Louisiana Sinkhole’s Explosive Potential Massively Understated!

PART I

By: FREEDOMROX

As I have previously reported on, in Massive Explosive Potential in Louisiana and Gulf of Mexico. Doomsday?, and PART II, the various threats all of us are facing posed by the mammoth issues in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico, are spinning completely out of control. The consequences are far reaching, phenomenal, and highly volatile.

Instead of weaving this update one into another...this time I shall take it one area at a time, this time focusing on just the Napoleonville “Sinkhole”. If any doubt the veracity of any of the claims I make, please rest assured a link will be provided for each and every salient point, normally by scientific entreaties, video, or news sources, as well as the usual authorities.

BAYOU CORNE SINKHOLE:

Much has happened since my last article. The so-called "sinkhole" has now grown to over eight football fields in size with daily seismic activity. Although close to 85, 000 gallons of oil have been removed from the surface of the lake it has become, the water is still slick black with oil.

The flyovers show us that the surrounding swamp water has invaded and is overflowing the sinkhole contaminating the surrounding swamps, as well as methane invading both the Louisiana and Mississippi Aquifers. Several wells have been drilled in an attempt to flare off the methane, but most clogged, and one well being drilled into the cap rock of the Salt Dome was shut down when Hydrogen Sulfide was discovered the day before Thanksgiving, actually two days, but Texas Brine waited twenty four hours before letting anyone know.

http://enenews.com/watch-officials-call-state-police-sinkhole-after...

The bottom of the "sinkhole" has risen over fifty feet, indicating a sub-pressure gas or fluid. 

This is born out by the Itasca Consulting Group;

“Dr. Will Pettitt, Principal Geophysicist at Itasca Consulting Group, has reviewed the seismic data recorded overnight on November 20/21. Long-period seismic tremors and micro-earthquakes have been observed, similar to those defined previously by Dr. Steve Horton of CERI/USGS, and recorded mainly on station LA08 closest to the sinkhole. The long-period seismic tremors are postulated to be caused by gas and/or fluid movements through the rock collapse zone below the sinkhole on the edge of the salt dome. Micro-earthquakes of this nature are typically associated with small-scale rock movements, and again are believed to be occurring in the collapse zone. The source of both of these event types continues to be investigated by experts.”

http://enenews.com/international-experts-gas-andor-fluid-moving-below-giant-sinkhole-are-thought-to-be-causing-new-tremors

It has also been found that this is not the first time residents of Bayou Corne have had to be evacuated due to escaping gases.

Magnolia, Grand Bayou, south Louisiana (USA)

“The Magnolia Facility operating at the salt dome is located in a sparsely populated area at Napoleonville, about two miles from Grand Bayou, south Louisiana. In 2003, a cavern gas storage facility was constructed in the dome, operated by Entergy Koch/Gulf South. On Christmas Eve/Day 2003, only six weeks after operations began at the facility, around 30 people were forced from their homes by a natural gas (Methane) leak that led to the release of about 9.9 Mcm of gas in a matter of hours.

Investigations revealed that the gas escaped from a crack in the casing of a well near the top of a cavern, some 440 m (1,450 ft) below the surface. It was eventually plugged at a point below the crack and thirty-six other wells were drilled in the area to monitor and control the release of leaked gas that was bubbling up from underground. They removed 375 million cubic feet of gas before they were shut down in 2004.”

Then on August 11^th, 2010, while the BP debacle was still ongoing, Assumption Parish was dealt a blow as well, when an Oil Well Blowout Preventer, (sound familiar?), malfunctioned and shot oil over 200 ft. high over a sugar cane field and closed down Hwy. 70 for over three weeks before it was brought under control. Video is here:

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-481102

Overlooked is the amount of Parish’s that report methane bubbling all around them, as twenty eight bubbling sites associated with giant sinkhole. Authorities also are testing air releases from three new bubble sites found in recent weeks farther west toward Pierre Part and beyond any of the 25 other bubble locations in the general vicinity of Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou.

One far flung Parish is also experiencing similar bubbling that was a precursor of Assumption Parish’s sinkhole is Lake Piegneur, fifty miles away, which was also the site of a Salt Dome and Mine disaster all it's own in 1980, when the fresh water lake was sucked down into a salt mine, and replaced with a salt water lake after an Texaco oil drilling rig punctured the salt dome being mined. Even after such a disaster, and since 1994 AGL Resources has been using Lake Peigneur’s underlying salt dome as a Storage and Hub facility for pressurized natural gas. Efforts by the residents to stop the current expansion of the salt dome so far has fallen on deaf ears. Gov. Bobby Jindal’s mainly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur

Salt Mines disasters are not a new occurrence, but the one in Napoleonville is on a scale previously unknown.  

List of Salt Dome Disasters

Yaggy                Hutchison, Kan.   Natural Gas   Jan. '01     Fire and Explosion                Casing Failure

Brenham            Brenham, Texas      LPG           April '92    Fire and Explosion                Valve Failure

Mont Belvieu      Mont Belvieu,Texas LPG          Nov. '85     Fire and Explosion               Casing Failure

Mont Belvieu      Mont Belvieu,Texas LPG          1980          Fire and Explosion               Casing Failure

West Hackberry      South La.              Oil             Sep. '78     Fire                                     Packer Failure

Moss Bluff         Liberty, Texas      Natural Gas    Aug. '04     Fire and Explosion              Valve Failure

Magnolia         Napoleonville, La.   Natural Gas    Dec. '03    Gas Leak and Evacuation  Casing Failure

Stratton Ridge   Freeport, Texas   Natural Gas     1990s       Cavern Failure/Abandonment Leak-Failed MIT

Mont Belvieu   Mont Belvieu,Texas   LPG            Oct. '84      Fire and Explosion              Casing Failure

Eminence       Eminence, Miss.    Natural Gas    April '72       Loss of Storage Capacity     Salt Creep

Source: Falcon Gas Storage Co. http://www.falcongasstorage.com/_filelib/FileCabinet/Articles/artic...

Also, data has been obtained towards just what is in all those caverns under the Napoleonville Salt Dome, Magnolia Facility via industry websites and a report handed in to Department of Natural Resources, Louisiana. The results were beyond chilling.

http://dnr.louisiana.gov/assets/OC/BC_All_Updates/DOC.PDF

Crosstex is not the only source of the Butane at the Magnolia facility, with K/D/S Promix holding butane with a cavern capacity of 1,660,788 Million Barrels, and another storage cavern of iso-butane with a capacity of 1,372,759 Million Barrels. Dow Storage has Ethane/Propane with a potential capacity 9,266,456 BBls. Ethane is three times more flammable than Butane. What really is disturbing is what is kept within one cavern and that is LPG with a potential storage capacity of 1,451,107 BBls.

Why is this disturbing?

According to K/D/S Promix’s Tony Russell, “

http://dnr.louisiana.gov/assets/OC/BC_All_Updates/SITUATION_REPORTS...

According to Natural Gas. Org;

“Whatever the source of the natural gas, once separated from crude oil (if present) it commonly exists in mixtures with other hydrocarbons; principally ethane, propane, butane, and pentanes. In addition, raw natural gas contains water vapor, hydrogen sulfide (H2S), carbon dioxide, helium, nitrogen, and other compounds. To learn about the basics of natural gas, including its composition, click here.”

This is what is stored under the Napoleonville Salt Dome by K/D/S/Promix and Dow Chemical, as well as Gulf South Pipeline, LP, a wholly owned subsidiary of Energy/Koch LP.

These companies are admitting they have so much worse than Butane stored at Magnolia, (NPVL). Ethane is 3 times more energetic, and flammable than Methane, Butane, or Propane. HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE!

Also Propylene is used in plastics, paints, etc. and is highly explosive at the concentrations that exist in the cavern, and if it reaches the surface water then all vegetation and critters it touches will die. Although Dow refuses to test for water toxicity, it does give a good overview here:

http://www.dow.com/productsafety/finder/pro.htm

Now to add insult to injury, The Dept. of Health and Hospitals acknowledges the well water samples taken in Bayou Corne in September showed:

Benzene

Toulene

Ethylbenzene

Xylene

Total Dissolved Solids

Chlorine

Tentatively Identified Compounds

Butane

Ethane

Ethene

Propane

http://new.dhh.louisiana.gov/assets/oph/Center-EH/envepi/BayouCorne...

Seems like a coincidence that the exact same chemicals that are housed in the Salt Caverns are precisely what are detected in the Industrial Well waters. The scary part is that Dow’s caverns are mostly on the East Side of the dome.

I personally don’t believe all of the caverns are separated anymore. All the “earthquakes” are nothing more than the cavern walls breaching, one by one, and all hydrocarbons are now intermixed again into who knows what concoctions, and is being caused by methane migration coming up through the Miocene shale from the Gulf of Mexico, and the Macondo blast site.

That will be my segue into Part II, where many more shocking surprises await us back again in the Gulf of Mexico.

Acknowledgements: I want to thank the webmaster of Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle for his help with this article. His site can be found at: http://lasinkhole.wordpress.com/

Mirror Site for this article is at: http://freedomrox.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/louisiana-sinkholes-expl...