gigantic sinkhole eating a small texas town

gigantic sinkhole eating a small texas town

www.khou.com

DAISETTA, Texas -- A monster sinkhole the size of several football fields is causing serious concern in the Liberty County town of Daisetta.

(visit the link for the full news article)

wow. there is some kind of black bubbling liquid at the bottom


www.khou.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by baconvein


Thats what happens when you drain an oil well Theres a big pocket of nothing but gas sludge and vapor.

This sinkhole will stop growing once it reaches the end of the oil pocket remeins.

reply to post by whatukno


ha, the news just said the entire town is on top of the salt dome.

I guess its better that the event happens quickly and stops just as quickly unlike what happened/ is still happening in Centralia, Pennsylvania still. I personally would rather see my property and stuff get sink holed then be rendered too dangerous to live in due to various things with sinkholes being at the lower end of the list :-(

Still though, its kind of interesting seeing how fast the actual sink hole came and progressed, sucks to be that farmer though

okay, this morning the newspaper said it was as big as four football fields and 200 feet deep and its still growing as fast as it ever was.

Don't mess with mother nature, she'll claim her own eventually.

How much bigger can this thing get? Realistically are we looking at a square mile or more? Anybody know?

This seems to be the best footage I can find so far.

as long as it gets big enough to swallow up crawford texas ill be happy.

But this is only going to get as large as the pocket of oil that used to be there was. I don't know how big the oil field was to begin with but whatever size it is thats how big the hole will end up being.

Cmon be huge and take out crawford texas cmon cmon cmon!

Originally posted by whatukno
But this is only going to get as large as the pocket of oil that used to be there was. I don't know how big the oil field was to begin with but whatever size it is thats how big the hole will end up being.

This source of the oil in the sink hole.

Sunoco, which manufactures petroleum and petrochemical products, secured two 6-inch crude oil pipelines near the sinkhole that had started to leak Wednesday, said Lester Edwards, hazardous materials coordinator for Liberty County.

www.foxnews.com...

This is the probable reason for the sink hole, which is oil industry related, but has nothing to do with some vacant space left from oil extraction.

The ground might have caved in because of the collapse of an old salt dome where oil brine and natural gas are stored underground, officials said. Daisetta sits on a salt dome, one of the most common types of traps for oil.

www.foxnews.com...

Another possible explanation.

Daisetta isn’t the only area with salt domes and the possibility for a sinkhole. The Big Hill, or Spindletop, site, and High Island have areas of salt domes close enough to the surface to possibly sink if certain conditions arise.

A salt dome is an underground arch of sedimentary rock with a mass of rock salt at its core. The dome may collapse when, as the salt moves upward, comes into contact with the water table.

“The real question is what triggered the collapse,” he said. “And if the salt dissolved away from the cap rock, is it supported again?”

www.mineralwellsindex.com...

Update on sinkhole!

Company Accused of Violating Saltwater Disposal Permits in Connection With Texas Sinkhole

A company that sits near the edge of a massive sinkhole in Southeast Texas has been accused of violating permits for disposal of saltwater, which some geologists suggest may have caused the crater.

****SKIP****

The company has received citations for two violations from the state. One was for exceeding the amount of wastewater it was permitted to inject into the ground, Nye said. Deloach was allowed to inject 90,000 barrels of waste water per month, but Nye said the firm last year was injecting between 128,000 and 192,000 barrels per month.

The company was also cited for failing to conduct its annual leak test on the piping in the disposal well before April 30.

Officials with Deloach could not immediately be reached for comment on Saturday.

OOPS!

[edit on 5/10/2008 by Keyhole]