The
following is the 4th and final in a series of interviews between
Patriotic Alaskan Chronicles(PAC) and Ex-Alyeska Employee Michael Kelley on the
root-cause leading up to the EXXON Valdez “Wreck”. This follows a
self-publication by Kelley titled the “Tale of Two Fools - The Oil Man &
the Environment Guy”, as found on Uncle Al’s Closet -
UncleAlsCloset.blogspot.com:
PAC Interviewer: Wow, in that Tale of
Two Fools - The Oil Man & the Environmental Guy you recently published,
that mention of Hey Norm, well I thought all my time went wasted in these
interviews as was this supposed to be in joke with this Norm thing? So I start
off in apology for casting doubt your writing. The little we know about oil
development.
Lead Technician Kelley: No apology this way,
and one must remember that this, routinely Hey Norm it is not a problem in the
oil patch, only when it gets concentrated.
PAC Interviewer: But before the Norm
chapter, you seem to pick on the local authority, what appears to be for good
reason, that those in authority outside Alyeska but with oversight over Alyeska
seemed to display a laissez faire attitude upon concerns.
Lead Technician Kelley: Fair assessment.
PAC Interviewer: Like the time you
called the environmental cop when someone was purposely trying to pollute, by demonstrating
a disregard of proper operation of the devices designed to make safe the vapors
from the storage tanks.
Lead Technician Kelley: Got your Dramamine?
PAC Interviewer: I’m ready, and
willing for another wild ride.
Lead Technician Kelley: After I had moved
away from Valdez, not too long before the wreck, I had a face to face incident,
a confrontation with the local environmental cop, threatened…
PAC Interviewer: While on the job?
Lead Technician Kelley: No, while on
vacation.
PAC Interviewer: Threatened how?
Lead Technician Kelley: The brandishing of a
sidearm…
PAC Interviewer: For breaking the
law, a law, like under arrest?
PAC Interviewer: No, no laws broken,
not under arrest but subjecting the cop to cross examination duress, while
watching him commit an environmental crime.
PAC Interviewer: So you’re telling me
that the guy designated as the environmental cop, committing such a crime,
caught in the act?
Lead Technician Kelley: I was down at
Perkins Cove, where my brother in law lived, a small cabin on the shoreline
outside of Valdez. It was just around the corner from town, so not remote and road
access. It was early morning, a beautiful day, and I woke up to the straining
sound of an engine, like someone was stuck…
PAC Interviewer: On the road?
Lead Technician Kelley: No, in the damn tide-flats,
a stuck backhoe.
PAC Interviewer: What was that all
about?
Lead Technician Kelley: Above the cove some
investors were building a new sub-division and this guy was cutting a drainage
ditch, for sewerage runoff.
PAC Interviewer: The local environmental
cop?
Lead Technician Kelley: Same guy, same
badge.
PAC Interviewer: Wow…
Lead Technician Kelley: And when I got close
to his stuck hoe, seeing all the crushed sea life and hearing the screaming disaster
under the cat tracks, I was pissed as I knew exactly who I was dealing with,
and my brother in law was with me, also pissed.
PAC Interviewer: Then…
Lead Technician Kelley: I asked him for his
permit, and that is when he drew his sidearm, and we retreated.
PAC Interviewer: Did you call his
bluff, challenge this crime?
Lead Technician Kelley: It would be no
different then calling the cops on yourself. So no to your question and kind of
glad I had moved away. This is how it was in Valdez.
PAC Interviewer: Anything else,
unusual about this cop and such behaviors?
Lead Technician Kelley: He was one of Hamel’s
coattails, a main men. And my belief that when we tried to get him involved
with things not working right at the Terminal, by not doing his job he was
helping Hamel’s cause.
PAC Interviewer: So is it your belief
that he understood your concerns, but chose to turn a blind eye because of his
affiliation with Hamel?
Lead Technician Kelley: BINGO!
PAC Interviewer: Like in the worse it
gets out of control the easier it is to prove a point?
Lead Technician Kelley: Right on assessment.
PAC Interviewer: OK, switching hats
to Jane Fonda, in China Syndrome. This NORM stuff, what do you know about it,
let’s say with respect to what went on in Alaska, on the pipeline?
Lead Technician Kelley: Ok Kimberly, then I’m
Mr. Wilbur an automotive expert with a dual-column gas chromatograph,
Hewlett-Packard model 5710a with flame analyzing detectors…
PAC Interviewer: Funny…My Cousin
Vinny right?
Lead Technician Kelley: For real. I had my
boss purchase a Hewlett-Packard Data Acquisition System, the kind used by NASA.
To evaluate things around the station, especially with the crude oil
measurement stuff. And there started to be some weird things happening at the
station, unexplained. But I had a hunch, from some things overheard about in
the field. See, the town of Deadhorse up in Prudhoe Bay is a dry-gulch town. No
nothing, except Child’s General Store, which was an after-work congregating
place away from the “oil”, away from the monotony of camp life. A place to meet
people, and I overheard a conversation about this NORM, when some BP maintenance
workers had opened up a heat exchanger and found high levels of this stuff.
PAC Interviewer: So you reacted, I’m
getting to understand your philosophy.
Lead Technician Kelley: Well anything done
upstream, the trickledown works as that NORM was heading our way. So for 25
bucks, I picked up a used gamma ray scintillation detector…
PAC Interviewer: Used for?
Lead Technician Kelley: Measuring this Norm.
And with the HP, it was very easy to build a device to, well evaluate a sample
of oil and water taken from the pipeline.
PAC Interviewer: Did it work?
Lead Technician Kelley: To good to be true.
PAC Interviewer: Well, did it scare
you, to take cover from this fallout?
Lead Technician Kelley: No. As for the most
part any NORM would be confined inside the pipeline. Same with a maintenance
crew racking out a heat exchanger, which could dislodge surface scale, and
eventually that stuff ending up in the pipeline.
PAC Interviewer: And not a problem
until it reaches Valdez...
Lead Technician Kelley: And not a problem
until the NORM containing water and scale went separated and the leftovers discharged,
heading south.
PAC Interviewer: So it was a not a
safety concern to the workers?
Lead Technician Kelley: It was contained,
but ask the herring the same question.
PAC Interviewer: Like I have
mentioned before, everything you bring forward for this outsider, it adds up.
So one of two things, you are really good at the puzzle pieces or tell a good
story. But the puzzle pieces find credibility and you put it together in a form
a story that fits, it tells the truth.
Lead Technician Kelley: Thank you for hearing
me out.
PAC Interviewer: So even though
Charles Hamel did not directly interfere, direct involvement any harmful hands
on and maybe merely a sentiment of intent, that his followers, his cult, they
became involved based on Hamel’s failures with Big Oil and felt sorry, felt a
sense of camaraderie time to get even?
Lead Technician Kelley: I have tried to
bring what I saw, what I knew, what I heard and what I believed was a very easy
means to put it all together. Yes, it was poor me, poor oil broker going broke.
And some jumped to his side.
PAC Interviewer: But your
understanding of who this Charles Hamel was and what Charles Hamel was all
about, you were an insider so that was an advantage over others, even within
the Alyeska organization, an advantage many did not have. Am I correct?
Lead Technician Kelley: Nature of the beast,
but my vigilance helped.
PAC Interviewer: So if the Exxon
Valdez wreck was a planned sabotage, it is apparent from your publications and
these remarkable interviews a reliable source, that it was possible by a cult
following, that an ex-oil broker was harmed by the mighty Exxon so tuned into
an environmentalist, all in efforts to beg for sympathy.
Lead Technician Kelley: Yes, sympathy for
the devil, pleased to meet you hope you guess my name.
PAC Interviewer: And with Hamel, cause
what’s confusing you is just the nature of my game?
Lead Technician Kelley: Exactly.
PAC Interviewer: Well Mr. Kelley, I
don’t know if there is anything beyond this, here it is all out in the open,
for the general public to believe or leave.
Lead Technician Kelley: Well said, but the
good thing, my honor finds no misery.
PAC Interviewer: Best of luck in the
future.
Lead Technician Kelley: Same here.
~ EOI ~
