by Aaron Davis

Created on: July 17, 2010   Last Updated: December 01, 2011

The fear that the BP Gulf disaster may trigger a “world killing” event should not be dismissed as simply yet another doomsday scenario. Fortunately, unlike a massive meteor impact or getting swallowed up by a black hole, this disaster has a rather simple, and yet commercially viable solution. Drill-Baby-Drill. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not a Big Oil fan and am quite concerned about global warming by adding to the volume of CO2 in the atmosphere. But CO2 is a lot better than Methane both from a global warming point of view, and because CO2 does not blow people up.

Rather than act like a mob of angry villagers running up the hill to burn the castle of BP, let’s consider how we might avert this disaster. The problem as I understand it is that a giant uncontrolled release of natural gas is what we want to avoid. Based on the geologic history this will eventually happen unless we intervene. The earlier we do so the better. 

There is no reason to think that it is too late. If the scenario has merit, drilling offshore over the last 50 years may have reduced the potential for mass extinction. The claim is that the BP oil well disaster has expedited a potential mass extinction. However, equally valid hypotheses might be that the Deepwater Horizon served to further relieve pressure in these deep sediments and also served to expose a serious problem that up till now has been largely ignored.  After all, no one actually witnessed a gas saturated formation, breach its impermeable layers some 13,000 feet below the sea bottom, and explode in the atmosphere.

So, how many wells will it take to relieve the pressure in the massive subsea reserve to keep the natural gas from rupturing the 18,000 feet of sediment and sea water overburden?  Adding more impermeable sediments to the cross section will not work. What might work is to step up drilling activity one or two orders of magnitude beyond our current capabilities to effectively remove the over- pressure risk.

What could be some of the effects of increasing drilling in the Gulf by a factor of 10 or 100? The first thing is a huge financial commitment on the part of both government and industry. Then we need to deal with the surplus of natural gas and oil. This surplus will make energy costs plummet as usage fails to keep up with supply and storage sites become over over-subscribed. This much increased production

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