Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Climate Change and Environmental Issues BP Oil Spill

The media has complained that the Coast Guard and BP have prevented them from viewing affected areas. On May 18, 2010, CBS reporter Kelly Cobiella tried to visit the beaches in the Gulf of Mexico to report on the disaster. She was met by BP contractors and American Coast Guard officers who threatened her with arrest if she did not leave. The Coast Guard officials specified that they were acting under the authority of BP. On May 25, a scheduled flyover was denied permission after BP officials learned that a member of the press would be on board.

Their presence has blown to smithereens the cliché that oil floats on water. That correctly describes what happens when pure crude spills into the sea from a well in shallow water or a tanker at the surface, as happened with the Exxon Valdez. But when a gusher is 5,000 feet down, consists of a mix of crude oil and dissolved methane, and is being disgorged under tremendous pressure and temperature, studies predict that the physical and chemical properties of the spill will undergo an ugly alchemy. "The dispersants are changing the chemistry and physics of the oil," says biological oceanographer Ajit Subramaniam of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "They are creating microlayers of oil that are being carried by the deep currents." Even without dispersants, the crude gets broken into zillions of droplets suspended in the water column and corralled there, prevented from rising to the surface. The result is the undersea plumes that oceanographer Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia and colleagues first detected from the research vessel Pelican three weeks after the blowout. Despite years of research showing that undersea oil might form such plumes, BP's Hayward insists it cannot. "Oil floats!" he repeatedly says.

Making matters more interesting, the chemical dispersants that work fairly well on surface spills, breaking apart oil slicks into droplets that degrade more quickly than a contiguous layer, may be exacerbating the undersea-oil problem. A 2007 report by the Minerals Management Service—which OK's oil and gas leases—on the environmental consequences of oil and gas drilling on the outer continental shelf concluded that an underwater plume is a real possibility: "The use of dispersants on oil spills … could cause these compounds to reach the deeper water reef areas." BP has pumped 185,000 gallons of dispersant onto the out-of-control wellhead (plus 800,000 on the surface). That is causing more of the gushing crude to break up into the very form unlikely to rise to the surface. There have been no suggestions that BP intended to keep the worst of the spill out of sight.

This event has TRULY impressed upon me just how little power a sovereign government has over a major multi-national corporation. The arm wrestling match is over and the corporations WON.
Corporations really DO have more power than a government, MUCH MORE power. They didn't just win, they CRUSHED the opponent.

Our president IS A PUPPET, a figurehead.

In fact, we are nothing to them except chattel.
We are a CROP to be HARVESTED with the remains burned or thrown away.
We are an expendable commodity.

PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. – The timing might be a bit off for tourists hoping to waste away in Margaritaville. But that doesn't bother Jimmy Buffett.

The singer — whose tunes are as much a part of life in this beach town as fried grouper sandwiches, Land Shark beer and the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels — is planning to open a 162-room Margaritaville Hotel in a week.

As tar balls came ashore Saturday from an oil plume shooting out of the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, Buffett said he had no plans to delay the opening.

"This will pass," he said as walked along the city's beachfront and fishing pier with Fla. Gov. Charlie Crist.