Under the provisions of martial law, the president could also order the suspension of national elections until the national emergency is over.

The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest
Vol: 105 Issue: 24 - Thursday, June 24, 2010

Gulf Oil Disaster

Ensuring The Worst Case Scenario? One of the most enduring features
surrounding the Gulf Oil Spill now entering its third month of belching oil
from the seafloor is the fact that no matter how bad the most recent
worst-case scenario speculation, the next one will be even more terrifying.
The base-line measures of the crisis have steadily worsened. The estimated
flow rate keeps rising. The spill is already worse than anybody could have
anticipated and there remains no end in sight.
According to point man Admiral Thad Allen of the US Coast Guard, the reason
that BP stopped pumping mud into the well in last month’s “top kill” effort
was fear the effort would damage the casing and open new channels for oil to
leak into the rock formations.

"I think that one thing that nobody knows is the condition of the well
bore from below the blowout preventer down to the actual oil field itself,"
Allen said last week. "We don't know if the well bore has been compromised
or not."
Making things worse, the admiral said, was the fact that the blowout
preventer is ‘leaning’.
"The entire arrangement has kind of listed a little bit," he said.
Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern
Methodist University, says one of the characteristics of the Deepwater
Horizon blowout is its unpredictability.
He said the deep-sea ‘plumes’ of oil detected by research vessels are
probably not from the blowout but possibly from additional leaks caused by
either the drilling or the blowout.
Nobody knows how much oil is actually seeping into the Gulf.
"I actually have a document that shows that BP actually believes it could go
upwards of 100,000 barrels per day," Rep Ed Markey [D-Mass] said on NBC's
"Meet the Press."
"So, again, right from the beginning, BP was either lying or grossly
incompetent. First they said it was only 1,000. Then they said it was 5,000
barrels. Now we're up to 100,000 barrels."
Senator Charles Grassley [R-Ia) released a BP document entitled “Maximum
Discharge Calculation.” The document was published internally was based on
theoretical calculations made before drilling began.
That document says given the most "optimistic assumptions" about the size of
the reservoir and the intensity of the pressure at depth and assuming a
total loss of well control and no inhibitions on the flow, "a maximum case
discharge of 162,000 barrels per day was estimated."
BP recalculated after the Deepwater Horizon blew up and came up with what it
called a “more reasonable” worst-case scenario of between 40,000 and 60,000
barrels per day. A ‘barrel’ of oil is roughly 42 gallons.
About the only thing that we ARE sure of (we being the public) is that
everybody is lying about it. BP is looking to mitigate the damage to its
corporate image and its bottom line.
Members of the Congress are looking for ways to use the oil spill to
mitigate the damage to their own re-election prospects.
Admiral Thad Allen is looking for ways to make it appear that the government’s
intervention is helping, rather than hindering efforts at both plugging the
hole and cleaning up the damage.
The truth is that every one of them is lying. Nobody knows how bad the spill
really is or how many other leaks it may have caused. At the same time,
nobody wants to admit that they don’t know.
Except Matt Simmons, founder of Simmons and Co. Simmons and Co. is an oil
investment firm. He claims that he does know and that the news is much
worse than anybody else believes.
Simmons says the leak that BP is focusing on at the “riser” is not the
problem. The real problem is a gaping hole at the “well head,” 8 miles away.
“The riser leak is a deception,” says Simmons. “The hole is in the well
head — it’s the well bore.”

“When they [the research vessel Thomas Jefferson] finally got the
permission to circle the three-mile radius,” of the well, “once they got up
wind [of the blast], within 20 minutes all the crew [of the boat] were
nauseous, and several people are still in the hospital. There is benzene
coming out of that stuff. If a hurricane finally blows up the Gulf, we could
have millions of people die.”
According to Simmons, the ultimate worst-case scenario has not yet even been
contemplated.

“We're going to have to evacuate the Gulf States. Can you imagine
evacuating 20 million people? . . . This story is 80 times worse than I
thought."

Only eighty times worse?
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates asking the Defense Department for six thousand active duty military
personnel to be dispatched to the Gulf to aid the Louisiana National Guard.
Jindal says that the reason he needs federal troops is because the National
Guard is busy preparing for just such a possible evacuation.

“Currently, our Soldiers and Airmen are staging for and are engaged in
the planning of the effort to evacuate and provide security and clean up for
the coastal communities expected to be impacted by the oil spill.”
If the well isn't capped soon, the toxic gases from the well, together with
the highly toxic Corexit 9500 chemical dispersant being used will eventually
force the evacuation of the Gulf States.
It may already be too late.

Assessment:
Those living in Florida are presently at the highest risk, but the danger
also appears likely to spread to all Gulf Coast states east of Louisiana --
and possibly even to the entire Eastern half of the United States once
hurricane season begins.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has already declared the airspace
over the oil spill site to be a no-fly zone until further notice. As we’re
already seen, various sources have indicated that local police, highway
patrol, National Guard, US military and foreign troops may be involved in an
operation to evacuate the Gulf Coast.
Since the Deepwater Horizon first exploded, the role of the federal
government has largely been confined to blaming BP for the spill, demanding
reparations for the spill, but nothing to stop the spill.
Had the White House mobilized every oil skimming rig in the country and
accepted foreign assistance offers, much of the oil now threatening the
American coastline could have been skimmed off.
Seemingly inexplicably, the White House has largely taken a “hands off”
approach -- apart from talking about it, that is. In short, it seems as if
the White House is simply allowing the spill to proceed.
The federal government shut down the dredging that was being done to create
protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico.
The berms are meant to protect the Louisiana coastline from oil. But the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department has concerns about where the dredging is
being done.
The department says one area where sand is being dredged is an ecologically
sensitive section of the Chandeleur Islands!
So efforts to protect the entire coast from ecological destruction was
ordered halted to protect one endangered section of beach. Plaquemines
Parish President Billy Nungesser, who was one of the most vocal advocates of
the dredging plan, sent a letter to President Barack Obama, pleading for the
work to continue.
"Once again, our government resource agencies, which are intended to
protect us, are now leaving us vulnerable to the destruction of our
coastline and marshes by the impending oil," he wrote. "Furthermore, with
the threat of hurricanes or tropical storms, we are being put at an
increased risk for devastation to our area from the intrusion of oil."
Despite his plea, work on the sand berms halted at midnight Wednesday. Why?
Since September 11, 2001 the United States has been in a state of national
emergency, which means that martial law can be declared by the President at
any time and for any reason.
A declaration of martial law authorizes temporary rule by military
authorities. Under martial law, civil rights are suspended and civilian
courts are restricted or supplanted by military tribunals.
Although a declaration of martial law is theoretically temporary, there are
no time limits. A state of martial law, once declared, can be extended
indefinitely.
The forced evacuation of as many as 80 million Americans from the Gulf Coast
region would indeed necessitate such a declaration. In an evacuation, the
federal government would determine when and where evacuees would be moved to
and for how long.
Martial law would not be confined to the Gulf States -- since the evacuees
would have to be relocated inland across the United States, so too would
military rule.
Under the provisions of martial law, the president could also order the
suspension of national elections until the national emergency is over.
The only one that can declare the national emergency
"over" and rescind a declaration of martial law is President Barack Hussein
Obama.