Money, Oil and Politics > The Oil Barons and Their Hold on Us
Oil Drilling Disasters
zorgon:
Oil Drilling Disasters
This is going to be a list of major oil spills and drilling disasters. They will not necessarily be in chronological order as I have to hunt them all down again :D This will be a sticky locked information thread. Any comments please start a new thread in this section. We feel it important to keep key topic material on top of the thread lists to use as reference.
So lets start with the big nasty one in the Gulf...
Oil Spills and Disasters
The following list includes major oil spills since 1967. The circumstances surrounding the spill, amount of oil spilled, and the attendant environmental damage is also given.
From Info Please
1967
March 18, Cornwall, Eng.: Torrey Canyon ran aground, spilling 38 million gallons of crude oil off the Scilly Islands.
1976
Dec. 15, Buzzards Bay, Mass.: Argo Merchant ran aground and broke apart southeast of Nantucket Island, spilling its entire cargo of 7.7 million gallons of fuel oil.
1977
April, North Sea: blowout of well in Ekofisk oil field leaked 81 million gallons.
1978
March 16, off Portsall, France: wrecked supertanker Amoco Cadiz spilled 68 million gallons, causing widespread environmental damage over 100 mi of Brittany coast.
1979
June 3, Gulf of Mexico: exploratory oil well Ixtoc 1 blew out, spilling an estimated 140 million gallons of crude oil into the open sea. Although it is one of the largest known oil spills, it had a low environmental impact.
July 19, Tobago: the Atlantic Empress and the Aegean Captain collided, spilling 46 million gallons of crude. While being towed, the Atlantic Empress spilled an additional 41 million gallons off Barbados on Aug. 2.
1980
March 30, Stavanger, Norway: floating hotel in North Sea collapsed, killing 123 oil workers.
1983
Feb. 4, Persian Gulf, Iran: Nowruz Field platform spilled 80 million gallons of oil.
Aug. 6, Cape Town, South Africa: the Spanish tanker Castillo de Bellver caught fire, spilling 78 million gallons of oil off the coast.
1988
July 6, North Sea off Scotland: 166 workers killed in explosion and fire on Occidental Petroleum's Piper Alpha rig in North Sea; 64 survivors. It is the world's worst offshore oil disaster.
Nov. 10, Saint John's, Newfoundland: Odyssey spilled 43 million gallons of oil.
1989
March 24, Prince William Sound, Alaska: tanker Exxon Valdez hit an undersea reef and spilled 10 million–plus gallons of oil into the water, causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
Dec. 19, off Las Palmas, the Canary Islands: explosion in Iranian supertanker, the Kharg-5, caused 19 million gallons of crude oil to spill into Atlantic Ocean about 400 mi north of Las Palmas, forming a 100-square-mile oil slick.
1990
June 8, off Galveston, Tex.: Mega Borg released 5.1 million gallons of oil some 60 nautical miles south-southeast of Galveston as a result of an explosion and subsequent fire in the pump room.
1991
Jan. 23–27, southern Kuwait: during the Persian Gulf War, Iraq deliberately released 240–460 million gallons of crude oil into the Persian Gulf from tankers 10 mi off Kuwait. Spill had little military significance. On Jan. 27, U.S. warplanes bombed pipe systems to stop the flow of oil.
April 11, Genoa, Italy: Haven spilled 42 million gallons of oil in Genoa port.
May 28, Angola: ABT Summer exploded and leaked 15–78 million gallons of oil off the coast of Angola. It's not clear how much sank or burned.
1992
March 2, Fergana Valley, Uzbekistan: 88 million gallons of oil spilled from an oil well.
1993
Aug. 10, Tampa Bay, Fla.: three ships collided, the barge Bouchard B155, the freighter Balsa 37, and the barge Ocean 255. The Bouchard spilled an estimated 336,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil into Tampa Bay.
1994
Sept. 8, Russia: dam built to contain oil burst and spilled oil into Kolva River tributary. U.S. Energy Department estimated spill at 2 million barrels. Russian state-owned oil company claimed spill was only 102,000 barrels.
1996
Feb. 15, off Welsh coast: supertanker Sea Empress ran aground at port of Milford Haven, Wales, spewed out 70,000 tons of crude oil, and created a 25-mile slick.
1999
Dec. 12, French Atlantic coast: Maltese-registered tanker Erika broke apart and sank off Britanny, spilling 3 million gallons of heavy oil into the sea.
2000
Jan. 18, off Rio de Janeiro: ruptured pipeline owned by government oil company, Petrobras, spewed 343,200 gallons of heavy oil into Guanabara Bay.
Nov. 28, Mississippi River south of New Orleans: oil tanker Westchester lost power and ran aground near Port Sulphur, La., dumping 567,000 gallons of crude oil into lower Mississippi. Spill was largest in U.S. waters since Exxon Valdez disaster in March 1989.
2002
Nov. 13, Spain: Prestige suffered a damaged hull and was towed to sea and sank. Much of the 20 million gallons of oil remains underwater.
2003
July 28, Pakistan: The Tasman Spirit, a tanker, ran aground near the Karachi port, and eventually cracked into two pieces. One of its four oil tanks burst open, leaking 28,000 tons of crude oil into the sea.
2004
Dec. 7, Unalaska, Aleutian Islands, Alaska: A major storm pushed the M/V Selendang Ayu up onto a rocky shore, breaking it in two. 337,000 gallons of oil were released, most of which was driven onto the shoreline of Makushin and Skan Bays.
2005
Aug.-Sept., New Orleans, Louisiana: The Coast Guard estimated that more than 7 million gallons of oil were spilled during Hurricane Katrina from various sources, including pipelines, storage tanks and industrial plants.
2006
June 19, Calcasieu River, Louisiana: An estimated 71,000 barrels of waste oil were released from a tank at the CITGO Refinery on the Calcasieu River during a violent rain storm.
July 15, Beirut, Lebanon: The Israeli navy bombs the Jieh coast power station, and between three million and ten million gallons of oil leaks into the sea, affecting nearly 100 miles of coastline. A coastal blockade, a result of the war, greatly hampers outside clean-up efforts.
August 11th, Guimaras island, The Philippines: A tanker carrying 530,000 gallons of oil sinks off the coast of the Philippines, putting the country's fishing and tourism industries at great risk. The ship sinks in deep water, making it virtually unrecoverable, and it continues to emit oil into the ocean as other nations are called in to assist in the massive clean-up effort.
2007
December 7, South Korea: Oil spill causes environmental disaster, destroying beaches, coating birds and oysters with oil, and driving away tourists with its stench. The Hebei Spirit collides with a steel wire connecting a tug boat and barge five miles off South Korea's west coast, spilling 2.8 million gallons of crude oil. Seven thousand people are trying to clean up 12 miles of oil-coated coast.
2008
July 25, New Orleans, Louisiana: A 61-foot barge, carrying 419,000 gallons of heavy fuel, collides with a 600-foot tanker ship in the Mississippi River near New Orleans. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel leak from the barge, causing a halt to all river traffic while cleanup efforts commence to limit the environmental fallout on local wildlife.
2009
March 11, Queensland, Australia: During Cyclone Hamish, unsecured cargo aboard the container ship MV Pacific Adventurer came loose on deck and caused the release of 52,000 gallons of heavy fuel and 620 tons of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer, into the Coral Sea. About 60 km of the Sunshine Coast was covered in oil, prompting the closure of half the area's beaches.
2010
Jan. 23, Port Arthur, Texas: The oil tanker Eagle Otome and a barge collide in the Sabine-Neches Waterway, causing the release of about 462,000 gallons of crude oil. Environmental damage was minimal as about 46,000 gallons were recovered and 175,000 gallons were dispersed or evaporated, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
April 24, Gulf of Mexico: The Deepwater Horizon, a semi-submersible drilling rig, sank on April 22, after an April 20th explosion on the vessel. Eleven people died in the blast. When the rig sank, the riser—the 5,000-foot-long pipe that connects the wellhead to the rig—became detached and began leaking oil. In addition, U.S. Coast Guard investigators discovered a leak in the wellhead itself. As much as 60,000 barrels of oil per day were leaking into the water, threatening wildlife along the Louisiana Coast. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared it a "spill of national significance." BP (British Petroleum), which leased the Deepwater Horizon, is responsible for the cleanup, but the U.S. Navy supplied the company with resources to help contain the slick. Oil reached the Louisiana shore on April 30, affected about 125 miles of coast. By early June, oil had also reached Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. It is the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
From Info Please
zorgon:
Gulf Oil Spill
Deepwater Horizon oil spill - May 24, 2010
--- Quote ---The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the BP oil disaster, or the Macondo blowout) is an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which flowed for three months in 2010. It is the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.The spill stemmed from a sea-floor oil gusher that resulted from the April 20, 2010, explosion of Deepwater Horizon, which drilled on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. The explosion killed 11 men working on the platform and injured 17 others. On July 15, 2010, the leak was stopped by capping the gushing wellhead, after it had released about 4.9 million barrels (780,000 m3) of crude oil. An estimated 53,000 barrels per day (8,400 m3/d) escaped from the well just before it was capped. It is believed that the daily flow rate diminished over time, starting at about 62,000 barrels per day (9,900 m3/d) and decreasing as the reservoir of hydrocarbons feeding the gusher was gradually depleted. On September 19, 2010, the relief well process was successfully completed, and the federal government declared the well "effectively dead". In August 2011, oil and oil sheen covering several square miles of water were reported surfacing not far from BP’s Macondo well. Scientific analysis confirmed the oil is a chemical match for Macondo 252. The Coast Guard said the oil was too dispersed to recover.
--- End quote ---
Before the Accident
--- Quote ---The Deepwater Horizon was a 9-year-old semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit, a massive floating, dynamically positioned drilling rig that could operate in waters up to 8,000 feet (2,400 m) deep and drill down to 30,000 feet (9,100 m). The rig was built by South Korean company Hyundai Heavy Industries. It was owned by Transocean, operated under the Marshallese flag of convenience, and was under lease to BP from March 2008 to September 2013. At the time of the explosion, it was drilling an exploratory well at a water depth of approximately 5,000 feet (1,500 m) in the Macondo Prospect, located in the Mississippi Canyon Block 252 of the Gulf of Mexico in the United States exclusive economic zone about 41 miles (66 km) off the Louisiana coast. Production casing was being installed and cemented by Halliburton Energy Services. :o Once the cementing was complete, the well would have been tested for integrity and a cement plug set, after which no further activities would take place until the well was later activated as a subsea producer. At this point, Halliburton modelling systems were used several days running to design the cement slurry mix and ascertain what other supports were needed in the well bore. BP is the operator and principal developer of the Macondo Prospect with a 65% share, while 25% is owned by Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, and 10% by MOEX Offshore 2007, a unit of Mitsui. BP leased the mineral rights for Macondo at the Minerals Management Service's lease sale in March 2008
--- End quote ---
Explosion
Credit US Coast Guard - Full size image here
--- Quote ---At approximately 9:45 p.m. CDT, on April 20, 2010, methane gas from the well, under high pressure, shot all the way up and out of the drill column, expanded onto the platform, and then ignited and exploded. Fire then engulfed the platform. Most of the workers escaped the rig by lifeboat and were subsequently evacuated by boat or airlifted by helicopter for medical treatment; however, eleven workers were never found despite a three-day Coast Guard search operation, and are believed to have died in the explosion. Efforts by multiple ships to douse the flames were unsuccessful. After burning for approximately 36 hours, the Deepwater Horizon sank on the morning of April 22, 2010
--- End quote ---
So it was the huge high pressure release of Methane that exploded that was the primary cause of this oil spill.
Volume and extent of oil spill
--- Quote ---An oil leak was discovered on the afternoon of April 22 when a large oil slick began to spread at the former rig site. According to the Flow Rate Technical Group, the leak amounted to about 4.9 million barrels (780,000 m3) of oil exceeding the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill as the largest ever to originate in U.S.-controlled waters and the 1979 Ixtoc I oil spill as the largest spill in the Gulf of Mexico
--- End quote ---
Deepwater Horizon oil spill at Chandeleur Islands LA - Full size here
Damage caused by spill
--- Quote ---The spill caused extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats and to the Gulf's fishing and tourism industries. Skimmer ships, floating containment booms, anchored barriers, sand-filled barricades along shorelines, and dispersants were used in an attempt to protect hundreds of miles of beaches, wetlands, and estuaries from the spreading oil. Scientists also reported immense underwater plumes of dissolved oil not visible at the surface as well as an 80-square-mile (210 km²) "kill zone" surrounding the blown well. In late November 2010, 4,200 square miles (11,000 km²) of the Gulf were re-closed to shrimping after tar balls were found in shrimpers' nets. The amount of Louisiana shoreline affected by oil grew from 287 miles (462 km) in July to 320 miles (510 km) in late November 2010. In January 2011, an oil spill commissioner reported that tar balls continue to wash up, oil sheen trails are seen in the wake of fishing boats, wetlands marsh grass remains fouled and dying, and crude oil lies offshore in deep water and in fine silts and sands onshore. A research team found oil on the bottom of the seafloor in late February 2011 that did not seem to be degrading. On May 26, 2011, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality extended the state of emergency related to the oil spill. By July 9, 2011, roughly 491 miles (790 kilometers) of coastline in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida remained contaminated by BP oil, according to a NOAA spokesperson.
--- End quote ---
A ton of detailed information and sources at Wikipedia
zorgon:
Posted this in Sarkoy's Methane thread but it is relevant in here and will be in the Anmial Die Off Thread
METHANE
Early in the year there were a lot of weird animal, fish and bird deaths... mostly the media and 'experts' had no clue, though some did suspect methane releases from the earth as a cause (methane in water will rob the oxygen so fish suffocate). I have a long list of the deaths that have been mostly forgotten about. Also there have been stories of weird sounds heard... hummings and rumblings... perhaps the earth is venting...(or growing... another theory that is gaining ground) In any case there have been record breaking releases of methane, like the one Sarkoy started this thread with.
In the Gulf Oil spill disaster there was one odd thing... Yes it was a man made accident, but during the leakage, there was an extraordinary release of methane along with the spill... in fact it now shows that this methane release was the primary cause of the disaster.
Methane in Gulf "astonishingly high": U.S. scientist
--- Quote ---(Reuters) - As much as 1 million times the normal level of methane gas has been found in some regions near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, enough to potentially deplete oxygen and create a dead zone, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday.
--- End quote ---
Reuters.com/article/2010/06/22/us-oil-spill-methane
Though some oil is indeed made by fossil plants and animals, I believe most of it, and especially methane, is created deep withing the earth, a theory gathering support in main stream science as they are discovering oil wells have been refilling themselves.
This is known as Abiotic Oil
With all this release of methane from beneath the earth's crust, the pressure on the mantle has to change as well. So we can expect a lot more earthquakes and volcanoes as the release in pressure causes the plates to move
Now we just saw a MASSIVE fish kill of Redondo Beach in California...
Redondo Beach fish die-off: Tests show oxygen levels at 'almost zero'
When methane disolves in water, the fish cannot get oxygen and thus cannot breathe and die off enmasse... as has been reported in many areas. Also a giant methane bubble rising into the air can catch a flock of birds unaware and kill them swiftly (like we used canaries in coal mines to act as an alarm when methane levels increase to danger levels giving miners time to escape)
So do we have a source of Methane that coincides with this massive kill?
Well yes, so happens we do... a huge Mud Volcano off Redondo Beach
--- Quote ---Methane Hydrate
In addition to naturally occurring oil and gas seeps in the Santa Barbara Channel, north of Los Angeles, methane and hydrogen sulfide gases are actively discharging at the crest of a mud volcano only 24 kilometers west-southwest of Redondo Beach, California. The mud volcano is 30m high and its top is about the size of a football field. It formed as gas-charged sediment from depth squeezed up to the sea floor, probably along an active fault at the edge of the offshore Santa Monica Basin. The top of the mud volcano is about 800m below the sea surface, and at this depth the water pressure is 80 times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. As a result, water and methane gas at this pressure "freezes" to form what is termed a methane hydrate. The hydrate ice becomes incorporated in the surrounding ocean-floor sediment. The photo of a cross-section of a sediment core (see below) reveals the rapidly disassociating chunk of hydrate (methane ice).
--- End quote ---
Methane Hydrate - USGS
The fish kill was March 8, 2011. Shortly after the fish kill a few miles away at the Gulf of California there were a series of quakes:
18-MAR-2011 01:44:12 25.42 -109.71 4.5 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
17-MAR-2011 10:52:42 25.32 -109.70 4.2 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
14-MAR-2011 01:43:49 25.44 -109.66 4.0 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
13-MAR-2011 16:07:34 25.29 -109.75 4.6 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
13-MAR-2011 05:54:25 25.28 -110.08 4.0 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
13-MAR-2011 02:50:11 25.44 -109.76 4.6 24.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 21:58:39 25.31 -109.84 4.5 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 20:16:58 25.42 -109.73 4.3 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 17:54:18 25.51 -109.79 4.7 14.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 17:13:01 25.48 -109.72 5.1 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 14:11:04 25.40 -109.65 5.3 12.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 13:26:02 25.35 -109.93 5.5 17.6 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 12:03:42 25.26 -109.96 4.4 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
This swarm was about 25 miles from Redondo Beach
zorgon:
More Disasters from Mankind's Drilling for oil
Mud Volcano Was Man-Made, New Evidence Confirms
February 11, 2010
--- Quote ---A new analysis shows that a deadly mud volcano in Indonesia may not have been a natural disaster after all. The research lends weight to the controversial theory that the volcano was caused by humans.
Villagers near Sidoarjo noticed a mud volcano beginning to erupt at 5 a.m. local time May 29, 2006. It was about 500 feet from a local gas-exploration well. Every day since then, the Lusi mud volcano has pumped out 100,000 tons of mud, or enough to fill 60 Olympic-size swimming pools. It has now covered an area of almost 3 square miles to a depth of 65 feet. Thirty thousand people have been displaced, and scientific evidence is mounting that the company drilling the well caused the volcano.
“The disaster was caused by pulling the drill string and drill bit out of the hole while the hole was unstable,” said Richard Davies, director of the Durham Energy Institute and co-author of a new paper in the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology, in a press release. “This triggered a very large ‘kick’ in the well, where there is a large influx of water and gas from surrounding rock formations that could not be controlled.”
--- End quote ---
Mud Volcano Was Man-Made
[youtube]IXertoctTPQ[/youtube]
The mud volcano caused by the unprotected drilling for gas in Sidoarjo that swallowed a few villages and the tolled highway in Indonesia!
[youtube]m5Uj8O2rEws[/youtube]
[youtube]oV8rVHKkkCc[/youtube]
This is not the actual mud volcano, it is the hot mud being pumped away into the nearby Porong River. It's just to give visual effect of what the mud looks like and? the high temperature. The centre of the mud volcano (Luci) is about 3km away from the this pipeline discharge point. - sumptechsales
zorgon:
Lake Peigneur: The Swirling Vortex of Doom
New Iberia, Louisiana
September 6, 2005
Lake Peigneur sinkhole disaster
This image depicts the huge waterfall that formed when an oil drilling rig in Lake Peigneur punctured the ceiling of an underlying salt mine. The backwards flow of the normally outflowing Delcambre Canal temporarily created the biggest waterfall in Louisiana.
Lake Peigneur
(Transcribed from video)
Early in the morning on November 21, 1980, twelve men decided to abandon their oil drilling rig on the suspicion that it was beginning to collapse beneath them. They had been probing for oil under the floor of Lake Peigneur when their drill suddenly seized up at about 1,230 feet below the muddy surface, and they were unable free it. In their attempts to work the drill loose, which is normally fairly easy at that shallow depth, the men heard a series of loud pops, just before the rig tilted precariously towards the water.
At the time, Lake Peigneur was an unremarkable body of water near New Iberia, Louisiana. Though the freshwater lake covered 1,300 acres of land, it was only eleven feet deep. A small island there was home to a beautiful botanical park, oil wells dotted the landscape, and far beneath the lake were miles of tunnels for the Diamond Crystal salt mine.
Concluding that something had gone terribly wrong, the men on the rig cut the attached barges loose, scrambled off the rig, and moved to the shore about 300 yards away. Shortly after they abandoned the $5 million Texaco drilling platform, the crew watched in amazement as the huge platform and derrick overturned, and disappeared into a lake that was supposed to be shallow. Soon the water around that position began to turn. It was slow at first, but it steadily accelerated until it became a fast-moving whirlpool a quarter of a mile in diameter, with its center directly over the drill site.
As the whirlpool was forming on the surface, Junius Gaddison, an electrician working in the salt mines below, heard a loud, strange noise coming down the corridor. Soon he discovered the sound's source, which was rushing downhill towards him: fuel drums banging together as they were carried along the shaft by a knee-deep stream of muddy water. He quickly called in the alarm, and the mine's lights were flashed three times to signal its immediate evacuation. Many of the 50 miners working that morning, most as deep as 1,500 feet below the surface, saw the evacuation signal and began to run for the 1,300 foot level, where they could catch an elevator to the surface. However, when they reached the third level, they were blocked by deep water.
Clearly, the salt dome which contained the mine had been penetrated by the drill crew on the lake. Texaco, who had ordered the oil probe, was aware of the salt mine's presence and had planned accordingly; but somewhere a miscalculation had been made, which placed the drill site directly above one of the salt mine's 80-foot-high, 50-foot-wide upper shafts. As the freshwater poured in through the original 14-inch-wide hole, it quickly dissolved the salt away, making the hole grow bigger by the second. The water pouring into the mine also dissolved the huge salt pillars which supported the ceilings, and the shafts began to collapse.
As most of the miners headed for the surface, a maintenance foreman named Randy LaSalle drove around to the remote areas of the mine which hadn't seen the evacuation signal, and warned the miners there to evacuate. The miners whose escape was slowed by water on the third level used mine carts and diesel powered vehicles to make their way up to the 1,300 foot level, where they each waited their turn to ride the slow, 8-person elevator to the surface as the mine below them filled with water. Although it seemed to take forever to get out, all 50 miners managed to escape with their lives.
Barges on the Lake. Meanwhile, up on the surface, the tremendous sucking power of the whirlpool was causing violent destruction. It swallowed another nearby drilling platform whole, as well as a barge loading dock, 70 acres of soil from Jefferson Island, trucks, trees, structures, and a parking lot. The sucking force was so strong that it reversed the flow of a 12-mile-long canal which led out to the Gulf of Mexico, and dragged 11 barges from that canal into the swirling vortex, where they disappeared into the flooded mines below. It also overtook a manned tug on the canal, which struggled against the current for as long as possible before the crew had to leap off onto the canal bank and watch as the lake consumed their boat.
After three hours, the lake was drained of its 3.5 billion gallons of water. The water from the canal, now flowing in from the Gulf of Mexico, formed a 150-foot waterfall into the crater where the lake had been, filling it with salty ocean water. As the canal refilled the crater over the next two days, nine of the sunken barges popped back to the surface like corks, though the drilling rigs and tug were left entombed in the ruined salt mine.
Despite the enormous destruction of property, no human life was lost in this disaster, nor were there any serious injuries. Within two days, what had previously been an eleven-foot-deep freshwater body was replaced with a 1,300-foot-deep saltwater lake. The lake's biology was changed drastically, and it became home to many species of plants and fish which had not been there previously.
Of course numerous lawsuits were filed, and they were subsequently settled out-of-court for many millions of dollars. The owners of the Crystal Diamond salt mine received a combined $45 million in damages from Texaco and the oil drilling company, and got out of the salt mining business for good.
No official blame for the miscalculation was ever decided, because all of the evidence was sucked down the drain, but the story described here is the generally accepted theory of what caused this massive disaster.
Endangered_Earth_Sinkhole_Louisiana
No description required seeing is believing :o
[youtube]ddlrGkeOzsI[/youtube]
Now I hear that some scientists are considering drilling a hole into the magma bubble at Yellowstone...
Ummm BAD IDEA
So lets stop drilling holes in Mother Earth and she might stop trying to rid herself of the human vermin :D
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