The Guadalajara Reporter

School for skeptics

Among the gushers of government hyped news this week were reiterations that the January 31 explosion at the Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) tower complex was a gas explosion.  The government of Mexico’s new president Enrique Peña Nieto identified the gas as methane.

But that quick announcement spawned a cascade of doubts, and not a little sharp reasoning among both experts and the citizenry.

National Autonomous University of Mexico security, engineering and civil protection experts questioned the government’s “thesis” that the explosion at Building B-2 of the Pemex Tower complex was due to an accumulation of methane gas. 

“Just knowing the properties of the gas in question rules out methane as the cause,” Guillermo Garduño, a security expert, told reporters.  “We can say without major contradiction that there (quite possibly) was a gas, but that gas (methane), no.” 

Methane, chemistry texts tell us, occurs naturally as a result of a process of decomposition of organic matter, which is colorless and odorless. When it is used commercially a substance with an easily detectable odor is added to it to warn of any leaking.  Methane is also explosive and highly flammable.  Its flammability is often the major identifier in accidental explosions.  “There was no flamazo,” at Building B-2.  Witnesses confirm this, reporting that there there was an “earthquake-like” eruption  that “produced smoke but no fire.”  If methane gas had caused that explosion, Garduño told the media, “... there would have been a monumental fire, the smoke produced would have been enormous and the victims would have been burned. But none of the injuries were burns.”  He added that the official versions “.... end up being an insult to the intelligence of anyone,” and that “more than answers, the report is leaving many, many questions.” 

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