Slashdot Mirror
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.
That would be hydrogen sulfide. Methane doesn't smell like anything. It's odorless; in fact your gas company puts a stinky compound into it so you'll know when there's a leak.
Pumping fluids down into the will, usually the normal recourse, just isn't working, said [copmany spokesperson Anne] Silva.
Great editing as always, timmay.
People forget that it is the Republicans that rule CA. The Democratic Party has no influence here.
Well it sounds like this really stinks for those residents.
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.
Burn it. It's far better to burn it than let it escape as methane.
Better known as 318230.
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.
Seastead this.
Typos not present in source article.
So much for those who say the editors don't do anything anymore.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
This article is pretty light on details. I know some of the residents in that area, and these are things some retired engineers have passed on to me from community meetings SCGC has had with them.
This is an old (early 20th century) oil field with over 80 wells. If you've never driven around LA, you may not know that there are still operational oil fields inside the city, but think of the La Brea tar pits, and it makes sense.
All of the wells in this field were designed to pump out oil. The pipes used in the wells are larger inner diameter than typically used with methane and have thinner and more porous wall material than typically used with methane. The pipes used are perfectly fine for oil, but would not be approved for a new methane well.
SCGC uses this underground cavern emptied of oil as storage for methane for Los Angeles in lieu of constructed tanks. They can and do pump methane in and out, it's all processed and comes from somewhere else.
What they did not do is verify that this old oil field will actually hold methane before they started using it. This leak looks like the methane is going through the porous concrete pipe that makes up the well and through the surrounding rock to the surface. This is why they can't seal the leak by clogging the pipe. It seems unlikely that anything short of capping all of the wells at the bottom or pumping out the methane will stop the leaking for good. They're halfway through drilling for one well, and don't intend to start on others until they show signs of leaking. All of their sensors are at ground level, so they will have no advance notice of an imminent leak.
The local schools have been closed due to air quality issues, and a few thousand people have been temporarily moved at SCGC's expense. This leak accounts for 25% of the total expected statewide carbon emissions.
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.
At the mind-boggling 110,000 pph (interesting choice of units for measuring a quantity of gas, btw) I don't know if this will be the atmospheric version of the Deep Water Horizon... There would probably be less damage overall if you'd just bought it straight from Gazprom... Sad :(
Maybe this is a dumb question, but why in the world were they stockpiling that much gas to begin with?
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.'"
Hell, yeah!
Its more sensible than a lot of other things that happen in Texas, and the movie rights would be worth even more than the legal fees. Unless God's legal team actually win and Texas has to pay - where is Chuck Norris when you need him?.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
By my calculations, this well is about 0.3% of the world's cows methane output (according to the webs, 265 pounds per year per cow; and there are over a billion cows), or the equivalent of about 3.67 million cows. (Note: I consume meat/dairy products. Just trying to put it into perspective.)
So this is a storage well for natural gas, right.
Is that anything like the proposed storage wells for captured carbon dioxide? Sequestering billions of tons of carbon dioxide in undrerground in deep wells so it doesn't get into the atmosphere and cause trouble?
Methane is lighter than air and disperses quickly -- in fact it goes to the upper atmosphere where it causes the problems that it causes. So this light gas which isn't particularly toxic hangs around long enough for it's impurities to force the evacuation of 1700 homes. Now what would happen if a CO2 storage facility would have a similar blowout, of a gas that is very heavy and creeps along the ground and kills people in houses (and livestock) instead of just stinking them out?
And unlike nuclear waste that is dangerous for thousands of years, carbon dioxide is deadly forever.
Is it really such a great idea to consider storage and capture?
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.