'Deafening silence' on BP Gulf oil still leaking

Although the deep sea BP Gulf of Mexico oil well was said to be capped 16 months ago, the oil is still bubbling up from BP's Macondo Formation area and the military and oil industry officials still remain silent about it according to an environmental attorney who spoke to Couthouse News Service Monday, although the new movie, "The Big Fix" documents details of the ongoing Gulf Catastrophe and related human rights violations, including the right to health.

New Orleans-based environmental attorney Stuart Smith told Courthouse News Service that new oil is washing ashore barrier islands in Louisiana and Mississippi and, "There's a deafening silence on the issue" from the U.S. military's Coast Guard and from BP, the Petrochemical-Military-Industrial-Complex (PMIC). 

View slideshow: Stuart Smith, environmental attorney among host of 'The Big Fix' Gulf truthers

On April 20, 2010 the TransOcean Deep Water Horizon deep sea oil rig rented by BP exploded, setting off a series of health rights abuses including carpet-bombing the Gulf region with Corexit that with oil, is eleven times more lethal than oil alone.

Since then, toxicologists studying fish from Louisiana waters are finding heightened levels of cancer-causing carcinogens and genetic mutations. An untold number of human casualties in the region have resulted thus far, although the human toll was predicted to be high by experts, such as oil guru, the late Matt Simmons and by toxicologist Riki Ott.

"In the spring of this year, we did some sampling and when we got the results back, it was a fingerprint match to fresh Macondo oil," Smith said, as he has informed the media at "The Big Fix" press conferences and indicates in an interview in the movie.

Courthouse News reports Smith saying BP and the Coastguard sent investigators to the well in August, and they came back saying no oil was leaking. 

The fingerprint had already shown that the fresh oil matched that from the Macondo area.

"That was very interesting to us. We couldn't understand why. Then again, we did some more testing this summer and it came back the same way. We're finding fresh Macondo oil washing up on beaches on the barrier islands. And then, through sources that I have, we heard that their [BP's] well was leaking, and that there was oil in the Gulf, and that they had research vessels there at the site. "

"We covered that, and then there was a big push back from BP, denying it. And so Bonny Schumaker [a pilot and founder of Wings of Care] flew out there in late August, and lo and behold, there's fresh oil bubbling up to the surface and this is still in the vicinity of the well. We don't know how much oil it is." 

Smith's blog last week details Schumaker's Nov. 12 flight over the Macondo well: "Macondo Mystery Deepens: Nine Large Vessels Spotted Working in Vicinity of Deepwater Horizon Site." 

The Coast Guard and BP "said they sent remotely operated vehicles down there which found no oil leaking from the well itself, and then there was speculation that it might be leaking from the equipment that has fallen to the seafloor."

Transocean did a submersible dive and reportedly found nothing leaking from the equipment according to Smith.

"We know that fresh oil is washing up to this day. It's a fingerprint match to the Macondo crude. That's even been admitted by Ed Overton, who is a research scientist at LSU that's been hired by the Coast Guard to do these tests. 

"The only explanation is that there has been damage to the seafloor because of the blowout, which has allowed oil to come from that formation."

BP indicated to Courthouse News in a written statement that the fresh oil is from natural seeps.

Smith responded to that statement saying, "If there are seeps in this area they are not natural."

"BP was required to do a seafloor survey prior to applying for a permit to drill. If these seeps were not discovered at that time, they are clearly related to the disaster and the methods used to try to seal the well."

Critically acclaimed 2011 movie, "The Big Fix," featuring Peter Fonda, Jason Mraz, Greg Palast, Chris Hedges, Stuart Smith and a host of other "new American heroes" in the human and environmental rights field opens in New York next weekend.

"The Big Fix" was the sole American documentary accepted into the world's most prestigious film festival, the Cannes Film Festival in France this spring, yet last week, Hollywood's Academy did not shortlist among fifteen documentaries the "Gulf oil truth film" for an Oscar.

Before Cannes Film Festival. Mr. Fonda was met by government officials who told him he could attend "The Big Fix" press conferences but could not speak about the dead dolphins, prompting Fonda to write a letter to President Obama in which he called the PMIC Commander-in-Chief an "f***g traitor."