Gulf Oil Spill - The Greatest Disaster Since The Flood?

From the Market Oracle:

...But that’s not all of it; here’s where I outline my “worst case” scenario. The main reason they’re having such incredible problems capping the darn thing is not because of depth; it’s because of internal well pressure. In the pre-drilling geological surveys a massive methane pocket was discovered coinciding with the oil deposits; this pocket is sitting at a pressure of 100,000 psi. Current engineering technology doesn’t exist to contain something at 100,000 psi, meaning efforts to cap this puppy are useless. The presence of this methane pocket is becoming harder to ignore as 40-70% of the emissions from the leak are now comprised of natural gas (and we’re still blowing out 60,000-120,000 barrels of oil a day). Best estimates put the amount of methane leaking at 2,900 cubic feet for every barrel of oil spilled (with an estimated 4.5-9.0 billion cubic feet of methane leaked so far… and the dang thing is STILL in six digit psi).

The secondary concern here is the pressure and what happens if (more like when) it is discovered that the oil leak can’t actually be capped as it spews with that amount of internal force. The primary concern is what happens if/when the methane pocket ruptures; some estimates put its size at 15-20 miles wide (at 100,000 pounds of pressure per square inch).

If the methane bubble explodes, it would create a tsunami that would wipe out anything within dozens (and possibly hundreds) of miles of the Gulf Coast in all directions (view this animation of the 2009 tsunami in Samoa and how it spread). The tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 wiped out between 150,000-300,000 people, some as far away as South Africa. This was caused by an earthquake that shifted the ocean floor by meters. An explosion of this size would shift the ocean floor for miles. The Gulf is touched by the Mississippi River and opens into the Caribbean where it is exposed to the Panama Canal...