The development of human society is extremely dependent on the earth's resources, and salt, oil and fresh water are closely related to the continuation of human races. But did you know that human overexploitation of a certain resource often causes some unimaginable ecological disasters, such as an accident in Lake Pinell in the United States, which directly caused 13 billion liters of lake water to dry up instantly, and the culprit turned out to be a 36 cm thick drill.
Unexpected accidents
Many substances in nature complement each other, salt and oil are such a good pairing, from a geological point of view, where there are salt mines often contain oil resources. The protagonist of this article, Lake Pinel, is such a place, people first found salt mines, and then found oil not far away, which also made Lake Pinel famous.
Lake Pinel is located in the Louisiana city of Iberia, this small lake is a place for local residents to walk after tea and dinner, and because of the abundance of catfish, it also attracts many anglers. However, for the Iberian region, Lake Pirne is a true economic pillar, and the salt mines here directly support the majority of the city's income.
Since the discovery of the salt mines of Lake Piner in the last century, it has become the most famous salt producer in the United States, and most of the Iberian residents are also engaged in salt mining. As the salt mining deepened, people gradually realized that there are probably a lot of oil reserves under Lake Pinel, and salt mines are natural substances that block oil in nature, and if there is no salt layer, oil will soon be replaced to the surface because of its low density.
This discovery has made some oil companies also begin to notice Lake Pinel, and the American oil giant Texaco has won the oil exploration project in Lake Pinel, invested huge amounts of money, and began to explore the situation under the salt mine. Extracting oil in inland lakes is much easier than going to ocean, and Texaco's professional team worked hard to find the exact location of the drill and use the drill bit to start drilling.
The exploration work was very smooth at first, and the drilling depth soon reached a depth of 180 meters underground, at which time the operator found that the drill bit seemed to have touched the hard salt layer, and when the drill bit was retrieved, it was sure enough that it was all salt ore crystals, which made the staff feel a little puzzled. Because according to the previous exploration and calculation results, they will not encounter salt mines at this depth, but strangely, even if the staff is suspicious, they do not stop the work they are doing, which directly causes the disaster.
When the drilling depth reached 400 meters, the drill bit was stuck again, and the staff tried several ways to try to get out of the trap, but then a loud noise was heard underground, and everyone realized that something was wrong and directly withdrew from the drilling platform. This was a timely decision, because as soon as they left the platform, the whole platform directly overturned, but what everyone did not know was that this was only the beginning of the disaster.
Disappearing lake water
The collapse of the rig is only a few million dollars in losses, and the real crisis is that the rig drills directly through the salt mine. The lake water was poured directly into the underground salt mine, and it must be known that there were still many workers in the salt mine at that time. All the workers also heard a loud noise in the tunnel, and then heard the sound of raging water. The experienced worker quickly realized that there had been a serious water leakage accident in the salt mine, he sounded the alarm and everyone began to evacuate.
Because the salt miners were well trained, 55 miners managed to escape from the 400-metre underground mine before they were flooded by the lake, which is also a blessing in misfortune, and the drilling accident did not cause the miners' families to be destroyed. But human luck, Lake Pinel suffered, in front of everyone, a giant whirlpool with a diameter of 400 meters appeared on the surface of Lake Piner, and many witnesses said that this was the largest whirlpool they had ever seen in their lives, and the lake water was directly sucked into the entire underground salt mine, and the huge pressure even squeezed the internal structure of the salt mine.
It is said that the strong pressure even made the salt mine entrance on the ground spew out a high-pressure water column, the height actually reached more than 120 meters, because Lake Pinel was not large, only 3 hours, 13 billion liters of lake water disappeared directly from the surface, and Lake Pinel that existed for an unknown number of days and moons dried up in an instant, leaving only a huge depression. This is not over, due to the huge whirlpool of Lake Pinel, even the flow of the lake has been changed, Lake Pinel was originally a concentration of river water into the Atlantic Ocean, but now the Atlantic water began to pour into Lake Piner.
After another 2 days, Lake Pinel was filled again by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, this freshwater lake was transformed into a saltwater lake, and the area of the entire lake has been greatly increased, the most obvious change is the depth of the lake, the average depth of Lake Pinel in the freshwater lake period is only 5 meters, but now the average depth of Lake Piner has reached 60 meters, becoming the deepest lake in Louisiana.
Drills are the culprit
Although the accident did not cause casualties, it still caused huge property losses to the local area, the large whirlpool formed by the water surface alone directly destroyed 12 boats on the lake, seawater irrigation flooded 260,000 hectares of land, the local economic pillar salt mine was also completely destroyed, the entire lakeside ecological system directly changed the world, but surprisingly, such a huge loss, local residents actually received only 45 million US dollars in compensation.
After investigating the cause of the accident, investigators found the culprit, which was a 36-centimeter-diameter drill bit used by the drillers, which directly penetrated the barrier between the lake and the salt mine, causing the lake water to enter the salt mine, in other words, 13 billion liters of lake water did not disappear, but became a high concentration of salt water stored in the salt mine.
As for what would have caused such a mistake, the reason is also simple, the Texaco engineers had a deviation in their calculations, and there were two coordinate systems in the exploration operation, namely the Cartesian coordinate system and the high Scrugg coordinate system, and the Texaco engineers used the second one incorrectly, resulting in problems with all coordinates, which eventually caused this catastrophic accident.