Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Climate Change and Environmental Issues BP Oil Spill

The well is located in block 252 of the Macondo prospect in the Mississippi Canyon. It has a very challenging geology for drilling. The seabed is composed of turbidite sand bonded with methane hydrates.

Methane hydrates are volatile compounds — natural gas compressed into molecular cages of ice. They are stable in the extreme cold and crushing weight of deepwater, but are extremely dangerous when they build up inside the drill column of a well. If destabilized by heat or a decrease in pressure, methane hydrates can quickly expand to 164 times their volume....

Additionally the hydrate/sand compound has a porosity of 26 - 30 percent. It is not only far more porous than rock, but can fall apart if the methane hydrate holding it together melts, leading to collapses in the seabed. Many believe this is already underway.

Scientists are well aware of the awesome power of these strange hydrocarbons. A sudden large scale release of methane hydrates is believed to have caused a mass extinction 55 million years ago.

if the seabed were to cave in around the well head, and/or elsewhere over the deposit, the entire reservoir of oil could empty into the gulf, through the Loop Current and into the Gulf Stream. No wonder this is being compared to Pandora's Box; humans opening up something that they have no real control over and setting in motion a terrible chain reaction. This certainly has the potential to become a mass extinction event, unseen in human history and the only hope of preventing it is a couple of relief wells, that may or may not work. Not to be alarmist or anything...

It's entirely possible that the entire Gulf of Mexico will be ruined by this spill if it isn't somehow stopped.

I truly think we have opened a well we have no clue how to close - and by "we" I mostly mean the drilling experts. I don't think we have any good moves at hand.

Thibodeaux, Boudreaux and Fontenot were told to clean as many brown pelicans as they could....

So far, Thibodeaux has cleaned and gutted over 56 birds while Boudreaux made the roux and Fontenot cooked the rice.

...Corexit 9500 was found to be one of the most toxic dispersal agents ever developed. According to the Clark and George-Ares report, Corexit mixed with the higher gulf coast water temperatures becomes even more toxic. The UK's Marine Management Organization has banned Corexit so if there was [b][ouch!] a spill in the UK's North Sea, BP is banned from using Corexit.
It seems like [ouch!] damage brought by the oil gusher has spread way beyond the ocean, coastal areas and beaches. Collateral damage now appears to include agricultural damage way inland Mississippi. [ouch!]
A mysterious "disease" has caused widespread damage to plants from weeds to farmed organic and conventionally grown crops. There is very strong suspicion that ocean winds have blown Corexit aerosol plumes or droplets and that dispersants have caused the unexplained widespread damage.