Image of the Day

een converted to a command post for state police and emergency
responders.
The Bayou Corne sinkhole is an unprecedented environmental
disaster. Geologists say they have never dealt with anything quite like it
before, but the sinkhole has made few headlines beyond the local media.
No news may be good news for Texas Brine, a Houston-based drilling and
storage firm that for years milked an underground salt cavern on the edge
of large salt formation deep below the sinkhole area. From oil and gas
drilling, to making chloride and other chemicals needed for plastics and
chemical processing, the salty brine produced by such wells is the
lifeblood of the petrochemical industry.
Geologists and state officials now believe that Texas Brine's
production cavern below Bayou Corne collapsed from the side and filled
with rock, oil and gas from deposits around the salt formation. The
pressure in the cavern was too great and caused a "frack out." Like Mother
Nature's own version of the controversial oil and gas drilling technique
known as "fracking," brine and other liquids were forced vertically out of
the salt cavern, fracturing rock toward the surface and causing the ground
to give way.
"In the oil field, you've heard of hydraulic fracturing; that's what
they're using to develop gas and oil wells around the country ..."What is a
frack-out is, is when you get the pressure too high and instead fracturing
where you want, it fractures all the way to the surface," said Gary Hecox,
a geologist with the Shaw Environmental Group, at a recent community
meeting in Assumption Parish. Texas Brine brought in the Shaw group to
help mitigate the sinkhole.
As the weeks went by, officials determined the unstable salt cavern
was to blame for the mysterious tremors and bubbling bayous. Texas Brine
publically claimed the failure of the cavern was caused by seismic activity
and refused to take responsibility for the sinkhole, but the United States
Geological Survey (USGS) has since determined that the collapsing
cavern caused the tremors felt in the neighborhood, not the other way
around.