BP Oil Spill Top Kill Fails: will criminal charges be brought?

We should never have laughed at that Mayan prophecy about the world ending in 2012. We’re on course to make it just in time.

As I updated yesterday, I was watching the live oil spill feed in the morning and noticed that the leak was belching black again, rather than the dense brown mud we’d seen over the last two days. This was bad. In the evening (GMT) the media confirmed that the Top Kill effort had failed and even the junk shot wasn’t working.

We now have vast dead zones being created as a result of the continuing leak. The entire food chain could be devastated. The blue fin tuna spawning ground is just south of the spill so an already distressed species may become extinct.

Everything is compounded by the use of 800,000 gallons of Corexit 9527 which is even more toxic than the oil. The main purpose of this poison appears to be cosmetic as it makes it look better. One marine toxicologist warned: “That ruptures red blood cells and causes fish to bleed. With 800,000 gallons of this, we can only imagine the death that will be caused.”

BP has been withholding information and has given figures that massively underestimate the volume of oil being released, surprise, surprise, possibly in anticipation of legal action and liability to come. BP is lobbying for a Houston-based oil industry-friendly judge to hear the plethora of spill cases mounting up.

We’re now hearing about all the other spills and negligence by BP, such as with their other spill this week, in Alaska. There’s been one in Singapore, and of course, the ongoing hellhole created by Shell in Nigeria.

Bush and Cheney favourite, Halliburton, is in the frame for the inferior cement that was supposed to hold back the oil.

This affects us here. In the two months it will take for BP to drill the relief wells, the oil and chemicals will have been picked up by the same Atlantic currents that bring the warm waters of the Gulf to Britain and Ireland, making us unusually warm for our northerly latitude, and will be headed here. Then the rest of the West coast of Europe gets it. Readers of this blog know how much I love Cornwall. I’m already picturing it dead and toxic.

Bankers and oil men. Dontcha just love ’em?

A new Google Earth Map Tool lets you compare the size of the spill with your area. I just typed in London and the slick covers almost the whole of the south east of England.

UPDATE: 7th June “”Are you fucking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen.” New eyewitness accounts via @MacMcLelland.

UPDATE 2: Rustbelt Radical has this left overview of BP and the rape of the Earth: Expropriate the Expropriators.