Bayou Frack-Out: The Massive Oil and Gas Disaster You've Never Heard Of

[WilliamPitt]

Bayou Frack-Out: The Massive Oil and Gas Disaster You've Never Heard Of
By Mike Ludwig
Truthout.org | Report

Thursday 06 December 2012

For residents in Assumption Parish, the boiling, gas-belching bayou, with its expanding toxic sinkhole and quaking earth is no longer a mystery; but there is little comfort in knowing the source of the little-known event that has forced them out of their homes.

Located about 45 miles south of Baton Rouge, Assumption Parish carries all the charms and curses of southern Louisiana. Networks of bayous, dotted with trees heavy with Spanish moss, connect with the Mississippi River as it slowly ambles toward the Gulf of Mexico. Fishermen and farmers make their homes there, and so does the oil and gas industry, which has woven its own network of wells, pipelines and processing facilities across the lowland landscape.

The first sign of the oncoming disaster was the mysterious appearance of bubbles in the bayous in the spring of 2012. For months the residents of a rural community in Assumption Parish wondered why the waters seemed to be boiling in certain spots as they navigated the bayous in their fishing boats.

Then came the earthquakes. The quakes were relatively small, but some residents reported that their houses shifted in position, and the tremors shook a community already desperate for answers. State officials launched an investigation into the earthquakes and bubbling bayous in response to public outcry, but the officials figured the bubbles were caused by a single source of natural gas, such as a pipeline leak. They were wrong.

The rest: http://truth-out.org/news/item/13136-bayou-frack-out-the-massive-oil-and-gas-disaster-youve-never-heard-of

[dipsydoodle]

1. The shape of further things to come.

[Champion Jack]

3. It's here, unfortunately

[RobertEarl]

2. Here is what is happening?

Underground, 10,000 feet deep, is this huge, big, mountain sized, ball of salt. The top of it is about 500 feet from the surface and this ball is about 1 mile by 3 miles wide at the top.

What we have done is gone in and hollowed out some of that ball of salt making huge caverns in which we store oil, and gasses like butane.

One of these hollowed out caverns was too close to the side of the salt wall and the wall has collapsed leaving a gaping hole underground which began to fill with water and dirt from above.

So now, at the surface, is a big hole in the ground because the bottom of that hole is eroding into the now exposed salt cavern.

The problem is that as more water contacts the salt dome the salt dome will shrink, as salt condenses in solution. We may end up with a 10,000 foot deep hole in the ground as this salt dome collapses into itself.

Will it swallow up New Orleans as it collapses? I dunno.

[RobertEarl]

5. Local site with great pictures

http://bayoucornesinkhole.weebly.com/index.html

[DaniDubois]

4. I've been watching this story since it first broke, and saying all along that it has to do with

fracking or oil in some way. I was told to loosen my tin foil hat. Yea, whatever. When the local residents are reporting smelling chemical smells and methane and there's no main stream news covering those details it becomes pretty obvious who or what the culprit is. As hard as it is for some people to believe, our government and our media isn't always honest with us.