An action thriller by Jock Miller


Fossil fuel has an ageless affinity with dinosaurs. To create oil, dinosaurs died.


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The perfect energy storm is sweeping over the United States: Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown has paralyzed nuclear expansion globally, BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill has stalled deep water drilling, Arab oil countries are in turmoil causing doubt about access to future oil, the intensity of hurricanes hitting the Gulf’s oil rigs and refineries has intensified due to global warming, and the nation’s Strategic Oil Supply is riding on empty.

As the energy storm intensifies, the nation’s access to Arab oil, once supplying over sixty percent of our fossil fuel, is being threatened causing people to panic for lack of gas at the pumps, stranding cars across the country and inciting riots.

The U.S. Military is forced to cut back air, land, and sea operations sucking up 58% of every barrel of oil to protect the nation; U.S. commercial airlines are forced to limit flights for lack of jet fuel; and businesses are challenged to power up their factories, and offices as the U.S. Department of Energy desperately tries to provide a balance of electric power from the network of aged power plants and transmission lines that power up the nation.

The United States must find new sources of domestic fossil fuel urgently or face an energy crisis that will plunge the nation into a deep depression worse than 1929.

The energy storm is very real and happening this very moment. But, at the last moment of desperation, the United States discovers the world’s largest fossil fuel deposit found in a remote inaccessible mountain range within Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve surrounding six and a half million acres.

Preventing access to the oil is a colony of living fossil dinosaurs that will protect its territory to the death.

Nobody gets out alive; nobody can identify the predator--until Dr. Kimberly Fulton, Curator of Paleontology at New York’s Museum of Natural History, is flown into the inaccessible area by Scott Chandler, the Marine veteran helicopter pilot who’s the Park’s Manager of Wildlife. All hell breaks loose when Fulton’s teenage son and his girlfriend vanish into the Park.

Will the nation’s military be paralyzed for lack of mobility fuel, and will people across America run out of gas and be stranded, or will the U.S. Military succeed in penetrating this remote mountain range in northwestern Alaska to restore fossil fuel supplies in time to save the nation from the worst energy driven catastrophe in recorded history?

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Probing BP's spill estimates: An editorial








http://www.nola.com

By Editorial page staff, The Times-Picayune

Investigators in BP's criminal probe are reportedly examining what company officials knew about the Macondo well's flow rate in the early days of last year's spill -- and that's a warranted angle for the probe.

After the April 20 blowout, the company initially said only 1,000 barrels a day were spilling into the ocean and later it revised its estimate to 5,000 barrels daily. But congressional investigators uncovered documents showing BP knew then that as much as 14,000 barrels could have been spilling every day. Government scientists eventually pegged the actual flow at 62,000 barrels a day.

Federal investigators have shown up at the homes of several BP executives in recent weeks to question them about the flow rate and how it may have differed from what the company told government officials and the public, according to sources. Giving false statements to a federal agency is a felony.

Two sources familiar with the Department of Justice probe said the investigation also is examining whether BP executives used their internal knowledge of the spill for illegal insider trading.

At the same time, the Justice Department has formed a new task force in the investigation headed by the Criminal Division, not the Environmental Division. It remains to be seen whether that means the department is preparing what could be the biggest environmental criminal case in the nation's history.

BP and its contractors face as much as $30 billion in criminal fines and an additional $21 billion in potential civil penalties for the spill. Many observers expect the fines to be negotiated between the firm and the government and to be set at lower amounts, in great part because BP already has paid billions of dollars for cleanup and to settle damage claims.

But Deputy Attorney General James Cole said that, "If criminal conduct did occur, there will be a harsh price to pay."

It's important that those responsible for the disaster pay the full cost of repairing the damage. It's also important that any firm or individual who broke the law is brought to justice.

Gulf residents, who suffered the consequences of the spill, deserve no less.



PHOTO BY TED JACKSON/The Times-Picayune Oil skimmers try to clean up oil Oil skimmers try to clean up oil released from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico before it reaches the sensitive wetlands Wednesday, April 28, 2010.

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