This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Methane Release From the Gulf Oil Spill: What Does It Mean? How Bad Could It Get?
Blog
Tremendous quantities of methane are being emitted by the Gulf oil
spill.
The methane could kill all life in large areas of the Gulf.
However,
rumors being spread widely around the Web claiming that the methane
could bring on a doomsday catastrophe are not credible.
This
essay will attempt to clear up the confusion and convey the facts
regarding methane and the oil spill.
Thank Uncle Sam
As
a preface, I want to touch on the government's role in this mess.
Many
people know that the government has encouraged deepwater drilling for
oil by giving huge tax
subsidies for deepwater drilling.
As the Los Angeles Times writes:
Some
say the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe can be linked to Congress' policy of
oil-friendly tax breaks and financial benefits.***
At
issue was the 2005 Energy Policy Act — the largest energy bill in years.
The committee chairman, Rep. Joe L. Barton (R- Texas), a friend of the
industry, had saved some big issues for the end: billions of dollars in
tax and royalty relief to encourage drilling for oil and gas in the Gulf
of Mexico and other offshore areas. There was even a $50-million annual
earmark to support technical research for the industry.***
The
royalty waiver program was established by Congress in 1995, when oil
was selling for about $18 a barrel and drilling in deep water was seen
as unprofitable without a subsidy. Today, oil sells for about $70 a
barrel, but the subsidy continues.
The Government Accountability
Office estimates that the deep-water waiver program could cost the
Treasury $55 billion or more in lost revenue over the life of the
leases, depending on the price of oil and gas and the performances of
the wells.
***
Oil companies won a lawsuit last year
requiring the government to pay back $2.1 billion in royalties from
previous years, including about $240 million to BP.
An increasing
number of analysts say the waiver program has pushed drilling into
fragile and remote areas where emergency response plans were inadequate.
"If it wasn't profitable for them to do it, then that's a good argument
for leaving the oil in the ground," said Robert Gramling, who studies
the history of the oil industry at the University of Louisiana,
Lafayette. The government-subsidized rush to deep-water exploration led
to a situation where the industry was doing "things that were
technically possible but were beyond our ability to undo them if we find
out we have a problem."
But most people don't know that
the government has actively encouraged drilling for methane in the Gulf
of Mexico as well.
For example, Congress passed
the Methane Hydrate Research and Development Act
of 2000 "to promote the research, identification, assessment, exploration, and development of
methane hydrate resources...."
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 also
provided government
support for methane hydrate research, exploration and development -
including in deep water.
The Department of Energy has actively
encouraged deepwater drilling for methane hydrates. See this
and this.
Indeed,
this has specifically included support for deepwater drilling for
methane in the Gulf of Mexico. See this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
In
fact, the government,
oil industry and academia have been exploring
the high methane content in the Mississippi
Canyon area of the Gulf of Mexico - where the spill is occurring -
for years.
Unprecedented Release of Methane
As CBS notes:
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.
As
Kessler also points
out:
This is the most vigorous methane eruption in
modern human history.
A U.S. scientist says
that methane levels in the Gulf are "astonishingly high", that 1 million
times the normal level of methane gas has been found in some regions
near the oil spill, high enough to create "dead zones" devoid of life.
Methane depletes oxygen, and the scientist noted:
At some
locations, we saw depletions of up to 30
percent of oxygen based on its natural concentration in the waters.
Another
scientist writes:
Researchers
studying the [plumes] have found concentrations of methane up to
10,000 times greater than normal and oxygen levels depleted by 40 percent below normal.
This
unprecedented release of methane into the ocean kill all life within
large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico.
Global Warming
NASA
has found that methane is 33
times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing global warming.
Many scientists have said that methane releases have caused past warming
spells. See this,
this,
this, this
and this.
Indeed, methane has such a powerful effect on climate that scientists
believe that woolly
mammoth farts gaseous emissions are responsible
for warming the Earth 13,000 years ago.
As Nature wrote
last year:
The Siberian Shelf alone harbours an
estimated 1,400 billion tonnes
of methane in gas hydrates, about twice as much carbon as is contained
in all the trees, grasses and flowers on the planet. If just one per
cent of this escaped into the atmosphere within a few decades, it would
be enough to cause abrupt climate change, says [Natalia Shakhova, a
biogeochemist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and one of the
leaders of the Siberian Shelf study].
See also this,
this,
this,
this
and this.
The
Associated Press points
out:
Estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey's
"flow team" [are] that 2,900 cubic feet of natural gas are escaping for
every barrel of oil.
Assuming 100,000
barrels of oil a day are spewing from the Gulf, that would mean
that 290,000,
000 cubic feet of gas is escaping a day, and 105,850,000,000
cubic feet of methane is escaping a year.
That's 105 billion cubic feet
a year. That's a very large number.
However, as the Guardian notes:
The
new study, published
in the journal Science, shows that methane emissions from the
Arctic increased by 31% from 2003-07. The increase represents about 1 [million] extra
tonnes of methane each year. Palmer cautioned that the five-year
increase was too short to call a definitive trend.***
[Researchers]
found that just over half of all methane emissions came from the
tropics, with some 20
[million] tonnes released from the Amazon river basin each
year, and 26
[million] tonnes from the Congo basin. Rice paddy fields across
China and south and south-east Asia produced just under one-third of
global methane, some 33 [million] tonnes.
As Scientific
American notes:
440
million metric tons of methane [are] emitted worldwide each year from a
combination of human activities and natural sources like rotting
plants in wetlands, termites and wildfires.
1 ton of
liquefied methane equals
approximately 16 barrels or 50,000 cubic feet of natural gas, depending
on methane content (Natural gas contains between 75
and 90
percent methane by volume. Natural gas used by consumers is composed
almost entirely of methane. However,
natural gas found at the wellhead, although
still composed primarily of methane, is not
as pure. )
So using a rough calculation, 440 million metric tons
equals approximately 2.2
× 1013 or 22,000,000,000,000 cubic feet.
That's
22 trillion cubic
feet a year ... 210
times bigger than the amount of methane being released from the
Gulf oil spill.
So the bottom line is that the methane gushing
out from the broken oil equipment is adding to the worldwide methane
output, but constitutes less
than one-half of one percent ... which would normally be considered
a statistical rounding error.
Remember, these are very rough
estimates which are certain to be somewhat off. I hope that an expert
can provide better estimates, and correct any erroneous assumptions
which I made. But the estimates still provide some sense of scale and
context.
(Note also that Iceland's volcanoes are probably going
to throw a
lot of ash into the air. This could have a cooling effect which
offsets any warming from the Gulf methane release.)
Look Out
Below!
Methane released deep underwater might not even make it to the atmosphere.
As
Newsweek points
out:
The latest science suggests that relatively
little, if any, methane hydrate is currently degassing, amounting to at
most 2 percent of global methane emissions, and much of that may not
even be entering the atmosphere. Most
of the degassing hydrate would be deep underwater, so the methane
that’s released can get dissolved in the water or chewed up by certain
microbes before it reaches the surface.
David
Valentine of the University of California, Santa Barbara, agrees:
"Although
methane from surface-vessel spills or shallow-water blowouts escapes
into the air, I expect that the vast majority of methane making the
long trip to the sea surface from a deep water spill would dissolve,"
Valentine wrote. "Unlike oil, methane dissolves uniformly in seawater.
And the tools are available to measure it accurately and
sensitively."
As Alexander Higgins points
out:
[A] study called Project “Deep Spill”
... debunks the lie that the methane gas being released from the well
is floating to the surface and not being absorbed into the sea.
The
study analyzed a wide range of controlled releases at different depths
below the sea surface of different types of oil found all over world
to help better understand the flow of hydrocarbons released from a
deepwater blowout.
One of the studies, called DeepBlow, released
10,000 barrels of oil per day at a depth of 800 meters which is less
than half of the depth of the Deepwater Horizon blowout.
The
basic findings of that study has been recreated by scientists from the
University of North Carolina.
In their research the scientists simulated of the formation of the underwater oil plumes
that are created during deepwater blowouts.Watch The
University of North Caroline Simulation Shows How Oil Released
Underwater Forms PlumesWhile
the University of North Carolina simulation gives you a basic
understanding of how deepwater blowouts create oil plumes it does not
fully account for all the findings of Project “Deep Spill”.
In
particular the final report of Project “Deep Spill” found: ound:
- Only 2% of the oil released in a
deepwater blowout may actually make it to the surface.
That’s as little as 2% naturally without the use of dispersants. Add
dispersants into the equation and it could be less then one percent of
oil that makes it to the surface.- None of the methane
released from the deepwater blowout made it to the surface. The
study found that released natural gas may dissolve completely within
the water column if it is released from a deep enough depth relative to
the gas flow rate.From the study of the 800 meter release:
Echo
sounders provided efficient tracking of oil and gas releases in the
field and showed that the gas was completely dissolved before it could
surface.DeepBlow does not include hydrate kinetics, and hence,
under hydrate forming conditions, the model predicts solid hydrate
particles. Not only is the mass transfer from such particles slower than
from gas bubbles, but also hydrate density is closer to that of water
than that of natural gas, substantially reducing plume buoyancy.- The buoyant parts of the oil released in a deepwater blowout
split from the main plume within the first 200 meters of release. Those
buoyant parts, which represent only a small portion of the total amount
of oil, turn into small droplets that float to the surface.Here is a
graph from the study showing this process.
Deepwater
oil release – Buoyancy particle separation graphHere is
an image that captures the separation process
Deepwater
oil release – Buoyancy particle separation simulation- Within the first 100 to 200 meters from the source of the release the
the majority of the oil loses its buoyancy and stops rising. This
majority of the oil remains submerged in an underwater plume that is
then carried away by subsurface currents.
The
fact that much of the methane released from the Gulf oil spill won't
make it to the surface is good for those worried about global warming,
but bad for the marine life. Remember as discussed above, methane
depletes oxygen, and thus kills everything in the ocean.
Methane
Explosions
There is speculation on the Web that the methane
being released from the oil spill will cause a tsunami
or a firestorm.
It is true that one scientist speculates
that methane bubbles released from the seafloor have caused
extinction-level events in the past.
But the odds that the release of methane from
the leaking oil will cause a tidal wave or a firestorm are infinitesimally
small.
There are many real things to worry about -
such as the destruction of the Gulf ecosystem, and the threat to human
health from toxic chemicals in the oil and dispersants.
Tidal
waves and firestorms are not worth worrying about. And - unlike the
destruction of the ecosystems and the threat to human health which we
can do something about (by stopping the use of Corexit dispersant and
using proven clean-up and containment methods) - there's nothing much we
can do about such low-probability Armageddon scenarios.
»
- advertisements -
Even sweet crude entrains plenty of sulphur. There's no doubt it's present in an oil saturated environment...I just don't know how that impacts the undoubtedly complex chemical/biological interactions going on down there. The suphur is there though.
+ Corexit = science experiment ...
I will trust you guys to keep an eye on this, its above my pay scale. I got this from wiki tho!
Corexit 9527
The proprietary composition is not public, but the manufacturer's own safety data sheet on Corexit EC9527A says the main components are 2-butoxyethanol and a proprietary organic sulfonate with a small concentration of propylene glycol.[
so there's some sulphur!
Mmmmm. Pour me a double.
George....a brief nit pick...but the culprit in Camaroon was carbon dioxide, not methane. Methane is lighter than air and CO2 is about 1.5X as dense as air...had it been methane that burst from that lake it would have risen instead of flowing down the mountainside and suffocating the victims.
Another thing to consider when worrying about a methane fireball (added to the fact that little of it is escaping to the surface) is the fact that methane atmospheres are explosive only in a very narrow range...5 to 15% by volume in air...and the chances of concentrations remaining in that range over a wide area (since methane rises) are likely pretty small. I agree that the fireball/tsunami thing just isn't a high enough probability to be overly concerned about.
Anyway....thanks for pointing out a bit of the unscientific speculation....reality is bad enough.
As an aside, I'm much more concerned about hydrogen sulphide than I am methane. When aerobic microbes eat methane in the water they eliminate relatively harmless gasses like hydrogen and CO2. Once the water becomes oxygen depleted the aerobic bacteria would likely die off and colonies of anaerobic microbes would take their place.
I don't have any idea how much would be produced but these microbes that thrive in anoxic environments tend to eliminate H2S ...much sterner stuff.
Heavier than air, extremely explosive (4.3 to 45.5% concentrations by volume) and deadly poisonous...I'd love to hear more informed people weigh in on how likely it is that H2S might be produced in these underwater plumes once the oxygen is depleted, and whether that gas would fizz out of solution as the plume moved up the water column encountering lower pressures.
H2S is already present in many oil wells..the more "sour" the more H2S..even apart from microbial activity.
Edit: Even with hydrogen sulphide I'm not all that concerned with explosions...though that seems a more likely problem with H2S than methane. My real question is
"What are the chances that H2S could rise to the surface and be swept into a populated area by a gentle onshore breeze?"
The results would be deadly....but I don't know if I'm expressing a valid concern or just adding to the hysteria surrounding this whole thing....
H2S is very soluable in water (more so than CH4 as is it an chemical analogue of H2O) and will simply acidify the water and, due to currents be rapidly dispersed and diluted to low levels. At the depth of the leak it would be very unlikely to get to the surface "living" zone of 0-100' where nearly all the sealife exists. The same argument applies to effects on sealife from CH4 released at such large depths. It will be mostly solubilized as argued in this article, and since nearly all sealife exists in the 0-100' zone is unlikely to have much effect. Anyone whose ever done any scuba diving knows its pretty useless to go below 100' as there's little life below where sunlight can penetrate (i.e. the food chain depends on mostly photosynthetic bacteria existing near the surface).
George....a brief nit pick...but the culprit in Camaroon was carbon dioxide, not methane. Methane is lighter than air and CO2 is about 1.5X as dense as air...had it been methane that burst from that lake it would have risen instead of flowing down the mountainside and suffocating the victims.
Another thing to consider when worrying about a methane fireball (added to the fact that little of it is escaping to the surface) is the fact that methane atmospheres are explosive only in a very narrow range...5 to 15% by volume in air...and the chances of concentrations remaining in that range over a wide area (since methane rises) are likely pretty small. I agree that the fireball/tsunami thing just isn't a high enough probability to be overly concerned about.
Anyway....thanks for pointing out a bit of the unscientific speculation....reality is bad enough.
That is not a nit. It explains ALL of the Geo Wash posts. Why deal with the science and facts? Just make it up or distort. That is why this should be on Before it is News. It cannot happen as a result of the Macando well.
Most gas wells do produce very small amounts of H2S with the gas. There is no evidence of high H2S from Macando. Worry, if you wish to find something to worry about. A very small amount of H2S could help feed the bacteria that eat the oil and methane.
theres that S again...hummph..4h20 + h2s = h2s04 +3h...grrrr still cant get tothe sulphuric acid rain i was going to worry about!
Stormdancer,
Thanks for the correction!
Well in fairness I have to admit that based on GW's previous posts on this topic I immediately assumed the worst and ran to a reference to get methane density at atm and converted to check his rates.....wow - his numbers are accurate. Then I finished the post and realized he was making the same argument I would.....
See - accurate numbers lead to accurate analysis. GW should try it more often. One point however - the Gulf of Mexico has a VERY large DEAD ZONE every year. This is due to high fertilizer & pollution levels associated with spring runoff from the Mississippi river. Oxygen levels in this zone (which often is larger than many states) are extremely low. ANY YET - LIFE STILL EXISTS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO.
There will be dead zones associated with the methane as well as biologic breakdown of the dispersant produced oil plumes at depth. These are very bad things but they will NOT 'kill everything in the ocean'.
Is there something to prevent communication with the GoM area?
If not, one could wonder how life could disappear from the area as life from other areas can as well migrate to the GoM.
Once again, a failed requirement with that life still exists in the GoM.
Could not disappear as long as there is life elsewhere and migration is possible.
Check out this UGA scientist who just came back from a research trip in the Gulf
Methane@100,000 times normal levels
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBaVMPIH0LI&feature=related
It's about the Gulf ecosystem and that is not trivial as an imbalance in the Gulf can have widespread impacts that last for decades.
more here
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/060910/new_650789974.shtml
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9133315
Interesting that you bring up the methane issue. There is a book written in 2003, "When Life Nearly Died" by Michael Benton, in which he searches for the cause of the Permian Extinction, the greatest known mass extinction about 250 million years ago. While the book itself also reads as a history of the field of paleontology, he concludes that the proximate cause, the spewing of lava vents in Siberia over a million year period, was insufficient and thinks that the resultant warming may have released frozen methane hydrates in the continental shelf.
I found it very readable and interesting.
I've seen/read that as well. The Permian extinction event was noteworthy because it was two phased. The Russian lava flows raised the temperature globally by about 6-7 degrees C, which was enough to stress a lot of life but not enough to cause mass extinctions. However, this was enough that after half a million years of this mid-latitude seas warmed to a point where even at depth the solid hydrate ice melted then evaporated or sublimated - raising the temperature another 6-7 degrees C, which proved too rapid for most life on earth.
Keep in mind that it is usually not the temperature itself that causes extinction - it's the rapidity of change. A sudden drop of 15 degrees (27 F) for more than a couple of years is just as bad as a sudden rise of 15 degrees.
Of course, turning the Gulf into a giant anoxic dead zone is just as much of an extinction event as boiling the life within the seas. I have a feeling that if this continues uncapped and doesn't reach equilibrium, we're going to see aquatic life devolve to the level of jellyfish.
agree...very interesting read
That Woolly Mammoth farts were responsible for Global Warming thousands of years ago and that man hunted the Woolly Mammoth to Extinction are supercilious, boneheaded, nonsensical pablum. There were not enough wolly mammoth to drown in their own poop nor did cavemen possess enough sharp sticks to eliminate the entire species.
Where the fuck some people come up with this shit is just beyond me. Are we likewise sure that aliens (UFO, not south of the border types) built the pyramids, too? But nonetheless, we can be sure in this day and age, that the IPCC, UN and God only knows who else, at the Behest of Al Gore, will land a multi-billion dollar research grant to study such whilst designing a more efficient hockey stick.
Stuff doesn't even rank up there with unreasonable Conspiracy Theory.
Twaddle.
Agreed.
Geez, the EPA rules that CO2 - you now, "plant food", is a poison gas to be regulated, and nary a word on methane. I guess gore et al are long taco bell and short tree farms.
Can you die from your own farts?
Edmon,
Only if in a confined area..Oxygen depletion,
Unless I missed it,where's the Benzene data?.....that's (if it surfaces) is lethal to anything that draws breath.........and there's supposedly a gazillion PPM, mixed, and realeased along with the Methane.
No, you can't die from your farts.. That being said, I was sentenced to 6 years for destroying the elevator's occupants olfactory receptors. I snuck a match into jail and blasted my way out and they never came looking for me.
two words: spontaneous combustion.
This from AssFire.
It is pronounced oss - FEAR - ay. ;)
Can you die from your own farts?
If they continue to smell like that last one I emitted, YES. ;-)
You sound like you work for BP. Do you get a bonus for writing this?
Who are you speaking to?
Great article. You just raised your cred level a gazillion percent. it is a shame that so few people can distingish the relativity of events.
Um, yeah. Seriously.
Ah Ha! 2005 Energy Policy Act led to the spill. I knew this was going to be George Bush's fault.
Pretty good article, reminded me of something off-topic.
Remember the end of the dinosaurs on the KT boundary @ 65 million years ago?
The tenured academic twat-heads will now start saying the Chixculub meteor impact released all that submerged methane (it used to be sulphur rains they said did it) and wiped out all big life on earth............. Bad science.
(FYI a water-melon hitting Dodgers stadium is about in scale with meteor to earth. How much damage could that cause using Newton's 2nd Law)
If the watermellon was made of dense rock and was shot at Dodgers stadium at 10,000 mph, it might have some effect...
Actually, ramp that up to 30,000 mph or more for some Earth crossing asteroids and larger meteoroids. The energy release is staggering. And if the object is only the size of a city block, the devastation will be huge, hundreds of hydrogen bombs going off at once. Make it bigger than that and you have serious problem world wide.
I watched a Discovery channel shows a few years back where a scientist was shooting a round piece of metal the size of a sand particle into a sand box at around 2,000 mph. The resulting impact was huge compared to the size of the particle. And this was at 2,000 mph. At 30,000, it's only in the atmosphere a second or more before it hits. Not enough time to melt or even heat up much.
"Everything you ever wanted to know about methane - INCLUDING woolly mammoth farts - but were afraid to ask ..."'
Probably the most imaginative teaser I've seen in the year I've haunted ZH. I'm familiar with cow farts. Are they similar? :>)
We know where the power is in the US when the US Government subsidies oil and gas drilling considering there's plenty of incentive to drill without the incentives. Just pull up the quarterly profit of BP or XOM if you don't understand.
Of course, an oil and gas person will give you a 2 hour lecture justifying these subsidies. And let's not forget the $800 Billion dollar military budget that subsidizes the oil and gas industry.
Actually, pound for pound... pure-bred Wookiees like Michelle Obama expel 5 times more methane than Wooly Mammals. And the kids are 50% Wookiee, baby. This is a big problem for the Secret Service... and involves close consultation with Nobel Prize winning Energy Secretary Chu.
Cd said, I'm familiar with cow farts. Are they similar?
Nope, we are as sweet as a daisy. Now the colombian mammoths, well, their the ones that will curl your nose.
I was hoping I would flush out from the cover that Oak Tree was giving you for a response. Now, can I get a second opinion on your sweet daisy "woolly mammoth" farts?
A unbiased opinion? Say.....maybe from those much maligned Colombian mammoths? :>)
Actually, most big business is subsidized, coddled and protected by our government. Its a validation of the fascist state we live in.
not sure that is quite accurate. my profession is corporate taxes and while everyone dwells on all the income tax breaks for a lot of industries you never hear of the tremendous amounts of other taxes being paid. The everyday person hasn't heard of most of these taxes as they are only assessed on big companies.
All hail Lord Obama! *Hand Salute*