Just when you started to think that the Gulf oil disaster had already estabished itself as a worst-case scenario, hang on; there's more. To many experts, it is starting to look like the Deepwater Horizon may have punched a hole in an oil souce that has way too much explosive Methane in it. In fact, some postulate that the drill head travelled 8 miles up the drill shaft, in reaction to the gas pressure, and impaled the B.O.P. which is the device that should have stopped all this.
Methane comprises about 75-90% of the natural gas that you burn at home (stove, furnace, etc.). Methane destroys oxygen in water and creates aquatic dead zones, where nothing can live (the Gulf already has one). Methane is also far more damaging to global warming effect than much-touted carbon dioxide. The average quantity of methane in an oil well is about 5%. What's coming out of the sea bed in the Gulf is about 40% methane.There is also deadly benzine in the "cocktail of poisons" that is racing out of the well. Benzine can cause cancerous lesions in the lungs years after a short exposure. The last news of benzine levels in New Orleans reveals an alarming 3,000 parts per billion. That's an awful lot of people who are in danger - right now.
But the hidden (and far more disasterous) danger lies in struggling to control the massive pressures pushing thousands of square miles of sea bed up to 10 feet above their pre-spill levels. If this deposit of methane escapes, uncontrolled, the following may happen.
- Every ship within 50 miles of the spill will instantly sink. Not become swamped - just drop like stones. If the water, surrounding any ships in the area, becomes saturated with this much gaseous material, boyancy won't mean a thing. There will be virtually nothing to resist the ships drop to the bottom. Do you remember early reports about declining help from other country's ships?
- Either because of an explosion, or simply a sudden cave-in, filling the void left by the methane would cause a 200-300 foot high sunami traveling at about 500 miles per hour. About that 200 foot sunami; the highest elevation in Florida is about 150 ft. above sea level. Scientist estimate that the shock wave from an explosion of this magnitude would flatten everything before the tidal wave. At least you won't know what hit you.
- Some sources say this explosion, if it happens, would be on the same scale as Mt. St. Helen's. We can only assume that an awful lot of poisonous gas is going to be in the air in the Gulf region. If the methane were dry, which it is not, it would just go up in the air and cause 20 times the global warming damage as the same amount of Carbon Dioxide. However, wet methane will remain on the ground and in the rain.
If the methane just "oozes" out into the sea and then into the atmosphere, unchecked until it is exhausted; we may be looking at extinction scenarios. Unfortunately, something like this is thought to have happened before in the Gulf - twice. 251 million years ago, the Permian extinction which wiped out 96% of all life on earth, along with, yet another, huge release of methane 55 million years later. One's mind flashes right back to reports of BP cutting safety corners for the sake of cost.I just hope this is not as bad as it is looking. There is, what one might call, a news blackout. Clean up crews are wearing gas masks. Cracks in the sea floor are being reported by independent agencies like NOAA, as well as high methane concentrations in waters that are up to 10 miles away from the Deepwater Horizon site.
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