Friday, June 18, 2010

Oil and gas leaking from fissures in the sea floor

Fillibluster: Video proves oil and gas leaking from sea floor
Potential environmental catastrophe on the level we have never seen before.
Excerpts:
BP denies it. But this video confirms it: oil is leaking from cracks in
the sea floor. It could spell the beginning of a far worse catastrophe
than anyone expected. If the sea bed fissures and collapses around the
well bore, the flood of oil will be of an order of magnitude that the
world has never experienced.


The sea floor in this area of the Gulf of Mexico is not solid rock, but
rather sand held together by a substance called methane clathrate, or
"fire ice", in which methane is trapped within ice crystals. It's the
same substance that fouled the "top hat" containment dome BP tried, and
forms when methane and water combine under high pressure. It's not
exactly dense or stable.


...
So, what happens if there's a collapse of the unstable seabed over the
existing gusher? That depends on the extent of the collapse. As the bore
hole continues to erode, eventually the casing will detach and relief
wells will become irrelevant. At that point, the entire reservoir of oil
-- approximately 2 billion barrels -- could empty over the course of
the next few decades.

...