So it is just — it is possible, but it just strikes me that there’s so much water and so much dilution that this is an extreme problem. Most of this methane gas is coming to the surface. Some of it is dissolving in the water column, but it is being dispersed over a fairly large area, incredible.
Remember, this well, if you were standing back a mile, looks something like a fireplug spewing out, so think about all the water that is in that water column. And that water doesn’t stay there, of course. Ocean currents move the water away from the well.
So, there is an incredible amount of water out there just in a square mile that’s a half-a-mile deep, unbelievable, billions and billions and billions of gallons of water, and so I am not terribly concerned. I think it is something we need to look at, but the dissolved oxygen levels so far taken from a number of cruises have not found alarmingly low levels of D.O. at depth. BLITZER: David Kessler, I don’t know if you him. He is a professor at Texas A&M University. He is quoted as saying this. And I will put it up on the screen.
“This is most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history.”
You think he is right?
OVERTON: He may know a lot more about that than I do. I’m not a methane expert, but there is certainly an awful lot of carbon going into the water column. There’s no question about it. There is just an awful lot of water out there.
And so it sounds like to me it is a bit of an overstatement.
BLITZER: What would the methane potentially do if it were to continue to come up in huge numbers to sea life, for example?
OVERTON: Well, it is not very toxic. What it does is bacteria will degrade the methane and use up oxygen in the degradation, so — and this is what I was referring to when you — when we measure the amount of dissolved oxygen at depth.
And, so far, those measurements have not showed significant lowering of the dissolved oxygen, maybe 10, 20, 30 percent, but not down to zero, so most calculations show that it is probably not going to be reduced to zero. You have to have a D.O. concentration, it is three or four or five parts per million and at depths, and it would have to go near zero to produce dead zones.
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1006/18/sitroom.02.html
Biofuels have caused more destruction to the planet than the people in the GOM will ever see, (thanks Al) including this oil spill. When those who demonize big oil let me know when the life and animal species in and around the Gulf of Mexico has become extinct and that the destuction of land or sea is so complete that it can never heal itself or return to its former state, - the most ‘successful biofuel crops’ have done this and more - then we can talk.