Just when
America was celebrating the provisional end of BP's Macondo oil blowout,
and getting back to important issues like Kim Kardashian's body-suit
collection, along comes Matthew Simmons with a rather strange and
alarming outcry on doings in the Gulf of Mexico that contradicts the
mood of renewed festivity, as well as just about every shred of
reportage from any media outlet, mainstream or otherwise.
Matt Simmons Houston-based company has been the leading investment bank
to the US oil industry for a long time, financing exploration and
drilling in places like the Gulf of Mexico. Simmons, 68, recently
retired from day-to-day management of the company. For much of the
decade he has been what may be described as a peak oil activist. His
2005 book, Twilight in the Desert, warned the public that Saudi
Arabia's oil production had reached its limits and, more generally, that
an oil-dependent world was entering a zone of serious trouble over its
primary resource. He took this aggressive stance despite risking the ire
of the people he did business with.
Matt Simmons is a
sober individual and a very nice man (I've met him twice over the
years), a button-downed corporate executive who's been around the oil
business for forty years. His knowledge is deep and comprehensive. From
the beginning of the BP Macondo blowout incident in April, he's taken
the far out position that the well-bore is fatally compromised and that
BP has been consistently lying about their operations to stop the flow
of oil. Perhaps most radically, Simmons claims that an oil "gusher" is
pouring into the Gulf some distance from the drilling site itself.
Last week, Simmons came on Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC financial show,
but he did a longer interview over at the King World News website.
(click here for
Eric
King's interview with Simmons). Simmons's current warning about the
situation focuses on the gigantic "lake" of crude oil that is pooling
under great pressure 4000 to 5000 feet down in the "basement" of the
Gulf's waters. More particularly, he is concerned that a tropical storm
will bring this oil up - as tropical storms and hurricanes usually do
with deeper cold water - and with it clouds of methane gas that will
move toward the Gulf shore and kill a lot of people. (I really don't
know the science on this and welcome any reader to correct me, but I
suppose that the oil "lake" deep under the Gulf waters contains a lot of
methane gas dissolved at pressure, and that as the oil rises toward the
ocean's surface, and lower pressures, the gas will bubble out of
solution.)
Simmons makes two additional points that are
pretty radical: he says that several states along the Gulf ought to
begin systematic evacuations in counties along the shore now. From his
experience in Houston with Hurricane Rita (2005), he says a last-minute
evacuation is bound to be a disaster -- the highways jammed hopelessly,
drivers ran out of gas, and then the gas stations ran out of gas. Based
on where the nation's collective state-of-mind is these days, I can't
imagine that any Gulf state governor or mayor will heed this warning and
begin preparing an evacuation now. (The practical problems are obvious
for householders but what if it really is a matter of life and death?)
Secondly, Simmons maintains - as he has from near the beginning of
the blowout - that the US military should take over operations from BP
and ought to set off a "small" nuclear device down in the well-bore to
fuse the rock into glass and seal the site permanently. Simmons says,
based on his experience growing up in Utah near the government's
underground nuclear testing sites in neighboring Nevada, where scores of
very large atomic bombs were set off for years with no measurable
consequences above ground, that a small nuclear explosion down in the
Macondo well is unlikely to have any effect above the undersea rock
surface. I have no idea, personally if this is true.
Matt
Simmons is taking a position so "out there" that even the radical peak
oil website
TheOilDrum.com
won't comment on his remarks (at least not as of early Monday morning
July 19). I don't know how to evaluate Simmons's contentions myself,
except to say that I don't believe Simmons is a nut, or that he's lost
his marbles. We also must suppose that someone in his position is able
to talk with an awful lot of the best people in the oil industry.
Simmons has put his reputation on the line. A lot of bystanders and
commentators are treating him as a fool. Simmons himself is painfully
aware of his lonely stance and seems, in his public appearances, to be a
very regretful messenger.
In the past twenty-four
hours, BP has reported some possible leaks coming out of the seabed some
distance from the well-bore. Nobody has been able to confirm yet
exactly what is happening down there. One other thing Simmons said is
that BP should be barred from the media airwaves since, he says, they
have lied consistently in order to cover up their criminal negligence
and culpability. The company itself cannot be saved because the claims
against it are much greater than the value of its assets - but the
people running the company could be sent to jail, so the incentive to
keep lying remains high.
Jesse at the
Jesse's Café Américain
website makes an excellent point that if Matt Simmons is correct, and
it turns out that the US government has been played by BP, then
remaining public trust in the competence and legitimacy of government
could evaporate. This is not a happy thing to contemplate at a time when
the state of the nation and its economy are so fragile. What follows
could make the current political situation seem like little more than,
well, than a tea party, compared to the politics-to- come.
Readers here at Clusterfuck Nation are probably well aware of my
past declarations of being allergic to conspiracy theories and crazy
ideas generally. I'm not really equipped to evaluate Matt Simmons's
warnings about the exact nature of the Macondo blowout and what might
happen in the months ahead. But I am confident, having met the guy and
corresponded with him and read his books, that he is a straight shooter.
I'm sure that he is sincere in proclaiming his extreme discomfort with
the position he's taken. Listen and decide for yourselves. (
Simmons
interview with Eric King)
