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Giant Methane Leak in California Won't Be Capped For Months
Motherboard takes a look at the ongoing leak from a deep well in Southern California, and the engineering challenges that mean it won't be stopped for a while. From Motherboard's report:
An enormous amount of harmful methane gas is currently erupting from an energy facility in Aliso Canyon, California, at a startling rate of 110,000 pounds per hour. The gas, which carries with it the stench of rotting eggs, has led to the evacuation 1,700 homes so far. Many residents have already filed lawsuits against the company that owns the facility, the Southern California Gas Company. ... Part of the problem in stopping the leak lies in the base of the well, which sits 8,000 feet underground. Pumping fluids down into the will, usually the normal recourse, just isn't working, said [copmany spokesperson Anne] Silva. Workers have been "unable to establish a stable enough column of fluid to keep the force of gas coming up from the reservoir." The company is now constructing a relief well that will connect to the leaking well, and hopefully provide a way to reduce pressure so the leak can be plugged.
As the article notes, methane is an especially noxious gas in a figurative as well as literal sense; while it spends less time in the atmosphere than does CO2, it is more effective at trapping heat.
If it's really that bad, strap a flare to a drone and fly it into the methane exhaust.
Then maybe someone will take notice and actually do something about it, rather then this bullshit "oh well, ho hum, we'll drill another well as soon as we can" business-as-usual attitude. I'm guessing the facility is fully operational and pulling in profits for SCGC, despite the insane environmental harm it's currently causing? What incentive do they actually have to fix it right now? They haven't even confirmed if the secondary well will actually do anything.
No. An accident is when you're drunk and you think you have to fart but you end up crapping your drawers.
When a leak in your natural gas storage facility springs a leak so bad that it makes an entire California town uninhabitable and the residents seriously ill, has already dumped the greenhouse equivalent of a million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and you won't be able to stop the leak until at least March, 2016, it's a fucking crime. They should be frog-marching the CEO and Board of Directors of SoCal Gas in handcuffs right now. Let the hundreds of families that have had to leave their homes indefinitely throw rocks at their heads.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Something said in another article about this leak, was that they *don't* try to burn them off, because it complicates the repair. I get the impression that the facility this leak is at is still open for business. The heat from the fire would force workers to keep a greater distance, and destroy equipment which the gas plume alone doesn't harm. It also seems that the leak is not coming out of a broken pipe, but rather from where it emerges, or even cracks in the ground nearby it. A fire fed like this might move around, pop up in unexpected places, and perhaps disintegrate the ground underneath the facility. Burnt, it's better for the environment, but set alight, it might never be put out.
They should be frog-marching the CEO and Board of Directors of SoCal Gas in handcuffs right now. Let the hundreds of families that have had to leave their homes indefinitely throw rocks at their heads.
Cowboy up. The world and no one on owe you anything.
So what you're saying is that the people affected by this problem should take the law into their own hands, and string those fuckers up? Because the world and no one owes them anything, like protection from those who would attack them?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"