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.

Comments

Golden Opportunity!

[Baldrson]

Look at the prevailing atmospheric vorticity of the area, place a bunch of counter-vorticity-inducing stators around the biggest leak (just a few percent cant on them is sufficient) and light it up. The updraft will pull air in through the stators inducing continuous vorticity that will form a fire tornado miles into the atmosphere, totally oxidizing the methane and anything else that might burn in the gas.

Once the fuel supply is cut off, the vortex may be self-sustaining due to the temperature difference between the ground and the upper troposphere. This is known as an Atmospheric Vortex Engine.

To turn it off, you turn the stators straight in thereby removing the vorticity and the vortex structure dissipates into a normal updraft.

Where is the FEMA money or similar?

[dbIII]

It's a disasterous waste of a resource and many people have had to be evacuated, possibly for months. Why isn't there a serious response on the federal level instead of expecting the company to do whatever they can with their own resources? A spill in the gulf was dealt with on such a level.

Re:Well done...

[Firethorn]

Assuming it's pure methane, that would be ~23k BTU/lb, or about 2.5B BTU/hour.

At around $1.80 per Million BTU, that's about $4,500 worth of gas leaking out per hour. About $3.2M/month.

Not good, by any means, but I think dollars puts it into better scale.