Stranger than fiction: methane hydrate, a potential source of energy that may dwarf the supply of earth’s existing fossil fuels likely caused the April 20 Deepwater Horizon-BP explosion and then prevented the containment of the resulting spill this weekend.

Reports that methane hydrate gases shot up the well before the Deepwater Horizon explosion appeared on Friday, while the attempt Saturday by BP to put a containment dome over the leaking oil well was foiled by “slushy methane hydrates” that built up in the structure.

Unknown risks associated with our society’s fossil fuel reliance are suddenly coming into sharper focus, and it’s beginning to look like a well-conceived science fiction movie. Only this is real, it’s happening now, and a happy ending appears out of the question.

We can’t turn it off.  

An out-of-control oil spill is coming directly out of the earth, with seemingly unlimited quantities of crude fouling into the nation’s most productive fishery, where 80% of the country’s domestically produced wild seafood supply is harvested. The oil spill is accompanied by one of the most potent known greenhouse gases, which stymies rescue efforts with acute volatility, threatening far more global climate damage than existing fossil fuels.    

Also known as “ice energy,” methane hydrate is layered below the global ocean floors around the world in a frozen, yet highly flammable state. Occurring in permafrost as well, this enigmatic substance has more than three times the carbon than natural gas, coal and oil combined, so it presents incalcuable risks to the global climate if it is released into the atmosphere without sequestration.

It has been nearly a month since the tragic events aboard BP’s drilling rig, Deepwater Horizon, which suffered a blowout, caught fire, and sank in the Gulf of Mexico releasing prodigious amounts of oil into the sea. So far there has been little damage to the coastline; however, this could change quickly as oil is still pouring from the damaged well pipe and it could be months before the blowout is brought under control.

The possible damage to the environment ranges anywhere from minor, which is doubtful, to wiping out the seafood and tourist industries along the Gulf coast for many years.

Although BP and the government continue to talk about a leak of only 5,000 barrels a day based on photography of the surface slick, numerous outside observers who have viewed video footage of the broken pipe are saying this figure may be an order of magnitude too low. Thus far BP has refused to deploy instruments that could give a more accurate appraisal of the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf on the grounds that stopping the leak, not its size, is what matters.

No matter how much environmental and economic damage results from the Deepwater Horizon blowout, the ramifications of the spill are likely to linger for decades and have a major impact on the availability of deepwater oil as we enter the era of oil depletion. The U.S. government has already put a temporary hold on additional drilling until the facts of the current situation are clarified. The oil companies who are used to minimal government interference with their activities are already raising objections to the possibility of tougher regulation.