Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Wayne Madsen on BP & Obama Administration


Wayne Madsen Report cited the Obama administration's strong support for BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling effort. It's 3-4 billion barrels of oil would provide domestic oil supply in the case of a U.S. attack on Iran. That oil is now sloshing around in the Gulf of Mexico, washing into beaches and marshes. Madsen's research has interesting connections to my findings.

He mentions two deepwater drilling sites, Tiber and Macondo, both drilled by Deepwater Horizon.

In September 2009, the Deepwater Horizon successfully sunk a well bore at a depth of 35,055 below sea level at the Tiber Prospect in the Keathley Canyon block 102 in the Gulf of Mexico, southeast of Houston.

During the September drilling operations, the Deepwater Horizon drill penetrated a massive undersea oil deposit but BP's priorities changed when the Macondo site in the Mississippi Canyon off the coast of Louisiana was found to contain some 3-4 billion barrels of oil in an underground cavern estimated to be about the size of Mount Everest.

BP's joint venture partner in the massive Tiber field is ConocoPhillips. Obama's Oil Spew Commission co-chair William K. Reilly controls over $2 million in ConocoPhillips stock. He's on temporary leave from the ConocoPhillips board of directors, but will return after his commission duty. Their report is due to the President by the end of 2010.

Madsen went on to report:

The newly-discovered estimated 3-4 billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico would cover America's oil needs for up to eight months if there was a military attack on Iran that resulted in the bottling up of the Strait of Hormuz to oil tanker traffic, resulting in a cut-off of oil to the United States from the Persian Gulf. Obama, Salazar, Chu, and Gates green-lighted the risky Macondo drilling operation from the outset, according to WMR's government sources.

Should this be true, it explains why Ken Salazar bailed on the investigative component of his 30 day report. America now has investigative cornucopia on Deepwater Horizon. Will they cordon off undesirable avenues of the investigation?

The spate of Hurricane Katrina investigations proved quantity does not mean quality. The Bush White House conducted an abysmal investigation, not addressing responsibility for patient evacuations or the powerless facility with the highest patient death toll. This casts doubt on the Executive Branch's ability to investigate itself.

WMR learned that BP was able to have several safety checks waved because of the high-level interest by the White House and Pentagon in tapping the Gulf of Mexico bonanza find in order to plan a military attack on Iran without having to be concerned about an oil and natural gas shortage from the Persian Gulf after an outbreak of hostilities with Iran.

BP still has an ongoing operation to drill down to 40,000 feet below sea level at the Liberty field off the north coast of Alaska.

A second Oil Spew Commissioner has BP Alaska ties. Fran Ulmer is Chancellor of the University of Alaska-Anchorage, the beneficiary of over $30 million in donations from BP and ConocoPhillips since 1999. Her boss, UA President Mark Hamilton, sat on BPAmerica's External Advisory Council.

It's a small world for the politically palatable, power elite.