Top scientist: Only one ship testing methane levels in Gulf, NOAA hiding results; Amount is “just startlingly high”

UGA SCIENTIST: TOO LITTLE RESEARCH ON GASES AT OIL DISASTER SITE IN GULF, Sunday Paper, June 29, 2010:

[UGA marine scientist Samantha Joye] notes “I have read the reports from NOAA and I have yet to see methane measurements.”

She says “the biggest hole [in research on the disaster] is the gas data.” …

Joye says the amount of methane that’s getting into the air is unknown because only one ship is actually doing any measuring of gases in the air. …

Joye, whose background is in chemistry, says when she and her colleagues got out their calculators and started looking at the measures of gas produced by the ruptured BP well-head, “the numbers we came up with are just startlingly high.”

1986: Underwater methane release kills 1,800 people and all livestock

A report from WRAL Channel 5 in Raleigh shows how the contents from the spewing well can accumulate halfway up the water column when attempting to surface from a depth of 5,000 feet: