusher, vehemently denies concern over measuring the spill; its only interest is in capping the gusher.

The company appears content with the ‘low ball’ 5,000 barrel/day number prepared by our government. I guess it wouldn’t be good PR to admit to a 70,000 barrel/day gusher, even one at 5,000 feet deep in the Gulf.

If this engineering estimate prepared by Purdue University is on target, that’s a lot of oil dumped into the Gulf of Mexico. At 42 gallons per barrel, the Purdue estimate equates to about 3 million gallons per day.

For a company that claims its focus is on plugging the leak, none of their efforts have been even marginally successful. The 100 ton doom didn’t work nor did the smaller ‘top hat.’

Other efforts are underway. No back, ugly oil stains on the beaches, but with the gusher at such great depths and the high volume of dispersants, there's much to be concerned about.

Will we ever be able to eat Louisiana shrimp again?

Even if BP doesn’t want to measure the gusher, don’t we need to estimate the “total oil spill” to begin to understand the environmental impact? Congressman Edward Markey thinks so.

Congressman Edward Markey (D, MA), who chairs a Congressional subcommittee on energy and the environment, a miscalculation of the oil spill’s volume may hamper efforts to stop it.

Markey said, “I am concerned that an underestimation of the oil spill’s flow may be impeding the ability to solve the leak and handle the management of the disaster,” he said in a statement Thursday.

“If you don’t understand the scope of the problem, the capacity to find the answer is severely compromised.” (VN: Hear that? Think about that a moment, if we don't understand the scope of the problem, then any solution is compromised, now you know why we do this blog, since we believe the same way about all of it, not just the oil blow out)

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., analysis in the Huffington Post on May 5th, “Sex, Lies and Oil Spills, provides valuable insight into the shenanigans between Material Management Service officials and big oil.

The sad part is that this is not fiction, even though some of this makes “Peyton Place” look like a kindergarten at play in comparison. Kennedy’s story is reproduced below.

Bob O’Dowd is a former U.S. Marine with thirty years of experience on the east coast as an auditor, accountant, and financial manager with the Federal government

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