Gulf Disaster: a horrible accident, or deliberate act?
By SCRIBE - 6-20-2010
It would appear that despite the tragic horrors and unimagined destruction now taking place in the Gulf of Mexico, there is a silver lining for a select lucky few. But, is it just Luck working here; is it all just a coincidence? Or is something more maybe going on?
Just days prior to the Gulf oil drilling operation and ensuing environmental catastrophe, Barack Obama suddenly does a 180 and gives his approval to resume offshore oil drilling. How odd and out of character that is: in February of 2009 President Obama reversed a decision by the outgoing Bush Administration to re-open U.S. coastal waters to oil and gas drilling; he had campaigned against traditional energy sources in favor of so-called “sustainable” alternatives such as wind, solar, etc; and he admitted in January of 2008 that it was his plan to use a Cap and Trade system to cause energy prices to “skyrocket” in order to force people to transition to “green” technologies. Now, Obama is using the gulf disaster as an excuse to not only ban offshore drilling, but also to demand passage of his “cap and trade” energy bill. A bill, by the way, that was finally considered "dead and going nowhere" thanks to the hard work of eveyone who helped to expose the "global warming" scam!
But there's more. We have numerous “coincidental” financial and business transactions that took place in the days, weeks, and months prior to the rig explosion. Here are just a few:
Goldman Sachs placed shorts on TransOcean stock (owner of the failed Deepwater Horizon rig) just days before the explosions rocked the rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and sent TransOcean stocks plunging. But thanks to their lucky move, Goldman Sachs didn't suffer a loss. Not only did Goldman Sachs short shares of TransOcean, they also ditched 4,680,822 shares of BP stock worth $250 million (44% of their BP holdings) before the disaster, as well. Wow, what luck: to get rid of substantial holdings in 2 companies right before they suffer huge losses. But it's just a coincidence, right?
Well, if that weren’t enough of a “coincidence”, how about this: chief executive of BP, Tony Hayward, also sold 223,288 shares of stock (worth over $2 million) in his own company on March 17th, just a few weeks before the BP Gulf mess. By doing so he avoided losing more than $614,449 when BP’s share price plunged after the oil spill began. Again, what luck!
Are there any ties between President Obama and Goldman Sachs? Well, while it would have been against Federal Law for Goldman Sachs (the company) to have contributed to the Obama campaign, that didn't stop Goldman Sachs employees from contributing over $739,521 to the Obama campaign, making Goldman Sachs employees the largest contributor. Today the Obama Administration is full of former Goldman Sachs employees. Coincidence?
And what about Obama and BP? During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant, and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records.
Are there there are any ties between Goldman Sachs and BP? Peter Sutherland is the chairman of Goldman Sachs International. He also served as chairman of BP right up until last year. He is currently a director for both BP and Goldman Sachs.
My question is, what did these people know that the rest of us didn’t? How is it that stock in BP and Transocean suddenly became so unattractive to those closest to the disaster? Ah, the coincidences! But wait, there's more.
Halliburton (ties to Dick Cheney) was in the process of acquiring Boots & Coots, a company well known for putting out some of the world’s largest oil and gas fires, just eleven days prior to the explosion. Services they provide include “deepwater application and well inspections, as well as blowout prevention and control counsel or assistanc”. And now their expertise is being put to use in the Gulf; they are one of two primary companies designing relief-well strategies for the BP blowout. What luck! The company famous for profiting from no-bid government contracts in war zones; will now collect for themselves yet another “windfall” profit from the BP disaster.
Halliburton isn’t the only company that stands to make a killing off the crisis. TransOcean took out a $560 million insurance policy on the Deepwater Horizon rig; an amount well above the rig’s value. After paying out $200 million to the survivors and the families of the deceased, TransOcean will have still have a tidy sum of $270 million in profit left over from the disaster.
Internal documents from BP, which Congress now has as they conduct their investigation, have shown that there were sufficient warnings as the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig had serious problems. These problems included the well casing and the blowout preventer. The internal documents reveal that BP noted in March after encountering several problems on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig that they were struggling with a loss of “well control.” Furthermore, the internal documents illustrate that BP had concerns as far back as 11 months prior to March regarding the well casing and the blowout preventer. Although rig workers warned against continuing to drill and continuing to drill violated company policies, the rig continued to operate after gaining approval from BP colleagues.
BP made a series of decisions aimed at saving money that heightened the risk of a catastrophic blowout, with a BP engineer calling the Deepwater Horizon platform "a nightmare well" in an e-mail issued less than a week before the explosion. The blowout preventer was damaged in a previously unreported accident in late March 2010. The American Bureau of Shipping last inspected the rig's failed blowout preventer in 2005. According to Transocean, workers had been performing standard routines and had no indication of any problems prior to the explosion. Preliminary findings from BP’s internal investigation released by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on May 25 indicated several serious warning signs in the hours just prior to the explosion. Equipment readings indicated gas bubbling into the well, which could signal an impending blowout. The heavy drilling mud in the pipes initially held down the gas of the leaking well. A BP official onboard the rig directed the crew to replace the drilling mud, which is used to keep the well's pressure down, with lighter seawater even though the rig's chief driller protested. According to a number of rig workers, it was understood that workers could get fired for raising safety concerns that might delay drilling.
That the crisis in the Gulf might have been planned and executed with the intention of profiting from it, while also pushing an environmental control agenda, might not be all that far-fetched. It also could explain the pathetic federal response to the disaster (which continues). It surely couldn't be that the government wasn't prepared, because just three weeks prior to the real disaster, the U.S. Coast Guard conducted operations in the Gulf, simulating a major oil spill and practicing the federal response to it.
The question is, why has the Obama Administration refused every offer of help? What the American people don't know is that well over a dozen different countries have offered to help clean the oil sludge from the Gulf. The Dutch government called Obama and offered to loan BP ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and a plan to quickly build sand barriers to protect the marshlands. Numerous private sector solutions have been offfered. One example offered was from Dr. Henry Crichlow, the world's foremost oil blowout specialist, who after Gulf War I developed the blowout engineering for 800 or more wells in Kuwait, and provided quick relatively inexpensive solutions to either recover the oil with the Crichlow connector from the pipe a mile down or to "Kill the Spill" completely. Yet, for reasons unknown, the Obama Administration has turned them all down.
Obama has a crisis on his hands, and as Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel so aptly stated to the media in February 2009, "you never let a crisis go to waste." It appears thay are following that advice.
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