Pollution or Extinction?

Expert calls oil spill doomsday scenario – There is growing evidence that the BP oil spill may be impossible to plug, because there is a leak in the well casing 1,000 feet beneath the ocean floor. If so, not even relief wells are likely to stop the flow in the foreseeable future. If the flow continues for more than a few more months it could turn into an extinction event of millennial proportions.

On the Canadian website Global Research, the writer of “Washington’s Blog” writes that the May 31st edition of the Washington Post reported that, “Sources at two companies involved with the well said that BP also discovered new damage inside the well below the seafloor and that, as a result, some of the drilling mud that was successfully forced into the well was going off to the side into rock formations.” The Post quotes a BP official who, insisting on anonymity, said, “We discovered things that were broken in the sub-surface.” He said that the mud plug was taking the oil “out to the side, into the formation.”

The broken underwater casing may have been what prevented the mud that was injected into the well from getting far enough down the well to overcome the pressure from the escaping oil and gas.

The website quotes Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) as saying, “We’re looking into something new right now, that there’s reports of oil that’s seeping up from the seabed, which would indicate, if that’s true, that the well casing itself is actually pierced underneath the seabed. So, you know, the problems could be just enormous with what we’re facing.”

This statement was part of an interview with Nelson by Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC, who said, “Now let me understand better what you’re saying. If that is true that it is coming up form that seabed, even the relief well won’t be the final solution to cap this thing. That means that we’ve got oil gushing up at disparate places along the ocean floor.” And this gushing oil will be likely to kill whatever marine life it comes in contact with.

Global Research quotes oil industry expert Rob Cavner as saying, “The real doomsday scenario here is if that casing gives up, and it does come through the other strings of pipe. Remember, it is concentric pipe that holds this well together. If it comes into the formation, basically, you’ve got uncontrolled [oil] flow to the sea floor. And that is the doomsday scenario.”

Nobody knows the extent to which toxic chemicals will rise into the air and be deposited in rain, or the degree to which the alteration of the oceans will change the weather, or how much oceanic oxygen exchange will be destroyed by the spill. But all of these things must happen, and if the spill cannot be stopped even by relief wells, then these effects will cause profound but immeasurable changes in the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.

There are certainly a lot of extinction events around lately, and we hope the next one won’t be US! In a diary about attending the screening of a movie about global warming, Anne Strieber once compared this website to a roach, because we’re stamped on and dismissed but we just won’t go away. There’s only ONE thing that can kill us off: neglect. We need YOU to make sure we don’t die so subscribe today! And if you have anything left at the end of the month, please click on the “donate” tab on our homepage too.

NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.