Gas Leak in Gulf 3000 Times Worse Than Oil Leak

reply to post by ommadawn

That research was completed in 2005. 4 years before this oil field was found.

If I remember correctly too, BP also said :

In its 2009 exploration plan for the Deepwater Horizon well, BP PLC states that the company could handle a spill involving as much as 12.6 million gallons of oil per day, a number 60 times higher than its current estimate of the ongoing Gulf disaster.

In associated documents filed with the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the company says that it would be able to skim 17.6 million gallons of oil a day from the Gulf in the event of a spill.

blog.al.com...

Yes that is a blog, but, here is an excerpt of the actual proposal drawn up by BP where they SAY THEY CAN handle that much, and keep it under control.
BP Lies on paper

And let me refresh what the original post says about this report:

...this study underestimated the current leak by a factor of 26. It was NOT peer reviewed and did not consider that the damage would occur at depth greater than 700 meters.

In other words, the determination of the potential impact of deep water drilling on the ecosystem by the federal agency that regulates these activities was a TOTAL SHAM.

[edit on 19-5-2010 by webpirate]

Originally posted by DTOXsick
I have heard of scientists concerned about natural methane deposits coming up from the ocean and being ignited potentially causing a huge explosion and burning off some atmosphere. I wonder if there is any risk of that happening here with all of that natural gas escaping. I heard all it would take is a bolt of lightning and BOOM. Any ideas?

You'll find the science here:

Gulf spill: is the methane a bigger problem than the oil?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I've pulled together a lot of research papers, and it isn't pretty. Besides the immediate dangers, it seems that this blowout is going to accelerate global warming by some fraction, cutting a few decades off the time it's going to take to warm things up.

There is also a danger of a catastrophic blowout around the wellhead, which would enormously complicate life as we know it. Think of it like a straw pushed through a dam wall. As the pressure builds it eats away the material around the straw and eventually blows the straw out and makes a progessively larger hole.

The field is estimated as holding upwards of a trillion cubic feet of methane, and they were anticipating drawing off a billion cubic feet a day. The data's in the thread I cited. Look at it and decide for yourself what the possibilities and probabilities are.

reply to post by apacheman


Thank you for that additional info. Was the amount of methane you cited though as under pressure, or was it total with expansion considered.

Either way it is a huge amount.

reply to post by webpirate


Unfortunately, it is highly pressurized.

It's a long slog through the various reports, but in every case I read so far, not one researcher thought anyone would be crazy or reckless enough to take the risks BP did, and so no one has modelled the effects of this kind of blowout.

But reading between the lines and projecting the data, at a minimum global warming is getting a booster shot.

reply to post by apacheman


Unfortunately I can only 1 line or 1 word actually reply to that.
Ugh.
Wait..that was 2 lines...

Originally posted by JohnnyFever
Why don't we drop a nuke on it...

[edit on 19-5-2010 by JohnnyFever]

Your video is not illustrating a North Korean anything. It is a USA underwater test in the 1950's designed to intimidate the world during the Cold War. North Korea have not tested any nuclear device in the atmosphere or underwater. Only underground. You Americans are so full of #. You commit crimes against humanity without the slightest hesitation. Nixon was going to have to answer before an International Court of the Human Rights, but lucky for the USA he died of natural causes and the proceedings were terminated. I believe the USA should be forced to submit to strictly enforced sanctions and a full embargo until all its Army and Navy return to home soil and all its nuclear arsenal dismantled and taken to bits completely so as to be nolonger any threat to humanity. As regard to using a nuclear device to stop the Gulf of Mexico gusher, I would advise caution, because the sea bed is extremely fragile at that 5000 feet depth and your nuclear device would probably cause the problem to become a million times worse than it is already. If my comments upset your ego its because you need to start seeing the world from a more birds eye view. Present and past USA foreign policy is criminal. The crimes committed by the NAZI's cerca, 1939-1945, are nothing by comparisson to what we see the USA perpetrating during World War Two and since. It was just not necessary to nuke the Japanese the way that you did. We the British were absolutely disgusted and will never forgive you for having done such a wicked evil minded thing to such beautiful people. Remember that the USA atomic bombs were purposefully and knowingly used to target unarmed civilians. That is a serious crime against humanity for which the USA will certainly have to pay the price before the Holy Spirit. Although BP, British Petroleum, are doing the drilling actually they are doing so under a contract paid for by the USA. We the British people are not the problem. So stop off loading the guilt onto a scape goat as they say in Bible language. If as may be the case a huge cloud of methane rises out of the Gulf of Mexico to suffocate half the eastern USA I suspect that most Mexicans will take it as a chance to further invade your country. Since according to them the western half of the USA, most likely to escape the suffocation, is Mexico anyway. Al-Qaeda is not to blame this time, nor are the British either. I hope that you are in possession of an oxygen cylinder and breathing mask ? Hospitals have such things. Otherwise you're a dead duck. The methane is still in crystal form under pressure at depth, but will rise to the surface as the crystals sublimate. An explosive event. The methane cloud will drift in the wind, also it might explode as it encounters some one smoking some tobacco, so the President Obama should be initiating mass evacuations from the southern states ? Mass relocations ? This disaster is going to be far worse than were the Hurricane Katrina. If it is going to be as bad as I think it to be then possibly up to a million might suffocate ? Count the dead animals too, although I am sure that the destruction to nature probably does not worry you ? Already it is the worst oil spill ever recorded. But as the thread is indicating it is the methane that it probably going to be the biggest danger. I was told that no less than 80% of the gusher is "methane snow". There is no known method by which to collect the gas. As far as I know the Oil Companies are ignoring it since it was never expected. It took them by surprise and is the major cause of the disaster. In my opinion the methane is a cloud of suffocation spreading out across the deep sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico until all of it is absolutely dead. That suffocating cloud of death will then start rising upwards sublimating until it reaches the surface of the water, in a month from now, and that is when coastal areas will start to suffer the suffocations. It will be impossible to make any forecastings about where any methane discharges will arise to cause such suffocations. I notice from watching video's on the YouTube network that in fact people in the southern states can already smell the methane.

[edit on 19/5/2010 by CAELENIUM]

Originally posted by lencando
Can someone tell me why BP is drilling in US waters to begin with . I thought that this was our reserve oil . So why are the Brit's here drilling for our OIL! Something don't sound right. I don't know???? Anybody ???

BP ISN'T BRITISH it's owned by foreigners. Dutch, American and Indian owned I think.
Spotted the recent msm trying to label the company as British Petrolium. Trying to shift the greed blame from the US shores doesn't work don't look this side of the pond.

Originally posted by webpirate
reply to post by rival

 

Also, they based their estimates using what they saw coming from the pipe. Remember though, the pipe is about 1 mile deep in the ocean. The first article I posted has the math, but what we are seeing coming out of the pipe at the bottom is under immense pressure. So it will look smaller than it actually is. A good estimate I have heard is between 25,000 and 50,000 barrels a day.

Aren't liquids are non compressible? Especially oil?

So the preperations of the fema camps, controlled evacs, martial law can be implemented, with the simple announcement of risk and exposure to methane.

The word suffocation as mentioned above will make people freak out. Really, volcanoes in the north, methane to the south. mmmmm... don't volcanoes throw sparks?

Why have a false flag?.....seems to be just before "disclosure"........again.
Just An Idea
Kind of a more direct root build our safe havens underground and send most of the planet to hell with a green house disaster of epic proportions. What I don't get is how its still standing?
I that was here in the UK it would of been knocked down immediately, It's kinda like leaving a KKK monument up.
Seems very odd that they don't just cap it at the point of entry.....but then they'd have to pay more to re-tap it wouldn't they......Greed is ugly and it isn't known for its thought process.??????



[edit on 19-5-2010 by DreamerOracle]

Going back to the original post,

"this study underestimated the current leak by a factor of 26."

where exactly does that figure come from?

There's a lot of smoke screeening going on here.

Where does the above come from? This entire thread hangs of that, and at the moment it's just something pulled out of a hat in the original article.

What is the source of

"this study underestimated the current leak by a factor of 26."???

Calenium: buy some paragraph breaks. They sell them cheap here. Then your rants against the USA will be easier to read...

To the guy who hopes all humans are killed by this: Please seek therapy, counseling. For the sake of the humans who have to live around you. For every bozo who puts executive profit before safety there are thousands (possibly millions) of innocent human beings who just want to get through the day. How injust to focus only on the few and condemn the entire species for that.

Thanks to others for the links to the other thread and the quotes from various sources. Very distressing, interesting but in that chinese, "may you live in interesting times" curse kind of way.

RC

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say it's a drop in the bucket.
Even if the entire oil reserve, with a generous estimate of 10 billion barrels, leaked into the ocean which is 7.76x10^18 barrels, that would only ammount to an average concentration of about 1.22 ppt (parts per trillion). Of course, the concentration would be higher closer to the gulf, but eventually it would spead out on its own and reach a harmless concentration. Of course, who knows how long that would take.

Also, if the gas, even if it was all the horrible greenhouse gas methane, was released totaling 30000 billion barrels (3000 times more than the oil) the concentration in the atmosphere would only be 5x10^-5 percent, so small as to be insignificant.

The earth is huge guys, calm down, this is not an extinction level event.

[edit on 19-5-2010 by bobnpn]

Ok , how would you classify the event ?

About a half hour ago i heard CNN describe the oil is in exactly where it needs to be in the Gulf to cause what happened in the 2000 movie, The Perfect Storm.

reply to post by bobnpn


Not for us, perhaps, but it could certainly be an ELE for the denizens of the Gulf.

Personally, I like my shrimp.

But chances are the shrimp populations, as well as pretty much everything else, is going to take a huge nosedive from anoxia, dispersant poisoning, oil contamination, and methane poisoning. The industry that depends upon them will collapse as well. So even if some shrimp survive AND are safe to eat, they'll be priced well out of my range.

Try to diminish it all you want, but the science is against you: this is an unprecedented catastrophe, nowhere near containment. If you don't believe me, check the sources I've gathered here:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I'm not here to preach but the way I see all this unfolding is the Biblical prophecy that 1/3 of the fish in the sea will die in "end times" This is historic. One history breaker, after another!

Local news here in South Florida says that people who clean trash off the beach in the keys found two helmets that fell from oil rigs in Texas and Louisiana coastlines.

This isn't indicative of the oil rig that went down, but it does show how the current WILL head from there to the Keys and into the Gulf Stream on our east coast here.

They're predicting oil in the keys by Sunday. How long til it gets here? Well, it might not even matter if the Gulf becomes a general dead zone.


And now they're talking about the Everglades. There taking sediment and sand samples at all the national beaches to know what the damage will be. So, will a change constitute a "reasonable claim" for BP?! Arrogant pricks.

Is it any coincidence that they say Illuminati/elite/government set this up..and the fact that the BP logo ( sun/calendar/whatever) has 72 petals to it? I find it kinda strange.

reply to post by CAELENIUM


Your aforementioned hatred for the U.S. is child-like, at best! Need I remind you that lovely old Britain was raping and pillaging the world long before the U.S. was even around. Good ol' Britain committed quite a lot of inhumane acts, and still does to this day. Please, think before you type. You are only embarrassing yourself. I don't say this to attack you , but to merely bring you back to reality. While you are at it, please stay on topic. We are discussing the oil leak and its magnitude.

Many of the questions being asked/ unknowns on this thread are answered- at least tentatively, on a mariners' forum (the link for which, I think, came from another ATS thread). It is a detailed & fascinating (& sad & infuriating) discussion. I won't spoil the direction this has taken there, but basically, yes, the explosion is believed to have been caused by a methane "kick" that engulfed the DWH & ignited. And that this leak (oil and gas) could have been "top killed" way before now, but wasn't for the sake of other BP drilling projects in the field.
Methane is a pretty chilling threat apparently around most offshore rigs (Thunderhorse- re another off shore rig, was one of the papers written on it c. 2005) & apparently not uncommon at all- both an asphyxiation risk & highly volatile by mere friction; in addition to capsizing crafts.

There are many links to outside sources with many revelations on this one thread alone. The rumor that Shlumberg (?) had left the rig shortly after BP officials refused- and earlier before the explosion, to shut the rig down per their recommendation/ ultimatum/ "order" was somewhat confirmed by Reuters' release (yesterday or early today?) that they had indeed been there & left that day, though their article states it was on a regularly scheduled BP helicopter not their own (as the rumor states.
The federal govt's head of offshore drilling regulation has resigned....just lots of stuff.

Link to the forum holding this wealth of information (this is the last page)

gcaptain.com...

UK Times Online article re Chris Oynes' resignation

www.timesonline.co.uk...

Thunderhorse pdf re methane response.restoration.noaa.gov...

Sorry if this post is disjointed or redundant. Posting on the run.