Gulf Methane Pocket to Burn 'Months', Worst Coming

BP/Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon rig methane explosion over Macondo Prospect began an inexhaustible gas leak catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico and further inland. Photo credit: Wikipedia

The new Gulf of Mexico oil industry disaster that began Tuesday with a rig exploding after hitting a pocket of methane could burn for months, according to officials on Thursday, but according to former predictions, methane disturbed by the BP-wrecked Macondo Propsect well is “inexaustible” and the over-all methane catastrophe will continue indefinitely.

An oil- drilling rig that caught fire late Tuesday after a methane gas well exploded and burned approximately 55 miles off Louisiana’s Grand Isle coast  could continue burning several weeks.

The Advocate reports that local officials and industry experts said that the fire could linger for up to two months.

How long, however, will methane continue to linger and push its way ahead of oil still spewing from the Macondo well, regardless of oil and gas industry “safety issues” being raised following this latest episode in the Macondo historical event?

‘Inexhaustible’ methane leak

Tuesday, the oil rig crew “hit a high-pressure gas pocket,” believes Eric Smith, an associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute.

The mud weight that workers were using to complete the drilling could not contain the pressure, speculated Smith, deja vu of the Transocean/BP Deepwater Horizon blow-out.

This latest Gulf oil disaster impact is not expected to have as devastating and long-term consequences as BP’s wrecked Macondo Prospect well blowout catastrophe, according to several industry and environmental experts on Wednesday.

Most reporters continue refering to the 2010 BP Gulf event as an “environmental disaster.” It has, however, been the worst environmental and humanitarian catastrophe in the nation’s history, according to many scientists and human rights experts.

Most reporters continue projecting a message that the BP Gulf catastrophe ended. It is, however, an ongoing catastrophe, according to many, including scientists, an environmental attorney, and human rights experts. Some of these experts have said that the Macondo Prospect catastrophe would involve methane leaks and explosions for years to come. 

Down-playing the Macondo catastrophe has taken many forms by many people.

“The perjury going on has just been astonishing,” the late oil industry insider Matthew Simmons said on King World News.

Simmons had made national headlines by stating such things on numerous national media programs where reporters eventually told the pubic that the Macondo well had been capped.

BP’s Macondo oil continued gushing gas and the military and oil industry officials remained silent about it, according to environmental attorney Stuart Smith, who spoke to Courthouse News Service. (Sabrina Canfield, Attorney Says Macondo Well Still Leaks Oil From Seafloor, Courthouse News Service, 21 Nov. 2011)

In a little over one month alone, an approximated eight billion cubic feet of methane was released from BP’s Gulf crime, making it one of the most vigorous methane eruptions in modern human history.

Up to 1 million times the normal level of methane gas was detected in some regions near the Macondo Prospect oil volcano, an “astonishingly high” level said Texas A&M oceanography professor John Kesslar. (Julie Steenhuysen, Methane in Gulf ‘astonishingly high’: U.S. scientist,” Reuters, 22 June 2010: http://tiny.cc/n9r1cw)

Kesslar’s crew took measurements of surface and deep water within a 5-mile (8 kilometer) radius of BP’s broken wellhead.

Methane is 25 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.  High methane concentrations encourage growth of microbes that derive energy from oxidation, resulting in oxygen depletion and a subsequent dead zone. At higher concentrations, methane easily ignites.

“We saw them approach a million times above background concentrations in some areas,” Kesslar said.

BP’s oil is still leaking. Methane is still traveling ahead of that oil, through cracks, fissures and connecting fault lines — over 3 years later — as predicted. 

Louisiana’s onshore faults and fractures link to Gulf of Mexico where methane gas has been leaking since April 2010 when BP wrecked the Macondo well, MC 252. Photo credit: Dr. Sherwood Gagliano et.al)

Methane has increasingly posed greater risks for south Louisianans. For example, methane migrated from Apache’s well in the Gulf off Louisiana’s coast in February. (Read: Explosive Methane Fault Migration: Gulf to La. Salt Domes?)

Also, near the Gulf but further inland, at least two methane gas leakage events are occurring at Lake Peigneur and Bayou Corne. Each of these are linked: a connecting fault line system and each is manmade due to salt dome mining by the oil and gas-related industries.

Proven and suspected faults in South Louisiana and of its coast in the Gulf of Mexico were mapped by Baton Rouge based Coastal Environments, Inc. president Sherwood Gagliano, PhD in 2005 and presented in a research report and slide presentation. (Photo Credit: Dr. Sherwood Gagliano et. al)

He said methane pressures there were so high, nothing short of a small nuke could close it. Until then, Macondo would continue leaking an “inexhaustible amount of oil and methane.”

Simmons recommended that experts with methane gas expertise provided advice for the safety of Gulf Coasters. That never happened.

The bottom line?

“It could be one of the greatest losses of life we’ve certainly ever had from a natural non-war disaster,” Simmons had said.

On August 11, 2010 the man who courageously tried to prevent suffering and death along the Gulf and was discredited for doing so; the man credited by locals as their leading advocate; the Gulf of Mexico oil crime whistleblower Matthew Simmons, 67, tragically died an untimely death. He had a fatal heart attack – relaxing in his hot tub in his Maine home. For three months, he’d bravely stood for the Gulf people and against the PMIC and its Gulf Operation. 

Naturally, it was widely speculated that Simmons’ death was not a natural one, such speculation particularly strong among other whistleblowers and targeted individuals who know first-hand the “treatment” of covert harassment and lethal assaults. (See: Targeted Individuals) 

Simmons’ reported cause of death, heart attack, is among most common causes of whistleblower deaths. (See: Heart attack homicides in disguise, Examiner, 16 March 2010.

Although he was founder and chair emeritus of Simmons & Company International and a prominent peak oil prophet, many will remember Simmons mainly as the brave humanitarian who died working to bring peace to the Gulf Coast.

Instead of peace, a deafening silence about the Gulf region human extinction has continued. Environmentalists for the most part have supported media concern for the Gulf’s four-legged, finned and winged creatures but not humans, and a 2010 BP Gulf “disaster” that ended.

To wit: People, especially in Louisiana, needed to be evacuated due to the Gulf’s “open hole,” Simmons warned.

“There will be a vast amount of methane gas coming out of there,” he alerted.

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Reporter, author and human rights professional for over 30 years, Deborah Dupré exposes lies and truths about the Gulf of Mexico oil operation In her book,“VAMPIRE of MACONDO: Life, Crimes and Curses in South Louisiana that Powerful Forces Don’t Want You to Know.” In “Vampire of Macondo,” Dupré exposes covered-up facts and victims’ gut-wrenching stories about the 2010 BP/government Gulf oil catastrophe, a continuing humanitarian and environmental historical event.