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A picture of the Gulf oil spill as seen from space. NASA Photo, Public Domain
The latest updates on the Gulf oil spill exemplify the principle "one step forward, two steps back" more than anything. Some good news emerged as BP reported success in siphoning off some of the leaking oil to a surface ship. However, even more bad news came out with new videos of the leak reports of oil coming ashore. Here is the latest updates on the spill. The latest pictures of the disaster can be seen below.
- New videos released by BP showed the leaks coming from the riser and the pipeline. Both videos showed massive amounts of oil gushing out of the leaks even after the siphon was inserted. One expert interviewed by MSNBC said his earlier estimate of 70,000 barrels-a-day is now too low given what he sees on the new videos. BP still seems to be running with a number of about 5,000 barrels leaking each day.
- The no-fishing zone in the Gulf has now been doubled because of the reach of the Oil spill. The zone now encompasses 19% of the overall area in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Over 150 dead sea turtles have washed ashore since the disaster began. One expert interviewed by Reuters called this number abnormally high for this time of year. Tests are being done on the carcasses to see if the oil spill was related to their deaths.
- The Los Angeles Times has a report which details the spills effect on wildlife. According to the experts they interview, the full impact of the spill to wildlife may never be known since many animals are likely dying offshore and then sinking. The effects of the spill on the ecosystem of the area could last for years.
- The economic impact from the spill is already being felt. Many fisherman and oyster bed workers have been laid off because of the disaster. In addition, the prices for fish, shrimp, and oysters have all increased dramatically with the anticipated decrease of future supply. Hotels and resort along the Gulf Coast also report many cancellations because of the spill.
- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration believes the oil spill has likely already hit the Gulf current loop. That loop has the potential to take the spill to the Florida Keys and all the way up the East Coast. Scientists are particularly worried about the oil's effect on the corral reef environment off Florida's coast.
- Meanwhile, Republicans continue to obstruct attempts by Democrats to increase the liability of oil companies for the disaster. Democrats have proposed a bill which would raise the damages cap to $10 billion instead of the current cap of $75 million. Two Republican Senators have raised objections effectively stalling the bill.
Comments
this is so sad that bp cant get this right ! they should NOT be able to dill anymore unless this leak is stopped,and the public sees ALL videos,is our right_ bp is in our waters causing all of this danage,putting fishermen out of work,this has to stop!! why no pics/video bp ? why,whats the problem ??? You guys allready screwed up !!!
yeah you are right, why BP? why not that many pics/videos? if you dont have the time to post them,hire some one to do it for you,its our right to see them!! You folks at bp have already caused the damage,and are causing more hour by hour,get this leak stopped this week,stop the bs- show us the pics,and etc..
Can't forget the tragedy that 11 people were killed, and the huge amount of money this is costing BP. But the other side of the story is otherwise pretty exciting. This was part of one of the largest oil finds in US history- in the deepest well ever drilled in the world.
Oil companies like BP are pushing the limits of technology in dangerous conditions to make modern life possible, while the pretentious and self-righteous spit on them. When all this fuss dies down this find will lead to a much needed economic boost to the area and the country.
(as long is it's not shut down for the sake of politics and a couple of sickly sea birds)
guys im a a strong supporter of the republican party, i live in the florida panhandle, im here in the mix of all this. And i want bp to go down hard for this, no oil here yet but that doesnt matter, memorial day is 1 of 3 huge summer weekends for tourism here, and cancellations by the thousands, so our econoomy is going to **** for this so let me say this loud and clear **** BP AND ANT WHO STILL SUPPORT THEM.
The private, foreign International Monetary/Banking Cartel controls its Demo/Repub-puppets in Washington and controls its oil company executives. And everything the Cartel does is anti-life, absolutely no exceptions; and their "pretended" Gulf oil clean-up is a glaring case in point. Instead of cleaning up the unprecedented catastrophe created by the Cartel's mega-corporations (Halliburton, Transocean, and British Petroleum), these very same companies seem to be purposely killing our Gulf of Mexico, under the pretense of cleaning it up. Instead of using safe, non-toxic ways to gather up the rogue oil gushing from their incompetence, or planned cataclysm, the private Cartel is using an extremely toxic chemical dispersant, with the approval of the (criminal)Obama administration. BP has even refused to use their own oil tankers, lying in the Gulf, to suck up most of the runaway oil, and possibly salvage it for sale later, as was done successfully after a Saudi spill in the '90's.
Nick Pozzi, a former oil pipeline engineering and operations project manager is puzzled why BP did not salvage perfectly good crude oil for later sale, and to thereby protect marine and wildlife. What Mr. Pozzi does not know is the oil companies are owned by the world's only legal counterfeiters the International Monetary/Banking Cartel - who can "print" all the money they want, so making money on Gulf oil was not important to them. Killing the Gulf of Mexico is, apparently, important to them, for their own cryptic and esoteric reasons. If the Cartel had wanted to save marine life, any oil they had not vacuumed up could have been mulched with any number of non-toxic materials, such as "Oil Sponge," a name trademarked by Phase III, Inc.
Rated as the "best performing" absorbent by the US Army Corp of Engineers, Oil Sponge is 100% organic, and is made from renewable resources, not toxic chemicals.
It cannot yet be proven that the Monetary Cartel purposely blew up their own wellhead, but the crimes they have committed in their so-called "clean-up" efforts are well documented, in spite of no corporate media outrage.
After the Exxon Valdez incident of March 1989, Mycelx of Georgia developed what looks like a paper towel to soak up to 50 times its weight in oil. And while this product is used from the Middle East to Europe to Canada it was of no interest to the parties Obama charged with cleaning up the Gulf of the floating oil those very same parties caused.
Then there is the Aerohaz product manufactured by Sustainable Technologies, Inc. that encapsulates environmental contaminants, making crude oil and other oil like substances easy to retrieve.
Even hair naturally separates oil from water, leaving large tar globs, in which mushrooms can then be seeded. And as the mushrooms grow, they digest the oil, leaving non-toxic organics, harmless to marine life.
And now that they've probably destroyed the tourist, shrimping, and fishing industries along the Gulf Coast, we'll be hearing about more "stimulus packages" that will make what money we do have even more worthless as it enriches Wall Street. But in the world of what could have been, there's hay, sawdust, crushed volcanic rock, and even kitty litter that could have mulched with the oil on the surface of the Gulf waters, making for easy pick-up. But, oil industry executives and their confederates in the Obama administration quickly made sure that all spewing oil would either sink well below the surface, or never rise to it, with over half a million gallons of their dispersants. Now the oil that's been gushing for weeks can never be vacuumed up or safely neutralized. Worse yet, these international enemies of humanity, and life in the Gulf, committed their dastardly deed of deeply submerging the floating oil with an extremely dangerous amount of chemical dispersant.
Trying to give this mass murder a positive spin, BP spokesman John Crabtree said his corporation had dropped more than 560,000 gallons of [toxic] chemical dispersants on the surface slicks and 28,700 gallons of the chemical at the wellhead, 5,000 feet below sea-level. Crabtree's justification for such an insane, criminal act was that the dispersants would drive the oil well below the water's surface, keeping it away from coastal shorelines. So instead of removing the oil, BP decided to make the oil even MORE toxic, and drive it deep into the ocean where it can never be retrieved, but will kill all marine life in its path. BP's chemical dispersants contain 2-butoxyethanol, a compound that kills marine and wildlife, exactly the life our clean-up measures should try to save. BP's chemical dispersants, currently being dropped by airplanes, break the crude oil into tiny droplets that sink well below the water's surface, where they form a giant cloud or plume, making it impossible to gather
With this poisonous plume creating a dead zone, currently estimated to be about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, hidden at about 3,000 feet of water, no one can place an accurate figure on how much oil has actually rushed into the Gulf. According to Stephen Howden, an oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi, the Loop Current could drag the oxygen destroying cloud into shallower waters thus potentially impacting the coral reefs and fisheries near Florida's coast. Another person famous for misleading and under stated remarks is our president, Barack Obama. There can be no denying that President Obama and his Enviromental Destruction Agency regulators are accomplices to the crimes in the Gulf of Halliburton, Transocean, and British Petroleum by allowing these perpetrators of the of the disaster to be the ones in charge.
How much longer will our government allow these corporate criminals to fail with the capping this volcano of oil?
Thus far, President Obama has made a grandstand play by pretending to excoriate the oil company executives responsible for the Gulf tragedy for not taking proper responsibility.
Excuse me Sir, it's you who should have taken control and responsibility by tasking competent individuals and companies to cap this runaway well, and to clean up the mess, without destroying the entire Gulf of Mexico in the process.
And instead of excoriating the oil company executives and government bureaucrats who dumped over a half million gallons of toxic dispersants into the Gulf, you should be arresting them for crimes against humanity, not to mention their crimes against marine and wildlife. The very obvious point Mr. Obama, is you should have saved our Gulf of Mexico, by making sure Transocean, Halliburton, and British Petroleum had absolutely nothing to do with the clean-up efforts, rather than making them pay to turn the Gulf into a dead zone. But you work for the same people they do don't you?
"There is oil leaking. We need to stop it, and we need to stop it as soon as possible," said Obama. It's not a leak, Mr. Obama. It's a volcanic gusher spewing out an Exxon Valdez every two to four days. From whales and dolphins to sardines, from starfish to coral reefs, from microscopic organisms to all the fish in the sea, the Cartel has embarked upon killing, and will kill unless they are stopped. Are you man enough for the job, Mr. President?
Oil companies are only responsible for $75m in damages. What a crock. All the billions they get in profits, why should there even be a cap. They should be responsible for the cost of cleaning up their entire mess!
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