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Gulf Oil Full Of Methane, Adding New Concerns
Gulf oil full of methane, adding new concerns
By Matthew Brown and Ramit Plushnick-Masti | Google News
It is an overlooked danger in oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well contains vast amounts of natural gas that could pose a serious threat to the Gulf of Mexico's fragile ecosystem.
The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill.
That means huge quantities of methane have entered the Gulf, scientists say, potentially suffocating marine life and creating "dead zones" where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.
"This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history," Kessler said.
Methane is a colorless, odorless and flammable substance that is a major component in the natural gas used to heat people's homes. Petroleum engineers typically burn off excess gas attached to crude before the oil is shipped off to the refinery. That's exactly what BP has done as it has captured more than 7.5 million gallons of crude from the breached well.
A BP spokesman said the company was burning about 30 million cubic feet of natural gas daily from the source of the leak, adding up to about 450 million cubic feet since the containment effort started 15 days ago. That's enough gas to heat about 450,000 homes for four days.
But that figure does not account for gas that eluded containment efforts and wound up in the water, leaving behind huge amounts of methane. Read more.
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How are they going to be able "to make sure" that they are "not overloading the system"?
Why does he say "We want to make sure we're not overloading the system"? The NOAA is not responsible for the oil leak and I don't see any explanation for how anyone can really prevent overloading of the system. If overloading occurs, then what means do the govt and companies, universities, ... have to curb this? I haven't read of any, but maybe some scientists will be able to think of a way of curbing this problem, if there isn't an existing way of doing it, yet.
Also, this is not a Google News article; it's an AP article. Google only hosts articles of news agencies or companies. The url itself indicates that it's "hostednews" and that the article is from AP. So credit for this good article should go to AP.
Anyway, what it says is quite frightening.
This oil leak will clearly, enough anyway, cause great destruction in the Gulf and in the economy for people along the coast. What are they going to do; especially those who are poor and of low income, who surely can't afford to relocate to ... just anywhere else in the U.S. They should be compensated well by BP, but this is surely not going to happen; surely not for the poor and low income people anyway. The rich don't take from the rich to give to the poor and low income of us when they are responsible for this poverty.
And I wonder if there's any impact further south, like along the coast of South America. Not having seen any articles or videos saying anything at all about this, the impression is that there is no impact from the oil there. I imagine people making income, directly and indirectly, from the fishing industry of the countries with coastlines south of where the oil leak is will likely be affected, but maybe none or little of the oil has been flowing southward.