At BP Oil, Brilliance and Insanity are indeed close cousins!

sounds like a marketing tag Line...


Have lately been fascinated by the Louisiana Sinkhole. At first, it seemed to be just another sinkhole story, but with bad photos. Then, as the details came out, the story has been nagging the back of my mind in an kind of “this means more, or means something else…” mind tickling way that has been happening lately.



If you don’t know the story, it started when a shitload of bubbles bubbled up from a swamp and walls rattled in Assumption Parish Louisiana. It was a miniscule story at first, Then, in Bayou Corne, in Assumption Parish Louisiana, a sinkhole opened up. OK! Bubbles in a swamp, walls rattling and a 357 ft round by 422 ft deep sinkhole is growing and that is big news.



Then the details: It seems that this corporation, “Texas Brine Inc.” got the bright idea to use ancient geological structure known as “Salt Domes” - these geological structures of salt are like mile(s) wide and miles deep, and are apparently (or not) thought to be good places to store dangerous stuff like nuclear waste or volatile butane gas.



It seems that Texas Brine Inc. used two adjacent salt domes to store radioactive waste in one, and a huge amount of butane gas in the other. Unfortunately for Assumption Parish Louisiana and more specifically, Bayou Corne, The cap of one or the other Salt Dome is caving in. Texas Brine Inc. isn’t stating which. Yet, there is a great honkin’ sinkhole and everyone in Assumption Parish Louisiana is waiting to find out which is coming out; radioactive waste, or a butt-load of flammable butane gas.



While I am on the edge of my seat to discover the answer as well as the residents of Assumption Parish Louisiana, something else has been nettling the back of my mind…it is the “Salt Dome” and the crazy idea that you could use them to store something in one.



Bear with me a second… In all my life I only heard the ‘salt dome’ phrase once before, and that was in the BP Oil Spill disaster wherein BP oil drilled through a salt dome on their way, 4 miles down, to striking abiotic oil that was at such a high pressure that 25000psi blew an oil rig all to hell and caused the worst environmental disaster in my lifetime (well worst until Fukushima Japan lost 4 nuclear reactors to an earthquake and tsunami and radiated the northern hemisphere).



When I read that BP oil drilled through a salt dome, I keep getting a picture of what happens to a sugar cub when you drop a drop of water on it (a favorite pass-time of mine as a child). I thought, at the time, that BP was just stupid for such an error in judgment for drilling through a salt dome. At the time, I thought it was just BP Oil’s hubris and greed that lead them to believe that they could control 25000psi with a rig designed to handle 6000psi flows of oil.



I mean really, I’m sure that BP Oil must have known about the Russian’s experience with this super deep, super high pressure, abiotic oil. How the Russian’s had to fail many times, even to the point of having to nuke a well to close it after it got away from them. How the Russians had to spend a bunch of money to master the equipment needed to dril for this oil.



Then tonight I had an epiphany… BP Oil never, ever thought that they could control the Macando well complex, with standard oil well equipment, when they hit oil at 4 miles deep… No, they were not concerned with the consequences, they never planned to control that well. They had something else in mind. Oh and it might be brilliance boarding on insanity.



BP Oil drilled through the salt dome in hopes that the salt dome would fill with abiotic high pressure oil. The pressure would eventually drop, or equalize, then BP could tap into the salt dome with cheap, low pressure standard drilling equipment and suck out a bunch of oil at a low cost. The BP Oil disaster is a great big experiment using salt domes for oil storage.



Whether this was a brilliant plan by BP oil, or a reckless gamble is yet to be seen, but if we are taking Texas Brine Inc.’s recent sinkhole experience as a guide, I suspect that BP oil’s experiment will not end well.



Just thinking out loud,

Den