Published: September 23rd, 2012 at 12:23 pm ET
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Assumption Parish Police Jury:
They have shut in and ceased the flaring operations at the drill site to pull the drill stem out of the hole. Due to pressure, they expect that to take until late this afternoon (dark) to complete. [...] At this time, it is not know if the cavern has been compromised – these tests will provide initial data to determine the integrity of the cavern.
At 8:05 p.m. Saturday evening, the drilling of the Observation Well reached and penetrated plugged brine cavern [...] Approximately an hour and a half later, moderate gas pressure in the range of 800-900 psi appeared at the wellhead along with what appears to be liquid hydrocarbon material. Subsequently, the gas was flared off through the night and liquids collected. Samples of both the gas and liquids have been taken for analysis.
Watch the latest video from inside the sinkhole here
Published: September 23rd, 2012 at 12:23 pm ET
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“Liquid hydrocarbon material” could be anything from maple syrup to gasoline.
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@Flapdoodle: Even maple syrup might be a disaster! (Who'd a thunk it!) January, 1919: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Molasses_Disaster.
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"The majority of hydrocarbons found naturally occur in crude oil"
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Is it possible the "liquid" hydrocarbon and gas are indicative of oil reservour or "down leg oil"? The Texas brine saltdome methane tested as thermogenic–or not created by shallow biologic events. So if from deep underground..what has allowed this to seap? See discussion on types of natural gases.
http://www.gaschem.com/using.html
No wonder Chevron filed for Force Majure due to tremors..they are well aware of what could be happening.
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Yesterday officials reported 'there was no gas pressure'. Today it's shooting up out of the ground.
No one has the slightest clue what is going on under there. All they – and we – know is that there is a massive amount of something explosive and somewhat radioactive underneath that is trying to get out.
Sound like some place else, only more radioactive???
The world is being destroyed by greedy dumbshits. They have, in the end, killed themselves and their families, along with the rest of us. I keep trying to think of appropriate words, but the only thing that really applies, is murderers.
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No, it's not "…shooting up out of the ground…".
This post's title is deceptive. Neither linked article describes anything like an uncontrolled well blowout. The sinkhole video doesn't have any sound, so nothing was mentioned there.
Sinkhole: “What appears to be liquid hydrocarbon material” shooting up from well
There was 3000 ft of drill string and nearly as much casing filled with heavy drilling mud to prevent anything from blowing out. They just breached the roof yesterday. They don't know what's in the cavern that exact second. They have to circulate the drilling mud out or pull the string.
When they did pull the cavern contents up an hour and a half later, they found 900 psi gas and what's probably diesel fuel. That's what you would expect in a plugged and abandoned brine well.
Hundreds of barrels of diesel fuel are used as a cap in all brine wells during mining. Whatever hasn't leaked out to the surface is still down there.
900 psi gas seems low. I would think something north of 1500 psi, but brine wells are different. There is natural gas and radium/radon in the salt. It's known to bubble out of the walls after plugging a well, displacing brine at the top. None of the old drill reports detail if any brine was added back to the well before plugging. It may not have been full.
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Suspicious, when reviewing the map of the regional wells, I noticed that all of these brine/hydrocarbon/etc wells, also have a water well right on site.. aka hole into the aquifer..
Makes me contemplate that cavern owners and State of LA, know that their activities put various gases into the aquifer, that are then vented/flamed off via the water well right next to the injection well.. check it out..
http://dnr.louisiana.gov/assets/OC/BC_All_Updates/SITE_PHOTOS/201209NapoleonvilleSaltDomeAreaWellsandBubblingEvents.pdf
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Since the gases are thermolitic natural gas..methane..its could be from hydrates or from a "down-leg" of an oil type reservor. Any experts willing to discuss the probability? The thermolitic type gass are from DEEP underground..and are looked for in oil exploration. Inerestings..and I bet there are a lot of oil experts out there with a pretty good idea of what is happening. Its been very quiet in the media hasnt it? A potentially major issue for global warming as well..METHANE is a lot worse than CO2! BP has released enought METHANE for us all from it's oil spill….probably a major reason the arctic ice is melting..the other being the gases/emissions from Jaoan's Fukushima. Great, just great news(sarcasm)–that liquid hydrocarbon comment!
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the arctic ice has been melting since long before the "bp" spill. It's simply a cycle that the polar regions go through.
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Methane released into the atmosphere certainly doesnt improve the situation, Kiwirj. Its been melting since the last ice age.
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Yes, the last Arctic ice sheet melt off to the same extent was 2 million years ago before humans lived on the planet. This isn't the cyclical partial melting. This is the complete melting of both poles. They are very different phenomenon and degrees of melting and to hide that fact is to hide facts.
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Just as a point of interest – we ARE in an ice age. We are WARMING during an ice age. Most people don't understand that. Fr some bizarre reason, it gets very little attention in the discussion of global climate instability. So, it's a d@%& good thing that we happen to be in an ice age, because if we weren't, it'd be really hot. Jec, you are correct, methane doesn't help. T
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@kiwirj, this melting is not cyclic. While there are many measurable indicators of naturally occurring cyclical heating and cooling phrases on the Earth, these have been fairly mild oscillations accept for some local regional extremes for eons. Currently, we are NOT in one of the naturally occurring warming phrases, but, in one of the cooling phrases. So, when one of the naturally occurring warm phrases arrives, it WILL only add to the heat. The preponderance of gases measured in the atmosphere are human made, not naturally occurring. Not volcanoes. Not plant and animal decay. They come from fossil fuel burning. The rate of melting is unprecedented, not seen on this planet for the last two million years, and odd, considering that we are in an interstitial ice age. The sun has not been in an active sun spot phase. In fact, we have been in the solar winter and are just now heading into the solar summer phrase for the next 11 years. Some have argued that human made nuclear radiation also adds to the unnatural warming we are experiencing. If that it true, so much for the "go Green, go nuclear'" motto. If you believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, the last time the Earth got as hot as it's going to get, homo sapiens' predecessors were little marsupials scurrying around in tunnels underground hiding from predators above.
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TexasSharon suspects that this blowout is the cause of the current Sinkhole.
Mantle Oil and Gas LLC is the owner of an exploratory well that blew out on 8/11/10. The well is 7,200 feet and they were drilling for oil and gas. The location of the well is near LA 70, in Assumption Parish. The well blew out at about 3:30 in the morning and was spewing a brown mist of oil, up to 200 feet into the air. Locals say that it is literally raining oil, up to a mile away.
At this point, there is speculation that the Blowout Preventer (BOP) failed. This is the type of failure that is being associated with the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, in the Gulf of Mexico. Other than general speculation about a BOP failure, details about this accident are not currently being released.
http://newsflavor.com/world/usa-canada/new-oil-well-blowout-in-assumption-parish-louisiana-video/
http://www.texassharon.com/2012/07/05/louisiana-gas-bubbling-bayou-in-blowout-area/
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Just In My Humble Opinion Methane Hydrates coming up from deep within and is what was causing the earthquakes, and rising up through cracks and weak areas and is why the site my be tilting over from the bottom to top.
We need some experts to talk and see if we can come up with a answer.I think Liquid Nitrogen could stop the problem is it from when BP hit the oil out in the gulf and hydrates from there is melting north, someone might have to look as to where to find a site if any if it is methane hydrates melting underground.
mark
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Liquid hydrocarbon material shooting up from well.
Want to get this clear…Are they saying:
This is going to get a whole lot bigger and worse?
That there is pressure and gases are shooting up, but they don't know exactly from where? With all the high tech that we have now?
This has been going on for some time now. This did not happen yesterday.
That the gasses should not be to this extent just from the salt domes even though they know they have a problem with the salt domes?
So, along with the salt domes, there has to be another source also to create this extent of gases?
That this has, radiation and harmful gases to the public and the environment?
That this is, combustible?
How far away is nuclear plants or any other plants that could explode?
Also, that this is contaminating the air, soil, and the aquifer (the main drinking water source)?
If this is correct, sounds like another waste land they have created.
Invited state and parish agencies were not present for the Bayou Corne, Louisiana Emergency Resident Meeting.
Maybe they don't want to explain, take responsibility, go against the ones who have caused this, or maybe they don't want to breathe in those gases?
Smart to stay away from that area.
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River Bend Nuclear Power Plant is approx. 35 miles away from the sinkhole according to Goggle Map.
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moonshellblue wonder if they are considering shutting it down. As this takes awhile to do.
Probably not, they like to live on the dangerous side and they love their profits.
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Absolutely correct. It may have to do with the oil well blow out..this summer. About the right time frame. So it could be oil/gas from a BOP failure..where have we heard that before? The tests of the liquid/gas will probably tell the story..48 to 72 hours.
Somewhare I read about the danger of this kind of blowout.and if the earth fractures there and leaks..not good. We must have super enenews experts here on all this!!
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Doesn't sound good jec..Wonder how big this has the potential of becoming?.They have to have grafts, computer images, and so on.
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There should not be any pressure at all coming out of the cavern. These caverns are supposed to be stable and solid. The only way that something could be coming out forcibly would seem to be if it was being forced into the cavern from someplace else, for example, through a deep crack. Its not looking good. There isnt supposed to be any hydrocarbons in this cavern, its a brine cavern, not used for any gas storage.
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I have a new Theory first there was radiation and then gas has been bubbling ie: methane Hydrates have radiation cause it was all over the Gulf after the BP MESS. And the gas Methane
Sounds like the Hydrates are melting and the cavern top is sinking,into the ground totally unstable Worse case Massive releases of more gas and now under pressure which was not supposed to be so it is coming up from the bottom. Mark
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Up to this point, they have been saying that the dome itself was not breached. This means that the source of all the radiation, gas, oil, and assorted muck in the sinkhole must come from someplace else. The most likely place is from some deep hydrocarbon/oil deposit that has found a breach in the alluvial aquifer layers and forced its way to the surface. It makes sense that it would appear beside a salt dome, as a look at the geology diagrams show that the layers are pushed up around the salt domes. The salt dome itself might not be the problem, it might be that the gas has simply pushed up naturally there by following the contours of the underground layers.
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I also noticed that they did not say the gas came from the cavern. They say it 'appeared at the wellhead.' Perhaps this gas forced its way into the drill hole and made its way to the surface? These official types are very deceptive with the way they choose to word things.
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@vivvi, precisely. They are imprecise purposely. Your grasp of the geology of this thing so far is greater than the geologists on site. I think that a lot of crap got buried that wasn't suppose to be and geologists that okay'd stuff that shouldn't have, and in those cases, things will always be left obscured to protect friends in the field. Then, someone comes along and secretly fracks and hits something and/or the oil well blow out preventor blows, and all the while no one is noticing the rise of deep methane bubbling up through the aquifer, up through the cracks created by all the excavation dumping, and illegal activities to boot, and there you have it – a natural phenomenon like you describe becoming exponentially worse because of human indifference to where they put their crap.
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"liquid hydrocarbon material"
"We've found akanes, but we're unable to determine their lenth."
Maybe chemistry 101?
h.
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alkanes, sry.
h.
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@harengus_acidophilus, that's funny. Ya got to wonder why they don't want to be more specific. Now, either they are all dump as a bag of hammers down there on this thing or this is some kind of stew of natural and chemical foul, oozing, briny, gassy fluid toxin and sorting out what is what really is that hard. Hard for one, because their analyzing equipment broke? Or hard because they'd have to fess up to there being stuff in there that shouldn't be and some heads could roll and they want to make sure they can find the paperwork and see what got okayed and what got dumped in the dark of night first? Or, hard because they've never had to do something so complex as separate out methane from oil, shale from salt, radon from underground nuclear detonation, fracking chemicals from drinking water?
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Really nice, isn't it.
I've had learnd a lot of new vocabulary:
"hydrocarbons"
"natural gas"
"naturally occuring radioactive substances"
"oily fluid"
"gazeous substance"
Now, I'm searching an invisible smile…
h.
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http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/07aug_southpole/. Only two planets have polar ice caps, Earth and Mars. Both are melting. Since BOTH are melting, is it deductively correct to assume Mars' ice caps are melting because of hydrocarbons? And so might the same theories that would apply to Mars also imapct earth, at least to some degree? Please let's not confuse this issue. There are VERY few blow out preventer (BOP) failures. Coincidentally(?) with BP' BOP's failure in April 2010 and Mantle Oil and Gas's BOP failure in August 2010, both involve possible penetration of a huge mega-methane deposit that stretches from the gulf to Venezuela….Huffington Post reports there have been only TWO BOP failures in the past 30 years! Whether this is true or not needs further research… But has anyone considered this penetration of a mega-field of deposits may have been intentional?
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Thoughtful post, irhologram. The best rebuttal I know to the "Mars icecap melt" hypothesis is here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars.htm
"At this time, there is little empirical evidence that Mars is warming. Mars' climate is primarily driven by dust and albedo, not solar variations, and we know the sun is not heating up all the planets in our solar system because we can accurately measure the sun’s output here on Earth."
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I know very little about these matters, but try hard to use logic to sort things….
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I like your logical approach, irhologram. Many people don't even try – they are dogma-driven.
A big danger for all of us who do try to use logic is in what we accept as axiomatic – what we are willing to use as "givens", from which to start a deductive process.
As you know, for people who start their reasoning with "little green men did such and such" the deductive path can lead anywhere at all.
There are huge efforts by shadowy forces trying to get all of us to accept nonsense as axiomatic starting points. For example, if we start with "clean coal" or "safe nuke" we can logically get to wherever they want to lead us. The fatal flaw is in the starting point, not in the rest of the deductive chain.
For deduction to be reliable we need both reliable axiomatic starting points and impeccable reliable steps between axiom and eventual conclusion. It's hard to get these right at the best of times and much harder in a noisy environment. "They" can sneak in a falsehood that derails the chain of reasoning at any step along the way.
From today's news:
http://gizmodo.com/5943048/the-american-outlaws-hoarding-lightbulbs-in-the-name-of-liberty
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-philip-neches/gulf-oil-spill-meet-the-b_b_589852.html. Discussion of BOPs
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Aigeezer… Also from your link above of citizen comments: "Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto.
NASA says the Martian South Pole’s “ice cap” has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto." (Fred Thompson).
I mean no disrespect… I think it's useful to look at all sides before forming opinion?
What IS the thermogenic gas being forced at pressure when there should be none from salt dome storage? On another thread here Vivvi posted that early on tests were done that indicated the gas detected was not the same as any materials stored in the domes. Why has this pressured release happened…and does it relate to RARE BOP failures? …and is a hidden agenda possible?
Back in August, Markww suggested the normal remedy of capping the top of the dome with cement…but if they KNEW or suspected the breach BELOW the dome, they wouldn't want to subject the salt dome to building pressure, would they? http://enenews.com/unsettling-news-theres-no-way-to-fix-it-if-salt-cavern-under-sinkhole-has-failed-says-state-engineer-theres-little-that-you-can-do
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irhologram, the citizen comment is nonsense – it's agenda driven FUD. The main text of the site clearly demolishes the overstatements and distortions in the comment. Nobody thinks "our planet is suffering from a fever" – that's classic straw man stuff.
As for the thermogenic issues… I don't know. Your questions are definitely interesting.
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