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OIL RIG SABOTAGE, ATTACK OR JUST AN ACCIDENT?
 
Incident was an accident. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
US Orders Blackout Over North Korean Torpedoing Of Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig
Posted by Europe on May 01, 2010

This is an unconfirmed report from Russia and posted by the European Union Times.  Recent submarine attack from North Korea on a South Korea naval ship is reported on the right. 
 
 
An unconfirmed report circulating in the Kremlin today written by Russia’s Northern Fleet is reporting that the United States has ordered a complete media blackout over North Korea’s torpedoing of the giant Deepwater Horizon oil platform owned by the World’s largest offshore drilling contractor Transocean that was built and financed by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd., that has caused great loss of life, untold billions in economic damage to the South Korean economy, and an environmental catastrophe to the United States.
 
Most important to understand about this latest attack by North Korea against its South Korean enemy is that under the existing “laws of war” it was a permissible action as they remain in a state of war against each other due to South Korea’s refusal to sign the 1953 Armistice ending the Korean War.
 
To the attack itself, these reports continue, the North Korean “cargo vessel” DaiHong Dan believed to be staffed by 17th Sniper Corps “suicide” troops left Cuba’s Empresa Terminales Mambisas de La Habana (Port of Havana) on April 18th whereupon it “severely deviated” from its intended course for Venezuela’s Puerto Cabello bringing it to within 209 kilometers (130 miles) of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform which was located 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the coast of the US State of Louisiana where it launched an SSC Sang-o Class Mini Submarine (Yugo class) estimated to have an operational range of 321 kilometers (200 miles).
 
 
On the night of April 20th the North Korean Mini Submarine manned by these “suicidal” 17th Sniper Corps soldiers attacked the Deepwater Horizon with what are believed to be 2 incendiary torpedoes causing a massive explosion and resulting in 11 workers on this giant oil rig being killed outright.  Barely 48 hours later, on April 22nd , this North Korean Mini Submarine committed its final atrocity by exploding itself directly beneath the Deepwater Horizon causing this $1 Billion oil rig to sink beneath the seas and marking 2010’s celebration of Earth Day with one of the largest environmental catastrophes our World has ever seen.
 
With each passing hour this environmental catastrophe grows worse. And even though Obama has ordered military SWAT teams to protect other oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico from any further attack, and further ordered that all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico be immediately stopped, this massive oil spill has already reached the shores of America and with high waves and more bad weather forecast the likelihood of it being stopped from destroying thousands of miles of US coastland and wildlife appears unstoppable.
 
And not just to the environmental catastrophe that is unfolding the only devastation to be wrecked upon the United States and South Korea by this North Korean attack as the economic liabilities associated with this disaster are estimated by these Russian reports to be between $500 Billion to $1.5 Trillion, and which only a declaration of this disaster being an “act of war” would free some the World’s largest corporations from bankruptcy.
 
Important to note too in all of these events was that this was the second attack by North Korea on its South Korean enemy, and US ally, in a month as we had reported on in our March 28th report titled “Obama Orders ‘Immediate Stand-down’ After Deadly North Korean Attack” and which to date neither the Americans or South Korea have retaliated for and giving one senior North Korean party leader the courage to openly state that the North Korean military took “gratifying revenge” on South Korea.
 
And for those believing that things couldn’t get worse, they couldn’t be more mistaken as new reports coming from Japanese military sources are stating that North Korea is preparing for new launches of its 1,300 kilometer (807 miles) intermediate range ballistic “Rodong” missile which Russian Space Forces experts state is able to “deploy and detonate” an atomic electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device, and which if detonated high in the atmosphere could effectively destroy the American economy for years, if not decades, to come.
 
 
 
UNCLASSIFIED REPORT ON THE DEEPWATER HORIZON DRILLING RIG
 
 
You may have heard the news in the last two days about the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig which caught fire, burned for two days, then sank in 5,000 ft of water in the Gulf of Mexico. There are still 11 men missing, and they are not expected to be found.  The rig belongs to Transocean, the world’s biggest offshore drilling contractor. The rig was originally contracted through the year 2013 to BP and was working on BP’s Macondo exploration well when the fire broke out. The rig costs about $500,000 per day to contract. The full drilling spread, with helicopters and support vessels and other services, will cost closer to $1,000,000 per day to operate in the course of drilling for oil and gas. The rig cost about $350,000,000 to build in 2001 and would cost at least double that to replace today.

The rig represents the cutting edge of drilling technology. It is a floating rig, capable of working in up to 10,000 ft water depth. The rig is not moored; It does not use anchors because it would be too costly and too heavy to suspend this mooring load from the floating structure. Rather, a triply-redundant computer system uses satellite positioning to control powerful thrusters that keep the rig on station within a few feet of its intended location, at all times. This is called Dynamic Positioning.

The rig had apparently just finished cementing steel casing in place at depths exceeding 18,000 ft. The next operation was to suspend the well so that the rig could move to its next drilling location, the idea being that a rig would return to this well later in order to complete the work necessary to bring the well into production. It is thought that somehow formation fluids – oil /gas – got into the wellbore and were undetected until it was too late to take action. With a floating drilling rig setup, because it moves with the waves, currents, and winds, all of the main pressure control equipment sits on the seabed – the uppermost unmoving point in the well. This pressure control equipment – the Blowout Preventers, or ‘BOP’s” as they’re called, are controlled with redundant systems from the rig. In the event of a serious emergency, there are multiple Panic Buttons to hit,
and even fail-safe Deadman systems that should be automatically engaged when something of this proportion breaks out. None of them were aparently activated, suggesting that the blowout was especially swift to escalate at the surface. The flames were visible up to about 35 miles away. Not the glow – the flames. They were 200 – 300 ft high.  All of this will be investigated and it will be some months before all of the particulars are known. For now, it is enough to say that this marvel of modern technology, which had been operating with an excellent safety record, has burned up and sunk taking souls with it.

The well still is apparently flowing oil, which is appearing at the surface as a slick. They have been working with remotely operated vehicles, or ROV’s which are essentially tethered miniature submarines with manipulator arms and other equipment that can perform work underwater while the operator sits on a vessel. These are what were used to explore the Titanic, among other things. Every floating rig has one on board and they are in constant use. In this case, they are deploying ROV’s from dedicated service vessels. They have been trying to close the well in using a specialized port on the BOP’s and a pumping arrangement on their ROV’s. They have been unsuccessful so far. Specialized pollution control vessels have been scrambled to start working the spill, skimming the oil up.
In the coming weeks they will move in at least one other rig to drill a fresh well that will intersect the blowing one at its pay zone. They will use technology that is capable of drilling from a floating rig, over 3 miles deep to an exact specific point in the earth – with a target radius of just a few feet plus or minus. Once they intersect their target, a heavy fluid will be pumped that exceeds the formation’s pressure, thus causing the flow to cease and rendering the well safe at last. It will take at least a couple of months to get this done, bringing all available
technology to bear. It will be an ecological disaster if the well flows all of the while; Optimistically, it could bridge off downhole.
 
It’s a sad day when something like this happens to any rig, but even more so when it happens to something on the cutting edge of our capabilities.
 
The photos that follow show the progression of events over the 36 hours from catching fire to sinking.
 
 

A sister rig, the Nautilus, being transported on a Heavy-Lift vessel

 

Deepwater Horizon on location in better days

 

Taken shortly after the rig caught fire – the mast is still there

 

 
 

Early morning Day 2 – Note the hole burned through the aluminum helideck

 

Day 2, morning – settling quite low in the water now – fuel and oil slick forming

 

 

A Crude Coincidence—The Gulf Oil Spill Works Out Well For The Greens

May 5, 2010 by John Myers 

"The end justifies the means.” —Machiavelli
 
Fact: Deep water oil platforms don’t just blow up. As the centerpieces of projects that cost billions of dollars, they are designed not to.

Fact: Just before 10 a.m. on April 20 a Transocean rig called the Deepwater Horizon 40 miles south of Venice, La., exploded and caught fire as it was working a well for BP.

 

Fact: Two weeks later as much as 300,000 barrels of crude oil have spread into the Gulf of Mexico, the bulk of it hitting the shores of Louisiana. More than 2 million barrels could spill out before the well is finally capped making this disaster worse than the Exxon Valdez catastrophe which spilled 400,000 barrels of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989.

 

Fact: This giant gulf oil spill happened less than three weeks after President Barack Obama announced he would allow offshore drilling.

 

Fact: Few in the mainstream media or in the federal government are putting a spotlight on to what caused the explosion that killed 11 men. Rather, their focus has been on what it will do to the environment.

 

Fact: The Greens have all the ammunition they need to permanently suspend future offshore oil production as well as drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, such as the oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

 

On April 30 Obama suspended plans to expand offshore oil drilling. That same day, during the PBS talk show, The McLaughlin Group, Eleanor Clift made this prediction: “The catastrophic oil spill in the gulf will silence Sarah Palin’s, ‘Drill, Baby, Drill.’”

 

That’s the aim of the Greens. Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club,said on Saturday: “Taking a temporary break from offshore drilling is an important step, but it’s not enough. We need to stop new offshore drilling for good, now. And then we need an aggressive plan to wean America from dirty fossil fuels in the next two decades.”

 

What My Deep Throat Says About This Deep Disaster
While I have been around plenty of oil rigs in my life I am hardly an expert. But I have friends who are. One of them is Ryan who is an oil field technician for one of the original Seven Sisters here in Calgary. I met with him last Friday to talk about the Transocean accident and what might have triggered the explosion.

 

“It probably comes down to one of two things,” said Ryan. “The blowout preventer failed to operate and seal the well. With the computers they have on deep ocean wells that shouldn’t happen; there is always the possibility of human error.” He looked around the room and then confided: “And of course it could be sabotage.”

The blowout preventer is a set of valves that connects the pipe from underground to the surface and it is used to control excessive pressure that might go further up the line. Valves can burst from either high-pressure oil, or oil mixed with gas which travels to the surface unexpectedly. That can start a catastrophic fire if sparked by the electrical gear on the platform. It should be noted that oil services contractor Halliburton is denying that its workers might have caused the accident.

 

It has already been alleged that Halliburton improperly cemented the well. Cementing is a process used to fill the gap between the drilled hole and the casing that brings oil and gas up out of the ground.

 

There has been speculation on whether the sealing process had been completed before the blast occurred. Yet the company insists that its workers had finished the cementing operation 20 hours before the rig went up in flames.

 

Perhaps It Was Just A Coincidence


The Wall Street Journal wrote on Friday: “Concerns about the cementing process—and about whether rigs have enough safeguards to prevent blowouts—raise questions about whether the industry can safely drill in deep water and whether regulators are up to the task of monitoring them.” To its credit, the WSJ is one of the few to report on the question of what caused the explosion.

While the Exxon Valdez accident immediately focused on the cause of the spill and the role that ship’s captain Joseph Jeffrey Hazelwood played, there is so far scant information and inquiry into what triggered the explosion on board the Deepwater Horizon.

The Greens were furious with Obama for allowing offshore drilling. It may be a happenstance that the Deepwater Horizon blew up three weeks later. But given the history of the Green movement I think it is worth considering that environmental extremists could have had a hand in this accident.

 

I had been thinking along these lines this past Friday when I got an email from my editor asking if I thought something was fishy and would I like to write about it.

 

I said yes, even though I was a bit apprehensive that you folks might consider me a reactionary or even a nut. And while I am not a big listener of Rush Limbaugh, I was encouraged when I read he was thinking along the same lines.

 

"Obviously the regime (the Obama Administration) is open to the idea that this is not an accident,” said Limbaugh. "The original Earth Day 40 years ago was inspired by the river in Cleveland catching fire. Forty years later, the day before Earth Day this year, the gulf is on fire. Coincidence? The jury is still out."

 

Love him or loathe him, what Limbaugh says is backed up by the actions of the White House which sent Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to the site. Napolitano has declared this is “an incident of national significance." Then on Sunday Obama visited the Gulf Coast to bolster efforts to control the spill.

 

The Dark Side Of The Greens

Of course I don’t know that eco-terrorists sparked this catastrophe. But I do know you don’t call a cop unless you think there might have been a crime. And some extremists in the Green movement are most certainly criminals.

 

The Federal government considers eco-terrorism a greater threat to America than Osama bin Laden and his organization al Qaida. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): “Eco-terrorism is the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally oriented, sub-national group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature."

 

Guilty or not I have no doubt that the extremists in the environmental movement must be celebrating the Gulf Coast crisis. A recent poll by the WSJ asked: “Have your views on offshore drilling changed after the oil spill off the Louisiana coast?” The response by its conservative readership was a resounding, yes.

 

We may never know what caused the explosion that sunk the Deepwater Horizon. What we do know is that 11 men lost their lives and there is going to be untold suffering to the wildlife and on the people of America’s Gulf Coast. We can also expect this catastrophe will do to deep water oil exploration what Chernobyl did to nuclear energy. I expect new offshore drilling to cease for years, perhaps even decades. That sets up a future of greater dependence on Arab oil imports and higher energy prices.

 

Action To Take: Expect plenty of blame to go around and three companies are going to get hammered: BP (NYSE: BP, $52.15), Transocean Ltd. (NYSE: RIG, $72.32) and Halliburton Co. (NYSE: HAL, $30.65). If you own shares in these stocks liquidate them immediately. If you own energy mutual funds make sure that part of your fund does not own these three stocks. If they do, sell the fund. What is ironic is that over the past few years BP has bragged that its name no longer stands for British Petroleum but rather Beyond Petroleum. It looks as if they might turn out to be right.

Yours for real wealth and good health,

 

 John Myers
Myers’ Energy and Gold Report

 

'Human Torpedoes' Are the North Korea's Secret Naval Weapon

From The Chosum IIBO, South Korea

 

South Korean military officials are said to be focusing their attention on "human torpedoes" deployed by North Korea military after testimony by defectors that could link them to the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan on March 26.

Human torpedoes trace their origins to the Japanese underwater suicide bombers known as "kaiten" who were put into action at the end of World War II. North Korea's human torpedo units belong to the 17th Sniper Corps and are deployed in both the East and West seas at the brigade level. The units are made up of elite soldiers, just like South Korea's UDT/SEAL teams, and were fed very well even when the rest of North Korea's people were starving due to economic hardships, according to defectors.

Jang Jin-sung, a North Korean poet who defected to South Korea, wrote recently on his blog that the human torpedo units "are treated better than submarine crew and their training centers around suicide bombing attacks." North Korea reportedly formed such squads in each branch of the military after leader Kim Jong-il said during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that no military in the world can defeat an army that can carry out suicide bombings.

But the human torpedoes not only use suicide bombing tactics but also launch attacks using semi-submersible vessels equipped with light torpedoes or other explosives, which are fired or placed on their intended targets at close range.

The North is said to have come up with the human torpedoes after its defeat by South Korea in the first and second naval battles in the West Sea, which forced it to realize that it cannot win by conventional means.

Park Sun-young, a lawmaker with the Liberty Forward Party, told the National Assembly on April 8 a three-man team aboard a Seal Deliver Vehicle could have sunk the Cheonan. SDVs are used to transport commandos under water. Some military experts say an SDV laden with explosives could have approached the Cheonan to launch a suicide bomb attack.

But that is far from certain. Many experts say it would have been difficult to launch a human torpedo attack on the ship, considering the depth, speed of the underwater current and the heights of waves at the site of the tragedy. "SDVs are very slow and there is a low possibility that such vessels were used in an attack," Defense Minister Kim Tae-young told lawmakers earlier this month.

 

N.Korea Took 'Gratifying Revenge' on South

From The Chosum IIBO, South Korea

 

A senior North Korean party leader has reportedly announced that the North Korean military took "gratifying revenge" on South Korea.

The Daily NK, an Internet media outlet, quoted a senior North Korean party leader as making the remark in a political lecture for party members in Onsong, North Hamgyong Province on April 24.

He reportedly said, "Since our heroic People's Army took revenge on the enemy, all South Chosun [Korea] has been in fear of our defensive military ability." The Daily NK carried the report under the dateline Changchun, China on Monday.

A source in North Hamgyong Province said the secretary did not directly mention the sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan on March 26 "but participants in the lecture were able to confirm that a rumor which had been circulating among the people really happened."

 

Torpedo Attack On South Korean Ship 'Could Be Proved from State of Wreck Alone'

Government officials say the wrecked hull of the Navy corvette Cheonan could in itself provide powerful evidence what kind of external explosion sank the ship on March 26, even if no shrapnel from a torpedo or mine is found. "We'd better not jump to any conclusion until the final outcome of the investigation, but the salvaged hull itself can constitute evidence," Foreign Ministry spokesman Kim Young-sun said Thursday.

A senior government official asked, "Is there decisive evidence other than the salvaged hull? It's important to find shrapnel of an explosive device, but that would be nothing but corroborating evidence."

The official added, "Even if we find shrapnel, North Korea will deny that it was from its weaponry. So if we conduct a precision analysis of the hull and determine that it was hit by a torpedo, we'll have secured more than 90 percent of the evidence."

So far the government has been saying that any North Korean involvement in the sinking can only be determined if fragments of an explosive device are found -- a position that would certainly help bolster international confidence in the investigation. But some experts say that has also limited the government's scope in investigating the cause.

Kim Hee-sang, the president of the Korea Institute for National Security Affairs, said, "North Korea is the only country that could launch a torpedo attack on the South in the West Sea. It's essential to analyze the hull and determine whether the ship was hit by a torpedo."