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I’d wondered about the methane. Years ago my geologist brother-in-law kept us all rooted to our seats (long after dinner had ended) explaining why deep sea drilling was so potentially dangerous, pressurised methane explosions were way up there on the list of things that could go wrong. So the title to Terrence Aym’s article "How the ultimate BP Gulf disaster could kill millions" in Helium caught my eye:
If the huge methane bubble breaches the seabed, it will erupt with an explosive fury similar to that experienced during the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in the Pacific Northwest. A gas gusher will surge upwards through miles of ancient sedimentary rock—layer after layer—past the oil reservoir. It will explode upwards propelled by 50 tons psi, burst through the cracks and fissures of the compromised sea floor, and rupture miles of ocean bottom with one titanic explosion.
The burgeoning methane gas cloud will surface, killing everything it touches, and set off a supersonic tsunami with the wave traveling somewhere between 400 to 600 miles per hour.
While the entire Gulf coastline is vulnerable, the state most exposed to the fury of a supersonic wave towering 100 feet or more is Florida. The Sunshine State only averages about 6 inches above sea level. A supersonic tsunami would literally sweep away everything from Miami to the panhandle in a matter of minutes. Loss of human life would be virtually instantaneous and measured in the millions. Of course the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and southern region of Georgia—a state with no Gulf coastline—would also experience tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Read in full: How the ultimate BP Gulf disaster could kill millions – by Terrence Aym – Helium
46 Comments
Disclaimer: I’m not a geologist so I can claim no special expertise. I am however a former felix (bomb disposal officer) so I know a lot about how things explode and the way in which they explode. Assuming that certeris paribus the facts are as laid out in Aym’s article the scenario he outlines seems to me to be intuitively plausible.
Good morning, MFI. Nice post although it’s really scary. Do you know if there is any way to measure the danger of this happening? Also is there something event that warns it’s about to happen? Time for evacuation?
Very interesting stuff indeed. Terence Aym, I thought, must know quite a bit about this stuff.
I found this bio page on Helium for Aym.
http://www.helium.com/users/529618
His other articles for Helium included the equally fascinating:
Why officials believe an Indonesian woman may be 157 years old
and
How a man can live seven decades without food or water
Yes, if matters are as he says they are it is very scarey – the warning would be a network of widening cracks appearing.
Good find – thanks, I will admit that page puts my mind somewhat at rest. (There are some tragedies that hardly bear thinking about.)
I’ve put this posting up mostly because of my very strong memories of my geologist brother in law having conniptions about the risks inherent in drilling where there’s a lot of highly pressurised methane gas.
This article brought the reason why he was having those conniptions strongly to the front of my mind.
Methane (CH4) is a green-house gas twenty times more powerful in its climate impact than carbon dioxide (CO2), which is what it becomes when it burns/explodes. So, in some sense, we may be better off if it does explode rather than simply seeping into the atmosphere.
Hey, Mark! What do you think of the US media’s looking at Torygraph and Hitler Mail spin on the Poooor Put-Upon BP Executives (and how Evil Obama’s allegedly taking food out of UK pensioners’ mouths by forcing BP to make a down payment on fixing their mess)?
that “better off” may vary depending on where you’re standing at the time, of course.
I accuse you of disastristic relativism and have reported you to the usual extreme right wing loolahs for excoriation
I think that vipers fanging one another is always fun to watch.
Relatively disastrous will remain central to my personal description, they’ll ne’er prise it
Shit. Shit. Family lives in NOLA. Shit.
The Mississippi is held by dikes up river. a 100 foot wave rolls through those dikes are toast barge traffic ire ore, corn etc stopped until the river finds a new river bank and the river is charted.
Louisiana and Texas have places for super tankers to unload oil. next to waiting oil refineries if both those places are off line for even a week after a 100 ft wave expect gas prices to rise in America.
There is frozen methane on the surface of the ocean is there more frozen methane below the oil that is leaking?
As I read it this is a worst case scenario.
If a tsunami destroys vast swathes of southern USA that will be the least of your problems.
I presume you mean that there are deposits of methane on the ocean floor?
But that’s not what the article discusses:
The worry is that the rig could have been placed directly over a large deposit (or reservoir or lake) of methane and moreover that this methane is highly pressurised.
If you look at the other articles this rooster has authored … like to how to live 70 years without food or water or whatever… it’s hard to escape the conclusion that he is pulling this stuff out of his nose.
I believe the situation as it now stands is in fact catastrophic and irreparable ; but this guy is a freakin’ asshat. Admittedly no one knows what could happen, but I prefer to take my disaster scenarios from people with a modicum of credibility.
Wake up, people. Jeez!
This person may be wrong but I don’t think we know what could happen since we have never had this situation before. It’s best to prepare (if possible) for the worst and hope for the best. Whatever, the outcome of this is going to be very bad for everyone.
John Kessler is a Texas A&M University oceanographer and he is worried greatly about the methane issue.
The “Atchafalaya” is where the Mississippi wants to be. When it is liberated that’s where it will go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchafalaya_River
I recommend caution. Don’t assume the author of the article, Terence Aym, knows what he’s talking about. References to unnamed geologists isn’t evidence and the links to youtube videos didn’t work for me.
The methane expanded by a factor of approximately 346 to 1 as it traveled up the riser to the rig from the seafloor where the pressure is approximately 2,200 psi. We don’t know what sparked the explosion. Any spark, including a static electricity spark from any source on the rig, would have sufficed to ignite the methane cloud. I trust the people at the oil drum more than the unnamed geologists to which Aym refers and I don’t recall them panicking about a massive methane explosion creating a 100 foot tall tsunami.
The hydrates that have been referred to frequently are methane hydrates. The methane is in solution in the oil until it reaches the 4 degree Centigrade seawater at the seafloor. A lot of the methane freezes at 2,200 psi, and together with some water, forms the hydrates that billow around and settle to the seafloor. At 2,200 psi, methane has to be heated to approximately 64 degrees Fahrenheit to turn into a gas. That phase change happens at a declining temperature as the pressure drops. Methane is most dangerous when it’s a gas and this is why I’m disinclined to believe Aym.
This subject has been discussed in more detail at the oil drum, so check that source before you form conclusions.
A collapsing seafloor could trigger a tsunami on the surface, but I’m not equipped to predict how big or dangerous it would be.
I think methane presents a greater danger for global warming, which is what I’m concerned about. Of course, there’s also the oil and the dispersants that could possibly extinguish life in the Gulf of Mexico.
Crap!
Very nice catch now we know how the river will change.
Mary at 20 found a better source for the same information. every now and then we all find a bad source who says stuff we heard someone else say unknowing we use the bad source.
Mary found a better source so Mark’s ideas are still valid.
Good Comments I wish more Science Types would weigh in. This is getting out of my area to even comment on.
???
I presume this means a big explosion Crap was my response to bad news.
Interesting discussion – as I say I put this up because it addressed something that had been at the back of my mind ever since news of the spill broke.
I completely agree that Mary’s source is way better. Particular thanks also to Mason. And yes more scientific based comment would be great.
You mean that “crap” is another way of saying “oh dear”? who’da thunked it ? :-)
In my family it is…our use of the English language however is interesting even grandchildren of immigrants tend to adopt novel uses of established words:)
The methane explosion isn’t entirely out of the question
Scroll down to the video
Not sure about a tsunami hitting the Gulf Coast. But if there is an explosion, it could cause a landslide in the Mississippi Canyon, which could cause a tsunami, which seems more likely to hit Cuba
JMO
You all are so worried about methane, but it is basiclly Natural Gas.
The Methane being lost probably has more power in it than the oil, and isn’t half as hard to refine.
The methane they have burnt off, and just let escape would probably power the country for many years.
They knew they would hit gas, and had they designed the well to cover what ever pressure they drilled into, we could have a huge source of power.
Instead to get the oil they try to dismiss the gas, and probably would have burned it iff anyway.
Methane or Natural Gas could get us off of oil cleaner and easier, because it’s abundant and cheaper than oil. It burns cleaner and most of our cars can be made to run on it. AS T Boone Pickins tried to tell people, other than some bio fuels, Natural Gas is the only thing that can run our diesel trucks.
Yet the American Poeple want to demonize Natural Gas in the same way they did Nuclear. The same way they made Ethanol out to be made with food. They are content to pay for oil and suffer all it’s problems. They want to keep burning coal and not build more nuclear. So they want to kill us and our planet, and break the Country for their love of oil.
I’m worried how the gas will effect the fish are they even testing to see how much gas as well as oil is released?
The methane is replacing oxygen in the water. This means death to anything that needs oxygen.
Yes, I agree and regrettably neglected to mention this in my comment @22.
Hey Things!
You have every right to be worried, because the gas is as bad as people are saying it is.
Yet as bad as it is, the real sin is we’re losing all that gas and oil.
Had they plugged the well with in the first couple days, we all would have less to worry about.
All we heard from the start is we can’t, well they didn’t even try to really plug the well.
Had the little boy and the dike ran off to get a bunch of scientists to figure out how to plug the hole in the dike, the dike would have ruptured and flood the land.
Really think about this. A split casing is a cracked pipe, and a bad cement job is basiclly a bad seal. Take a drinking straw big enough to slide over a pencil, then blow through the straw and push the pencil in the other end, and you will find you can’t blow through the straw with the pencil is in the straw. That well bore is the same as the straw, and the crack or bad cement job similar to a slit in the straw. Push the pencil past the crack or seal, and you can’t blow out the end of the straw or out the slit in it.
Had they cut off the blow out preventer so they had just an open pipe like the straw, and inserted a drill string in that open hole and pushed it down past the spilt or the seal they could have pluged the well. The weight of the drill string would over come the pressure coming up in the gas and oil and a solid steel blank at the end of the pipe would be a plug.
When they go down deep enough they could insert into the string set of slips. Slips slide in, but bite into the pipe if tried to be pulled out.
The blow out Preventer has been useless since day one, and has not even restricked the flow. This way it could now be on the surface being examined. The same top hat they are using also would have worked even better over the casing rather than over the spud of the riser they stuck it over.
I suspect they really aren’t in a hurry to plug the well, or bring that blow out preventer to the surface, because it will be evidence to convict.
Hi Iremember54:) Also were they not hoping to put a Hat/steel box with a tube on the well so they could get oil cheaper than drilling a new well with the EPA and OSHA on their backs?
I am still worried about the fish gas is lighter it should spread quicker much of it should bubble up to the surface but some should stay in the water.
Fish killed by gas will taste like gas I think but there won’t be any oil slick on them to let us know they are poison.
The FDA is not that good at inspecting food.
Any effect on plants and algae?
Don’t ask me how I came across it (because I forget), but here’s a study that might have an answer
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9680519
Does anybody know how the quantity of methane here compares to that under the northern tundra which when released will be a huge accelerant of global warming?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9680519
dispersants
like the stuff BP is using?
Doesn’t seem to say anything about the effects of gas on algae but this does provide more questions.
Not me but this will speed up global warming that and the ocean now having miles of black solar heat holding oil on the surface. Plus the smoke from where they burn this oil. Plus the gas produced from every dead plant and animal I think they have seaweed beds in the gulf.
How big are these sea weed beds? The Climate Change guys are going to have to adjust every model they have.
And if the water is hotter from oil slicks, won’t that make the storms bigger? What about a loss of evaporative cooling?