methane

In news reports today, we are discovering how violent methane is and how VERY much of it there is in the Gulf. And BP knew it.

“It is an overlooked danger in oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well contains vast amounts of natural gas that could pose a serious threat to the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile ecosystem. The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill.” “This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history,” Kessler said.”

Above, Discoverer Enterprise methane flare. photo source/credit
However, while the AP article looks at the devastating environmental aspects of the spill, this scientifically based article reveals the greater danger.

How the Gulf Oil Disaster Could Kill Millions
“Disturbing evidence is mounting that something frightening is happening deep under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico—something far worse than the BP oil gusher. Warnings were raised as long as a year before the Deepwater Horizon disaster that the area of seabed chosen by the BP geologists might be unstable, or worse, inherently dangerous. What makes the location that Transocean chose potentially far riskier than other potential oil deposits located at other regions of the Gulf? It can be summed up with two words: methane gas. Location of Deepwater Horizon oil rig was criticized more than 12 months ago some geologists rang the warning bell that the Deepwater Horizon exploratory rig might have been erected directly over a huge underground reservoir of methane. Documents from several years ago indicate that the subterranean geologic formation may contain the presence of a huge methane deposit. None other than the engineer who helped lead the team to snuff the Gulf oil fires set by Saddam Hussein to slow the advance of American troops has stated that a huge underground lake of methane gas—compressed by a pressure of 100,000 pounds per square inch (psi)—could be released by BP’s drilling effort to obtain the oil deposit. Current engineering technology cannot contain gas that is pressurized to 100,000 psi.”

But wait…it gets worse. Much worse.

“The ultimate Gulf disaster, however, would make even those historical horrors pale by comparison. If the huge methane bubble breaches the seabed, it will erupt with an explosive fury similar to that experienced during the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in the Pacific Northwest. A gas gusher will surge upwards through miles of ancient sedimentary rock—layer after layer—past the oil reservoir. It will explode upwards propelled by 50 tons psi, burst through the cracks and fissures of the compromised sea floor, and rupture miles of ocean bottom with one titanic explosion. The burgeoning toxic gas cloud will surface, killing everything it touches, and set off a supersonic tsunami with the wave traveling somewhere between 400 to 600 miles per hour.”

The result would be that

“While the entire Gulf coastline is vulnerable, the state most exposed to the fury of a supersonic wave towering 100 feet or more is Florida. The Sunshine State only averages about 6 inches above sea level. A supersonic tsunami would literally sweep away everything from Miami to the panhandle in a matter of minutes. Loss of human life would be virtually instantaneous and measured in the millions. Of course the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and southern region of Georgia—a state with no Gulf coastline—would also experience tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of casualties…”

This is what could happen. Not to say that it will happen. However, the geologists who have studied this area warned that the methane deposit under where BP planned to drill was too unstable and contained larger than normal quantities of methane. That is a fact. So it is also a fact that the BP well exploded. It is a fact that the sea floor is cracked and ruptured. It is a fact according to the AP article that methane is leaking at a rate at which the BP containment ships cannot keep up with burning it and the gas is spilling into the gulf, leaving huge dead zones. Pray to God that the methane in the gulf, either in the water or under the unstable sea floor, doesn’t explode, My mind can’t conceive of the devastation ensuing from such a disaster. Is judgment about to be rendered unto this sinful nation?

During the flood that is described in Genesis 6, mountains were raised up and valleys were made deeper to hold the enormous quantities of water generated in the Great Flood. Earth’s land masses have been pushed apart to make the current continents and islands. The earth as it looks now is not how it looked in the beginning, and it is not how it will look after it is returned to its original condition. In the latter part of the Tribulation God uses the massive natural disasters to not only judge the inhabitants of the earth, but to begin the transformation process in returning the earth to its pre-flood condition. In one example:

And there was a great earthquake, such as there had not been since man came to be upon the earth, so great an earthquake was it, and so mighty. The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. … And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. (Rev 16:18b-19a, 20)

It not so inconceivable that now, in these end times, the prophesied transformation process is beginning. The February 8.8 earthquake at Chile was so great it might have shortened earth’s days and tilted its axis. “A large quake shifts massive amounts of rock and alters the distribution of mass on the planet. The massive earthquake that struck Chile on Saturday may have shifted Earth’s axis and created shorter days, scientists at NASA say.”

The notion that there could be an earthquake so great that it shifts earth and makes it wobble, is intuitively understandable even if one is not a NASA scientist. But in the months since the Chilean earthquake in February, there have been an upsurge in disasters from below. We have seen a massive mine explosion and the largest oil spill in U.S. history. But that is not all, by any means. Besides the most “massive” and the “largest”- qualities we know are indicative of the end time with the constant ramping-up of painful contractions – we see the following constant and successive earth crustal disasters:

It has been a bloody week for China’s coal industry, with four reported accidents. In Russia, there were Two powerful blasts at the country’s largest coal mine that killed at least 12 miners and left 84 people – including 19 rescue workers – trapped deep underground while emergency services scramble to clear smoke and deadly gas from the stricken tunnels. At least six miners have died and seven are missing after a coal-mining accident in eastern Ukraine, regional officials say. In the US, an explosion at West Virginia Massey Energy mine killed 29 men last month, the nation’s worst coal mine disaster in 40 years. Mine disasters in the US are rare. In the US there was one in 2007, two in 2006, one in 2001, and one in 1992…and so on with their intermittent frequency indicating that such disasters are a relative rarity. Now suddenly it seems that mines are collapsing all over the place. But that’s not all that is collapsing.

Recently I wrote about the house and family in Quebec that was swallowed by an unexpected sinkhole in a location not known for sinkholes. That sinkhole tragedy was followed the next week by half an interstate lane disappearing in TN. And the world soon became highly aware of the eerie sinkhole in Guatemala City that swallowed a clothing factory, disappearing down a perfectly cylindrical hole that looked for all the nether-world like the shaft to hell.

Apparently, sinkholes have been appearing with enough regularity in China that the situation is spooking the population. A Sudden Sinkhole Outbreak Raises Fear in China–

“While the Guatemalans are wondering if the giant sinkhole formed on June 1 in their capital city is an isolated case, on the other side of the globe, the Chinese have discovered at least eight sinkholes that suddenly formed in the past two weeks across their country, and many more have appeared during the past two months. On June 3, four huge sinkholes opened up in Guangxi Province where a torrential storm was raging. According to Chinese state media reports, more than 600 villagers had to be evacuated because of them. Three smaller holes were found in southwestern Sichuan Province, and in Yibin City about 260 miles from the Sichuan earthquake’s epicenter, 26 larger sinkholes have formed since April 27. Prelude to Disaster? The outbreak of sinkholes has struck fear in Chinese people.” The report says that “Sinking government credibility and all too fresh memories of a series of recent disasters are causing Chinese society to become easily agitated. This February, the mere rumor of an earthquake scared tens of thousands of citizens in Taiyuan City in Shanxi Province out of their homes and into the streets to spend the night.”

Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. Luke 21:26

Besides earthquakes, mine disasters and sinkholes, there have also been a spate of gas and oil rig explosions. We’re all too familiar with the BP Deepwater Horizon rig explosion on April 22. On May 9 in Decatur Alabama, house was leveled in natural gas explosion. The blast could be felt as far as 2 miles away. Pictured above is a Pennsylvania methane explosion that injured 7 workers. The flames could be seen two miles away On June 8 in West Virginia a methane blast burned 7. The next day, Two men were killed Tuesday by a natural-gas pipeline explosion in Texas, the second such incident in the state in two days. There were several other gas explosion incidences that have occurred in May, but they were over-written in the news by subsequent incidences in June and became too hard to keep track of.

Earth’s increasingly temperamental crustal behavior is not escaping the attention of even the most liberal of opinion-casters, Keith Olbermann, who stated last night as “a Doomsday Scenario that is not far off” and reported something that is worse than Doomsday: something brought up by Florida Senator Bill Nelson in an interview with Andrea Mitchell. A transcript is here, the video is below. It seems that the ocean floor itself has ruptured underneath the BP well and oil is gushing out straight from the earth. A geologic rupture (subsurface blowout) was first mentioned weeks ago by Matt Simmons, who was pooh-poohed but now the scenario seems kind of, um, likely. You can read both Simmons’ claim and the pooh-poohing here.

I don’t like to connect dots that are not there. However it is fact is that there have been an unusual number of and successive methane, natural gas, and oil explosions in places that don’t usually have them, and whose cause have been investigated as non-terror related. Sinkhole outbreak and sub-sea geologic ruptures are being discussed. The earth is changing…or moving…or cracking…or something. We have a God who promised to use events in the end time to speak of His Holy power and the need for sinners to repent. We have an earth that has been prophesied to be renewed, from the ground up. We have documented evidence that earthquake frequency is up and that volcano eruption activity is up. In understanding where we are in the end time, I personally believe that the news related to explosions from the earth’s crust and ruptures are crustal shifts presaging the more massive shifts to come. In other words, don’t look out below, LOOK UP!

Category: methane

How the Gulf disaster could kill millions

Is the earth cracking up?