BP begins testing oil well cap

I really hope for a good outcome of the Mexican Gulf Oil Gusher.

People in the New Orleans area are still suffering from Hurricane Katrina since 5 years - people in Bodo Creek, Niger Delta, are suffering from Oil devastation since 50 years.
This is what may wait for the people at the Mexican Gulf, too.

Life expectancy of people living at Bodo Creek went down ten years due to poisoned water and environment. The Niger Delta has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless. Royal Dutch Shell remains.
Source: New York Times, June 16, 2010

4th of July - Independence Day

What is our Independence Day good for
if we are dependent from Oil ?

It is such a shame that in this year on
Independence Day we are reminded every minute of the poisonous oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, destroying the habitat of all these creatures living in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and depriving the people living at the shores of the Gulf of Mexico of their livelihood.

Let's do a dramatic switch over to renewable energy !

- a switch less dramatic than the Gulf 'oil spill' -
but with huge rewards, rewards we will never get by burning up fossil oil reserves.

When the United States Declaration of Independence was signed, the British still ruled this country.

Let us celebrate this 4th of July to become independent from the British again,
independent from the British Petroleum,
and pledge to get rid of the petroleum oil spill at the Gulf of Mexico!

Looking at this tremendous oil spill,
I have the feeling to be totally helpless.

Will our Government solve this situation?
What shall we do?

"Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man" - words of my hero, words of President Kennedy.

Today he would say: "Ask not what the Government will do for you, but what together we can do to be freed from the curse of oil".

I am sure you have heard the phrase "
Power to the people".

Dependency on oil makes helpless - Solar Panels give Power to the People, a power which can not be usurped to get power over people, on the contrary, Solar Power will set us free.

How often do we hear that we are living
in the land of the free?! Did you ever think about this?

Are we really living in the land of the free?

As long as we are depending on foreign oil or life threatening oil exploration, we are not living in the land of the free.

Only renewable energy will give us the freedom we deserve. Think about it!

People of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, and people all over the country, use your idle time and put Solar Panels on your roofs! Only Solar Panels will give Power to the People!

I know, everybody has to work hard and there is rarely any idle time.

But think about it! Decide for yourself, if you like to live as a free in this country or if you like to be depending on oil forever destroying more and more of our beautiful nature and country.

By the way, we have to admit, once and for all, in the Gulf of Mexico, most of the hydrocarbon reserves in the relatively shallow shelf waters have been drained!

The easy oil is gone!

Only in deep waters there’s plenty left: at least 56 billion barrels of oil equivalent — a measure that includes oil and natural gas — the catch is that finding oil at such depths is extremely challenging and hugely expensive.

But what a price has to be paid for this! We can see it every day.

A decision has to be made: living with oil forever destroying more and more of our beautiful nature and country up to the day where the last drop of oil has gone, or making a dramatic - but safe - switch to renewable energy from sun, like solar, wind, and geothermal now!

Geothermal energy needs deep drilling, but this should be no problem - to tap geothermal energy the oil rigs are coming in just right!

Collection of some data

Milestones in a timeline of decisions and catastrophe that will change our life forever

September 16, 2004
♦ Gulf of Mexico oil platform destroyed by Hurricane Ivan.

August 25, 2005
♦ Hurricane Katrina.
Over seventy countries pledged monetary donations or other assistance. Notably, Cuba and Venezuela were the first countries to offer assistance, all this aid was rejected by the U.S. government.

March 19, 2008
♦ Riots in Tibet.

March 19, 2008
♦ Early Spring Midwest floods.

March 19, 2008
♦ Mineral rights were purchased by BP.

June 20, 2008
♦ President Obama: "When I'm president, I intend to keep in place the moratorium here in Florida and around the country that prevents oil companies from drilling off Florida's coasts."

June 22, 2009
♦ Warnings about a blowout preventer worst-case scenario.

July 14, 2008
♦ President Bush lifts executive ban on offshore oil drilling.

October 7, 2009
♦ BP begins drilling the Macondo Well.

November 9, 2009
♦ Hurricane Ida damages rig - has to be replaced.

February 15, 2010
♦ 2010 Deepwater Horizon starts drilling in 5,000' depth.

February 16, 2010
♦ Barack Obama urges for new safe Nuclear Power Plants.
He acknowledged that there were concerns among environmentalists about nuclear power.

March 9, 2010
♦ Gasket on the blowout preventer damaged.

March 17, 2010
♦ BP Chief Tony Hayward sells 1/3 of his BP stock (933T$).

March 31, 2010
♦ President Obama announced the end of a decades-old ban on oil and gas drilling.

April 2, 2010
♦ President Obama: "Oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills."

April 15, 2010
♦ BP requests permit to fraction its blockage plan.

April 17, 2010
♦ Report: There may be a failure of the cement job.

April 18, 2010
♦ Report: Well may have a SEVERE gas flow problem.

April 19, 2010
♦ Halliburton completes final cementing.

April 20, 2010
♦ 7:00am BP cancels a recommended cement bond log test.
April 20, 2010
♦ 9:40pm BP officials celebrate 7 years no injury on rig.
April 20, 2010
♦ 9:45pm Deepwater Horizon on fire. 11 workers dead.

April 21, 2010
♦ Mary Landry named Federal On Scene Coordinator.

April 22, 2010
♦ 10:21 am Rig sinks. Oil leaking about 8,000 barrels/day.

April 29, 2010
♦ Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal: State of emergency.

April 30, 2010
♦ President Barack Obama halts new offshore drilling.

May 2, 2010
♦ Obama meets with fishermen and Coast Guard in Venice.

May 11, 2010
♦ BP, Transocean and Haliburton blaming each other.

May 22, 2010
♦ Obama signs executive order for National Commission.

May 27, 2010
♦ Obama announces six-month moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling permits in 500 feet of water or more. The moratorium will affect 31 wells.

May 28, 2010
♦ Obama visits Louisiana again.

May 31, 2010
♦ Robert Reich: United States should temporarily takeover BP.

June 1, 2010
♦ Mary Landry steps down, assistant James A. Watson takes over.

June 1, 2010
♦ Atlantic hurricane season begins.

June 2, 2010
♦ Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal opposes moratorium.

June 2, 2010
♦ Minerals Management Service approves new drilling permit for Gulf of Mexico offshore well.

June 4, 2010
♦ Tar balls arrive on beaches in Pensacola, Florida.

June 5, 2010
♦ Obama in his third trip to Louisiana since the disaster.

June 6, 2010
♦ Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour says "we have had virtually no oil".

June 9, 2010
♦ The Guardian reports that since April 20, 2010, 27 new offshore drilling projects have been approved by Minerals Management Service, the agency in charge of oversight. All but one project was granted similar exemptions from environmental review as BP. Two were submitted by the UK firm, and made the same claims about oil-rig safety and the implausibility of a spill damaging the environment.

June 10, 2010
♦ Testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs indicates there is a not single command and control hierarchy in the cleanup and frequently BP is still taking the lead. Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, said “I still don’t know who’s in charge. Is it BP? Is it the Coast Guard? I have spent more time fighting the officials of BP and the Coast Guard than fighting the oil.”

June 12, 2010
♦ Pools of crude oil as much as 4 inches deep hit Alabama beaches which previously had only been getting tar balls. State closes Mobile Bay to fishing. Only tarballs are washing up in Florida.

June 13, 2010
♦ BP begins installation of sensors into containment cap to measure oil flow.

June 14, 2010
♦ Obama in his fourth visit to the Gulf visits Gulfport.

June 15, 2010
♦ Competing oil executives testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee imply in their testimony that they have stronger safeguards than BP in drilling. Rex W. Tillerson, chairman of Exxon Mobil testifies if companies follow proper well design, drilling, maintenance and training procedures accidents like Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20 “should not occur. John S. Watson, chief executive of Chevron, testifies that every Chevron employee and contractor has the authority to stop work immediately if they see anything unsafe. Other executives testifying are Shell and Conoco Phillips. Edward J. Markey takes the oil companies to task noting that their submitted plans for dealing with disasters in the Gulf were nearly identical to BP’s including a plan to protect the walrus which does not occur in the Gulf.
Obama visits Pensacola, Florida where bathers are photographed on the beach in the background during the tour. He gives a speech at the Naval Air Station Pensacola.
Obama in the first speech from the Oval Office of his Presidency gives attorney Michael R. Bromwich power to clean up the Minerals Management Service.
Unified Command announces plans to move its 350 staff into 38,224 square feet of space to downtown New Orleans, Louisiana near the Superdome.

June 16, 2010
♦ Obama meets with Svanberg, Hayward, McKay.
♦ BP agrees fund a $20 billion escrow administered by Kenneth Feinberg.
♦ Svanberg said no BP quarterly dividends would be paid anytime in 2010.
♦ BP will pay $5 billion a year into the fund.
♦ BP’s net income was $21.2 Billion in 2008 and $16.6 Billion in 2009.
♦ “People say that large oil companies don’t care about the small people".
♦ Transocean's Newman testifying before the United States Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that the company is not legally responsible for "fluids emanating from the well."

June 16, 2010
♦ Gulf of Mexico oil platform still leaking after five years.

Our Presidents Oil Crisis Speech Today

The Gulf catastrophe, today exactly for eight weeks now, is an awful destroying crisis, but at the same time a chance - hopefully or not - once in a century to change history.

But what is happening now?

This crisis makes the United States more vulnerable than all the neglected hints about the planned attacks on the World Trade Center nine years ago.

Why?
The greatest cost is the cost of inaction, to quote The White House Speaker.
And people all over the world are recognizing that our President looks like a paper tiger.
He does all what in his power, it is said - the meaning: it is not in his power to do something. Everybody can see this with this crisis now.
Sorry to write this, because I am admiring our President and his great social skills.
We should do something about dependency on oil - that means:
we should, but we don't, doesn't it?


April 29 - U.S. President Barack Obama pledges "every single available resource," including the U.S. military, to contain the spreading spill... but that did not happen.

So it's clear for everybody what's going on.
I'm feeling pity, recognizing the situation.
Sorry about that.

But I learned exciting news:
Soon there will be cars powered by wind, sun, and rain!

To know what's really going on in this world, read George Orwell's epic "Nineteen Eighty-Four" strip off the garbage, and then you will find it.