Submitted by Charlton Stanley (aka Otteray Scribe), Guest Blogger
There are gigantic salt deposits under the state of Louisiana. Geologists tell us the salt dome under Assumption Parish is about the same size as Mt. Everest. Some of the deposits are as deep as 35,000 feet as shown in this not-to-scale drawing. In fact, huge salt deposits are under large patches of the North American continent along the Mississippi River valley all the way up to Lake Erie. The city of Cleveland is sitting on top of a large salt deposit.
Salt settled out of the water when these areas were part of the ocean as the continent of North America was forming. We have all seen what happens if you dissolve salt in water. It reaches a saturation point, where no more salt can be dissolved. At that point, the excess salt settles to the bottom. That process is still going on at the surface in places like the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea. Once the water evaporates, it leaves behind places like the famed Bonneville Salt Flats. The excess salt in the water in those formative years of this continent settled out into enormous deposits. The primary deposits of salt are deep underground, as far as ten thousand feet or more. However, like glacier ice, solid crystal salt becomes somewhat plastic under great pressure. At ten thousand feet, the overburden of rock and sediment creates pressures of thousands of pounds per square inch. Salt deposits find weak places in the rock, and start squeezing upward in plumes, called “salt domes.” These extrusions come nearer the surface, making the salt more accessible so it can be mined. When I lived in Louisiana as a kid, I remember the salt mines being an everyday topic of conversation. The salt is not only used for food, but has many industrial uses as well. During World War Two, the salt mines provided essential minerals used in the manufacture of ammunition and high explosives. Salt mining in Louisiana has been going on since before the Civil War. Some of the mine shafts go down as much as ten thousand feet, and some of the salt caverns that have been mined are enormous.
Some of those salt dome mine caverns have been used for storing things, such as butane and natural gas under pressure. Let’s see now. We have a salt dome near the sea holding about one and a half million gallons of liquified gas under pressure at 1,000 pounds per square inch. What could possibly go wrong? Add to that an abundance of oil deposits. Drilling for oil and gas is big business along the Louisiana Gulf Coast. Drills have a bad habit of punching holes in things. The Lake Peigneur Disaster of November 20, 1980 was the result of a simple miscalculation on the part of engineers responsible for telling the drill crew where to drill.
When the salt is not fractured, it retains its integrity as a vault. However, geological and human activity can cause fracturing. Additionally, mining creates a cavity, and the sidewalls must be thick and strong enough to resist side pressure from underground oil, gas and rocks. Like a crack in the foundation of a house, water can get into cracks. Water pressure at 5,000 feet is 2,165 pounds per square inch. At 10,000 feet, water pressure is 4,350 pounds per square inch. It does not take much of a crack for water to get in. At those pressures, a leak the size of a straight pin has the penetrating power of a cannon shell.
Assumption Parish is south of Baton Rouge, the state capitol. A parish is the Louisiana equivalent of a county. Parish governments are supervised by a Police Jury, a body of elected citizens somewhat similar to County Commissions in other states. The Parish has a web site, a blog and a YouTube channel. Over a year ago, bubbles were observed coming from the general area of the salt dome. At first the bubbles were a mystery. Then crude oil began appearing. At that point, geologists realized the integrity of the salt dome sidewall had been breached. A sinkhole began to appear in Bayou Corne in Assumption Parish. It has grown steadily since last year, and by this past week, was about 26 acres in size. The sinkhole is due to the collapse of a salt dome like the illustration at the top of this story. Some experts on the scene make a difference between a sinkhole and a salt dome collapse, saying the latter is a far worse environmental and geological disaster than a sinkhole. Because a true sinkhole is due to erosion of rock and sand, it can only get a few hundred feet deep at most. On the other hand, a salt dome collapse has the potential to end up more than two miles deep. No matter what it is called, the hole is getting larger by the day, and after the most recent sloughing this week, workers were pulled back from the berms and service roads surrounding the sinkhole. The increased rate of sloughing off edges of the hole was making it too dangerous to stay there.
An incident last week illustrated how the edges of the sinkhole are eroding away. Watch this short video made by work crews as the underwater edge of the sinkhole creeps toward a stand of 100 foot tall Cypress trees. The floating booms seen in the video were for containing the crude oil floating on the pond. Seeing these giant trees sink is not the most disturbing thing about this sinkhole. Despite the fact it is about twenty five miles from the nearest open water, the sinkhole has been exhibiting tidal wave action. That means it is probably somehow connected to the Gulf of Mexico deep underground, either through old mine shafts or cracks. Water pumping back and forth will cause more scouring than stagnant water. An unlimited water supply also means more salt can dissolve because the water will not become over-saturated with salt.
No one knows for sure when the sinkhole will stop growing. Depending on who you talk to, some geologists are pessimistic about these new developments, and want to post evacuation warnings as far as 25 to 100 miles from the sinkhole. There is another concern as well. No one knows exactly how all this geo/hydraulic activity in south Louisiana will affect the maze of fault lines along the Mississippi River valley up into the Great Lakes. The most famous of these fault systems is the New Madrid Seismic Zone. If it proves to be true the side walls of the dome were breached, the situation becomes unsalvagable. Maps show that a substantial portion of Louisiana could end up underwater unless the hole stops growing.The video below shows that unusual wave action.
A few days ago, Governor Bobby Jindal, with Attorney General Buddy Caldwell beside him, held a press conference in which he said the state is going to sue the salt mining company, Texas Brine. He didn’t say anything about suing any of the oil companies, such as BP.
The floor is open for discussion.
So – I’m sorry, but it took me awhile to realize this – the Bayou Corne sinkhole is unconnected with the Lake Peigneur accident of 1980? Looks to me like they’re about 50 miles apart as the crow flies.
The State v Texas Brine lawsuit has allegations of negligence, and does include Occidental as a defendant too:
(NOLA). Negligence is violating the behavior of a reasonable person –what a reasonable person would do under the circumstances involved.
If Texas Brine acted on the counsel of engineers and competent practices based on the known science then existing, how can they have been negligent?
Wouldn’t the engineers who gave inaccurate counsel be liable too?
What about trespass and public nuisance torts?
Just sayin’ …
Otteray,
Off topic–but I thought you’d find this interesting:
Shadow Of A Drought
By Charles P. Pierce
9/2/13
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/ogallala-acquifer-drought-090213
Excerpt:
Our old friend, the Ogallala Aquifer, which is pretty much what keeps everything between the Cubs and the Dodgers from being a desert, is still in trouble. Usually, we stop by to see how they’re trying to finagle our other old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, through one slice of it or another. Even without the death-funnel, however, the aquifer continues to have problems of its own.
A vast underground lake beneath western Kansas and parts of seven other states could be mostly depleted by 2060, turning productive farmland back to semi-arid ground, a new study says.The life of the Ogallala Aquifer could be extended several decades, but only if water usage is reduced, a four-year study by researchers from Kansas State University found. “There is going to be agriculture production in Kansas and corn production and cattle production really for the foreseeable future,” David Steward, lead author of the study, said in an interview last week. But without conservation, he said, “the future is bleak.”
I realize that long-term thinking is not part of our politics, unless you’re talking about the horrors of The Deficit, but running out of water is really something that ought to be a priority or another, especially with the ongoing success of the Great Climate Change Hoax. Luckily, some folks living on the land have managed to take the long view of things.
Very informative video.
Watching the filings in State v Texas Brine might come up with some helpful information.
I wonder if Occidental Petroleum and/ or Occidental Chemical will become parties in that case.
They may be “indispensable parties” under Rule 19 … FRCP … or the Louisiana counterpart.
For a true WTF moment and cut to the chase, fast forward the video to about 25:00. That might explain some of that water movement. I am not a geologist, but I do understand fluid dynamics. The containment booms and floating debris would not move like that, or that far, if the only explanation is a small watercraft or some other surface activity. Note the water surface does not seem to be disturbed by wave action or splashing. The movement of the floating objects appear to due to convection activity rather than surface splashing.
Wallace and Grommit,
Thanks for the links. For reinforcement purposes, here again is the link to Dan Franks’ Freedomrox blog. Dan Franks is keeping up with what is happening and knows the politics….and money trail…in Assumption Parish.
He created an extremely interesting video presentation. It is long at 37 minutes, but his take on the politics and business interest connections is interesting. He has excellent visuals, but his presentation is almost like listening to the radio. Too much to absorb in one pass, so I listened to it twice while working on other things.
Wallace and Grommit 1, September 2, 2013 at 7:08 pm
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I am not convinced by the “tidal wave” motion video. Tidal motions are generated by the moon and so there should be a rising and falling of water level which is truly tidal in period. Who knows what made the waves in the video. It could be anything from a truck to a boat to some other oilfield type operation going on off camera or some other action in the “sinkhole.” A wave motion transmitted from the ocean via some very long and narrow channel would not manifest this way.
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Well said –that evidence is not conclusive.
The hypothesis is that water from the gulf, either deep or shallow water, puts pressure on any liquid in any caverns, crevices, or holes caused by years of mining and liquid injection.
This would travel threw a zig-zagged mish mash of caverns, cracks, voids, and reservoirs which would alter and interrupt normal tidal behavior.
So, we would not look for usual tidal ebb and flow, but rather delayed herky-jerky effects, like in tidal caves.
Shaft cave-ins, etc. could also have caused the observed water movement.
Forensic water samples of the dome-collapse engendered and growing pond, at various depths all the way to the bottom might also render further insight.
Thad Daly 1, September 2, 2013 at 6:34 pm
Side wall collapsed NOT dome, It was because the cavern is next to the outside and the solution mining thinned the wall to the point of structural collapse …
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You cite to no authority for your assertion –a pattern in your comments.
Certainly Texas Brine, the company that was mining the salt, the company that drilled the exploratory hole in which it was discovered that for the first time the walls of a salt dome had collapsed.
The company that is being sued by the state government because of this dome collapse, is not going to say it mined too close to the edge and is at fault for the dome collapse.
Likewise, the engineering doctrines were that salt dome walls do not collapse and the engineering doctrines that say how thick the walls must remain, are not prepared to say that their engineering assumptions which have worked all along are in error.
So, who ya gonna call to support your assertion?
“Too deep we delved there, and woke the nameless fear.” – Gloin, The Fellowship of the Ring
“The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum… shadow and flame.” – Saruman, The Fellowship of the Ring
Otteray Scribe, that was a horrifying video of the cypress trees vanishing into the depths. Very disconcerting and unnerving. Great article.
Bron,
That is not a true sinkhole. There is a difference between a sidewall collapse and a sinkhole. Use this analogy. Imagine a hole chopped in your roof, compared to a truck running through the living room wall taking out the side of the house. Also, debris from the roof collapse fills the hole partly. Salt is not rock, it dissolves. if it falls in.
Sinkholes in Florida, Kansas, China and other places far from the sea are believed due to washouts underground. Here is how a sinkhole forms that is not in a salt dome:
Thad Daly,
I saw that chart when I was digging up information for the piece. I knew there was slow movement to the south. That area is literally sliding off into the Gulf. My concern is that the entirety of Assumption Parish and surrounding Parishes don’t have a high point as high as the roof of my house. There are too many unknowns. As for tidal action on a lake, yes, but it has to be a truly huge lake for it to be measurable with anything but the most sophisticated lab instruments. Tide on a 20 or 30 acre lake is not enough to measure, much less observe with the naked eye.
The people of the parish are going to have enough problems with sea level rise due to polar ice, much less having the land slowly sink under them. That is the granddaddy of no-win situations. I know quite a bit about opposing and counterbalancing forces. What happens when pressure is relieved off part of the New Madrid Fault Zone but not on other parts as that mass of softer alluvial soil drifts slowly south?
There is no cushion for mistakes, and there may be no solution. Perhaps learn to tread water really well? If this convergence of geological events keeps going, some future Katrina might hit the beaches of….Monroe or Vicksburg instead of NOLA.
This is very interesting to me and I went looking for more info. This fellow, Dan Frank, has geology background and contacts and has what appears to be high quality information: http://freedomrox.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/667/
From what I can see the salt dome rises from the Jurassic era Louann formation at approximately 40,000′ depth. This formation underlies much of the southern U.S. and the Gulf of Mexico.
The Napoleonville salt dome has been hollowed out to store many things, is a site for injection wells containing toxic materials, and in addition has been drilled for oil and gas. The dome appears to have previously had an intact mantle of shale which sheathes the salt and acts as a boundary that seals the various strata and their contents; oil, water, gas, sand, sediment, salt. The mantle has been broken and the various layers of stuff in and around the dome can now start mixing more freely.
From the reading and vids it appears the “cavern” was against the shale sheath and the cavern was sealed and restarted above the earlier cavern. Just like when the top floors of the WTC collapsed and stripped out everything below them as they fell, the roof of the lowest cavern fell since the wall was not being held up by salt since it was directly against the shale mantle.
This broke the shale mantle to many thousands of feet in depth and allowed weaknesses from prior modifications to the dome to combine to form the disturbed rock zone.
Dan Frank notes a .pdf research paper that describes a relevant salt cavern abandonment test. It is here: http://brouard-consulting.com/sites/default/files/ijrm-abandon-ez53_0.pdf
I am not convinced by the “tidal wave” motion video. Tidal motions are generated by the moon and so there should be a rising and falling of water level which is truly tidal in period. Who knows what made the waves in the video. It could be anything from a truck to a boat to some other oilfield type operation going on off camera or some other action in the “sinkhole.” A wave motion transmitted from the ocean via some very long and narrow channel would not manifest this way.
http://www.redstate.com/2013/08/25/the-bayou-corne-sinkhole-part-ii-what-really-happened/
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/what-causes-sinkholes/article4478383.ece
Elsewhere in the U.S., sinkholes are common in Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
Well, this post scared me, so I did a little reading on this, and here is what I found about the Great Corneholio:
It is found in Part II of this:
http://www.redstate.com/2013/08/24/the-bayou-corne-sinkhole-part-i-ridiculing-the-press/
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
http://geology.com/zacaton/
El Zacatón in Tamaulipas is the world’s deepest water-filled sinkhole. Indeed, till recently many people thought it was a bottomless pit. It measures 1,112 metres
Side wall collapsed NOT dome, It was because the cavern is next to the outside and the solution mining thinned the wall to the point of structural collapse– External hydrostatic pressure due to over burden 7,036 psi- at 5,600′ internal hydrostatic due to brine 2,912 psi at same depth differential pressure inward 4,124 psi . When there was not enough structural strength in the outside wall to support that pressure it collapsed inward.
Volume limit – take an existing void of a known volume (the cavern) remove material from a location (the sinkhole) and fill the void. Once the void is filled no more material can be removed from the location to fill the void.
Absolute max depth of sink hole same as the max depth of the cavern – gravity does not push material up hill– so material can come from a greater depth
There was no tidal movement in the sinkhole- the waves were from the air boat working on the sinkhole — Someone rather ignorant saw the original vid stole and jumped to that assumption. For what it worth all bodies of water have some tidal movement on lakes and ponds is too small to be noticed– Tidal movement has nothing to do with oceans it is caused by the gravitational pull of the moon as it orbits the earth-
Salt under pressure is plastic- plastic material do not exhibit fissure when under pressure. Water entering fissure has not been document or is the evidence that it has happened– so why would it happen now–
Lake Peignuer event was when rig drilled into the tunnel network of an operating salt mine– the lake did not flow in to the salt it flowed into the voids of the tunnels– TxBrn Oxy#3 was full of brine when the wall collapsed as sediment entered the brine was forced out to the same space the sediment came from-
Otteray Scribe you may find this interesting- the faulting is north of the Bayou Corne area and the entire sedimentary mass is slowly sliding south
http://classic.edsuite.com/proposals/proposals_280/effectofearthquakefaultmovementsandsubsidence1_fi_335.pdf
This whole Bayou Corne situation is concerning on many levels. Obviously a side wall collapse is far worse than the roof of a salt dome falling in. Here is a video taken last July of a depth sounding attempt. Keep in mind the bottom of his boat is only about two or three feet above mean sea level (MSL). I have no idea how long that line is, and the caption doesn’t say. However, that is a Solinst water level meter, and that model comes with a line up to about 1,000 feet. I could probably count the turns of the reel and do the math, but way too much work and hard on the eyes. Just an educated guess but that looks likes the 1K length of line. At any rate, the probe never touches bottom.
OS said that “The Bayou Corne community is only about seven feet +/- above sea level.”
A 1.5 foot rise in sea level, as has happened in Virginia, is about 21% of the Bayou Corne community level.
If an underground pathway to the Gulf is opened up, those areas in Bayou Corne will be impacted by the pressure the ebb and flow generate, not to mention an eventual water level rise of 21%.
That may have something to do with the first ever collapse of salt dome walls as was reported by Texas Brine mining company.
Oro Lee 1, September 2, 2013 at 3:59 pm
…As far as flooding, don’t forget climate change – from a summary of the leaked IPCC’s recent draft report: “Long-term, sea level rise could be 5 to 10 meters.” Tides, of course, could be even higher. Oh, 5 meters (the low end of the projection), is a bit more than 16 feet 4 inches.
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The sea level rise is a good point:
(Virginia Sea Level Rise). In the vicinity of Virgina, similar signs take place even though the sea rise is not otherwise noticeable:
(Daily Times). The sea water goes inland under the soil, and in the type of structure underground that OS shows in the videos, it could be a factor.