US SHIP SEIZED BY VENEZUELA

Posted by George Freund on October 13, 2013

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In an interesting turn of events the Venezuelan Navy entered Guyanese waters and arrested an American ship - well sort of an American ship. It flies the Panamanian flag and is owned by a Singaporean survey company and has Americans aboard. So in today's world that's as American as apple pie. The most important detail is the Research Vessel Teknik Perdana is operating under contract if not cover of American BIG OIL. It is working for the Texas oil giant Anadarko Petroleum Corporation of The Woodlands, Texas.
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It is one of the world's largest even though it is not the household word of the others. It was partners with BP's Macondo Prospect which resulted in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Anadarko was billed $272 million by BP for the privilege of partnership. They settled for a $4 billion payoff losing 25% of the Macondo to BP. I was never really good at math so I guess that makes sense to someone. CUI BONO?
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Of course everyone's opinion on the position of the ship changes with the wind, but a vessel tracker website has posted its position as above. However, as the story goes, we should be more concerned with so below. Anadarko contracted with FMC Technologies Inc. They specialize in providing subsea services. They can master the ocean floor together for many purposes. Few, if any, can inspect the work of these companies that far beneath the surface. Venezuela is far from the good intentions of the United States. Of greater concern would be a covert contract with the intelligence services. It has happened before with the Glomar Explorer in Project Jennifer or Project Azorian as The National Security Archive calls it. Glomar Explorer was operated by Texas oil billionaire Howard Hughes.
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Of course the marine tracker puts our ship heading out into the Atlantic and leaves out the actual position by latitude and longitude. One would be naturally suspicious of that I think. Another bizarre thing is a website devoted to the Teknik Perdana went AWOL with Comrade Google. What could they possibly be doing that would make even a cached copy of the page disappear?
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This is a picture of the ship that appeared on the site that I was able to salvage. Was there something there that implies they're up to no good? From my archives we reported the arrest of another Panamanian ship playing games with the Ecuadorian Navy. That one included a luxury yacht, a submarine and Russian operatives. So I think the Venezuelans are right on the money seizing the ship. Another ship called the Chikyu drilled some record setting holes on the fault line off Japan before a certain event. Oh what a tangled web they weave when there is no one to show you how they deceive.
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They have the technology to do almost anything. The movements of these special purpose ships can never be assumed to be benign. In safeguarding your coastline, they should be under severe surveillance. Of course if they get away with an earthquake or tsunami, you'll be cleaning for weeks or halflives if you have a nuclear plant on the coast. It's too bad we don't teach these things very well at naval colleges. The world moves at the speed of the predator not the pray. The Venezuelans may have understood that. Mr. R. A (Al) Walker is CEO of Anadarko. I wonder if he is related to the Walker/Bush clan?