America’s Worst Ever Ecological Disaster?
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
Frequent oil spills, GMO seeds, chemical, and other toxins poison planet earth worldwide – humanity’s survival threatened by ecocide or nuclear war.
BP’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon oil spill was considered the world’s most disastrous marine incident of its kind.
Millions of barrels of toxic hydrocarbons devastated large parts of the gulf, harming its sea life and ecology, along with causing a healthcare crisis for countless numbers of offshore residents in affected states.
Another little reported Gulf of Mexico oil spill may be worse, ongoing for 14 years, millions of barrels of toxic oil leaked, an estimated 700 barrels more leaking daily, no end of leakage in prospect.
EcoWatch said Taylor Energy Company’s Platform 23051 sank in Gulf of Mexico waters from a mudslide caused by Hurricane Ivan in September 2004.
It’s been leaking oil daily from then to now, explaining:
Up to 29,400 gallons “of oil per day spews from multiple wells around the platform, according to a recent government-commissioned study,” adding:
“This environmental horror story is amplified as the Trump administration plans to open up US coastal waters to offshore drilling and as hurricanes are predicted to become more destructive due to climate change.”
In December 2017, environmental watchdog Sky Truth estimated the cumulative spill to that time at up to nearly four million barrels of crude, saying the following:
“The Taylor Energy site perfectly captures the dysfunction of offshore oil development: In 2004, an underwater mudslide caused by Hurricane Ivan toppled one of the company’s platforms and buried the damaged wells attached to it on the seafloor. Reports of oil on the surface at the site of the wreckage followed shortly after and a secretive clean-up effort ensued,” adding:
By 2011, only nine of 25 damaged wells were found and plugged. Crude oil continues leaking from the site. A Greenpeace statement said “(t)his oil leak could last 100 years.”
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said if left unchecked, leakage could continue for decades until oil in the underground reservoir is depleted.
For six years, Taylor Energy failed to report the spill. Environmental groups discovered it. Initially the company lied, claiming leakage of only two barrels daily. It’s hundreds of times this amount.
EcoWatch said Taylor Energy “spent hundreds of millions trying to stop the leak. (It’s hard) capping the affected wells that are deep underwater and buried beneath 100 feet of mud.”
The company “mostly ceased to exist…president William Pecue…its last remaining employee.”
In 2008, the firm was “sold to a joint venture of South Korean companies,” the same year a $666 million trust was established for cleanup, a failed undertaking so far.
The so-called “Taylor leak” is located around 10 miles of Louisiana’s coast. Sky Truth president John Amos said it’s another “great example of what I call a dirty little secret in plain sight.”
Green Economic Institute founding fellow/health and environmental issues journalist Oliver Tickell said “(t)he company and the American regulators managed to keep the entire incident pretty quiet” for years, adding:
“It’s one of those long-running accidents, which is less exciting from a reporting point of view.”
“But, over the course of 14 years, with as many as 700 barrels a day being leaked into the Gulf, it adds up to being of the same kind of order as (the 2010) Deepwater Horizon spillage.”
My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
