Methane Fault Migration, BP's Gulf to TB's Sinkhole

Updated, edited version of article, Explosive Methane Fault Migration: Gulf ot La. Salt Domes?, published Feb. 25, 2013

Explosive methane gas migration along fault lines, such as from BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster site to Lake Peigneur and Bayou Corne sinkhole disaster salt domes, has been a well recognized oil and gas industry risk since 2005, according to a civil engineer expert interviewed by human rights reporter Deborah Dupré.

A Fault Zone with Teeth, Eating Away the Edge of the Continent

“Fault lines are planes of weakness,” Sherwood Gagliano, Ph.D. explained in a telephone interview, adding that “the methane leakages represent the faults.”

Gagliano shared his findings to Louisiana state officials back in 2005, proving that those leaders have not been as in-the-dark about the events as they might seem. 

“Until recently, the relationship between geological faulting and coastal land loss had been largely neglected by researchers, and by the coastal restoration community,” Gagliano concluded in his research team’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report, five years before BP’s Gulf catastrophe and seven years before TB’s (Texas Brine’s) Bayou Corne sinkhole disaster.

No wonder some South Louisiana sinkhole residents are more interested in investigating and suing the state, rather than just Texas Brine.

Why did head of the state’s DNR, the man who’d signed off on permits to oil and gas companies to drill into salt domes, quietly resign within days of the sinkhole formation, only to be given a presitgious LSU role by Governor Jindal? That’s the kind of question remaining unanswered as locals become increasingly outraged by the related human rights abuses they are enduring there. 

Meanwhile, seismic activity in the sinkhole area is increasing these days, rattling the area, the issues and those locals. 

“A vast area of south Louisiana is becoming inundated by waters of the Gulf of Mexico as a result of subsidence of fault bound blocks (Figures 1 and 2),” Gagliano reported in another paper, Effects of Natural Fault Movement on Land Submergence in Caostal Louisiana, 2005. “The most prominent and active area of submergence and land loss lies seaward of the Golden Meadow Fault Zone, a series of interconnected cracks extending 130 miles across the land from the west bank of the Mississippi River near Empire, Louisiana to Atchafalaya Bay, extending 35,000 feet below the surface, and studded with massive sub-surface pillars of salt.

“Between 1930 and 1990, some 618 square miles of land south of the Golden Meadow Fault Zone reverted to open water and the loss continues at comparable rates. This is a fault zone with teeth and it’s eating away the edge of the continent.”

Down under dome quake and explosive hydrocarbons dangers

Highly pressured migrating gas in the Gulf continues to be problematic in BP’s wrecked MC-252 “Macondo Well” region. Some 100 miles away, Lake Peigneur, with an arsenic plume, systematically and vigorously bubbles a foam. Fifty miles further north, enough methane is migrating and bubbling over 100 sites in the area of the bayou “sinkhole” and 1-mile by 3-mile salt dome region where it could “do very serious damage to anything on the surface if it’s not controlled,” according to chief geologist on that disaster case.

None of these areas have been “controlled.” Each are connected in more ways than one, according to civil engineer and president of Baton Rouge-based Coastal Environments, Inc. Dr. Gagliano, who spent years researching south Louisiana and Gulf of Mexico fault lines.

“Salt domes are there because of faults,” he said. “They don’t just happen on their own.”

In fact, fault movement is an underrated natural hazard in South Louisiana, according to Gagliano. Differential movement between low-density salt and adjacent sedimentary deposits might have a wedging effect on faults, initiating brine water and gas moving up fault zones, he reports.

Each of the main three widely reported problematic gas migrating areas in South Louisiana is manmade due to petrochemical-related salt dome mining, for extraction or storage, rather than natural events.

“Those dome leakages with methane escaping are more due to hot water being pumped into them,” explained Gagliano.

The primary method of extracting underground salt is pumping hot water into underground salt domes. “Today, all brine operations inject steam or hot water into dry salt beds.” (Michigan State University, Salt mining: mining part)

Over 100 of those facilities on faults exist in South Louisiana and Texas.

“They all need to be reevaluated,” Gagliano asserted. 

Sixty-one of those domes correlate with known subsurface faults, according to his 2005 report.

After the historic Bayou Corne sinkhole monster proved unstoppable, Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (LDNR) issued an order in 2012 for all of the state’s 34 salt dome operators to show how close their oil and gas industry storage caverns are to outer edges of the domes, and prove that those caverns nearest dome edges are structurally sound.

That was an admission of the state of Louisiana previously failing to ensure such safety measures and putting millions of people in harm’s way. 

In 2005, Gagliano led a comprehensive study of suspected relationships between geological faults and subsidence in Southeastern Louisiana. This civil engineer reported his team’s findings in the report, Effects of Earthquakes, Fault Movements, and Subsidence on the South Louisiana Landscape.

 “When oil, gas and produced water are removed, localized subsidence and fault movement may occur,” Gagliano reported. “Geological fault movement, compaction and fluid withdrawal are inter-related processes contributing to subsidence.

“Differential movement between the low-density salt and adjacent sedimentary deposits may have a wedging effect on the faults, initiating brine water and gas movement up fault zones,” Gagliano reported. “The water and gas in turn may lubricate the fault plane surfaces and cause instability along fault segments.”

Faulting poses a natural hazard in Louisiana, according to Gagliano. Pumping water into the salt domes to dissolve salt for brine, as Texas Brine LLC has been doing in the sinkhole area salt dome, allows methane to migrate along faults and veins, is risky business, he said.

Dangerous South Louisiana gas migration

Only 90 miles east of bubbling Lake Piegneur and about 140 miles from gas-bubbling Bayou Corne sinkhole area, migrating natural gas has caused extra problems since the BP catastrophe began, including blow-out preventer problems and trying to “kill” crippled wells from platforms. 

“In other instances of this happening, the upward-shooting gas also involves oil, both escaping into surrounding bedrock and ultimately reaching the water surface,” On Wings of Care wesbite, Dr. Bonnie Shumaker reported after a Gulf flyover in February. As gas was seen to continue migrating, a large surface sheen she’d been seeing in MC-252 (Macondo well) area “seem[ed] to have gone.” 

About 50 miles northwest, South Louisiana’s Vermilion and Iberia Parish sheriff’s offices and state officials were responding to calls by residents seeing Lake Peigneur bubbling two days running.

About 50 miles north of Lake Peigneur, over 100 more methane gas bubbling sites have been recorded by officials working on the Great Louisianas “Sinkhole” disaster. There, the explosive gas has leaked into residents’ yard and under their homes.

Peigneur bubbles

Nara Crowley, Save Lake Peigneur Inc. president, says bubbling there in the lake has occurred since 2005.

Locals raise concerns about the amount of water from their sole water supply, Chicot Aquifer, their precious water industry needs to create its new caverns in the salt dome in the lake. They are also concerned about an arsenic plume there.

Residents surrounding Lake Peigneur have long questioned the bubbling; many have opposed expanding the salt dome storage caverns in their lake; and many have continually voiced that setiment to Jindal and the state’s DNR.

The state, however, is hell-bent on permitting AGL Resources to expand its salt dome under Lake Peigneur, so it will have more caverns in what is an increasingly vulnerable part of the world.

Jim Brugh, regional manager of Louisiana Water Company, LAWCO, said the company knows an arsenic plume is within the aquifer east of the company’s wells in New Iberia Parish.

“The company only recently developed a new well field west of the plume that it estimated the arsenic wouldn’t reach for 50 years,” the Daily Iberian reported.

With accelerated draw down from AGL resources, however, Brugh said that they could not be so sure.

“We’re very, very concerned the plume will contaminate the wells,” Brugh said.

State Sen. Fred Mills, R-Parks, has questioned the need for more caverns and their impact on coastal resources: 

Natural gas storage is 16 percent higher than the five-year average while, “our coastal resources are among the most valued in the nation, yet the fastest disappearing on the planet.”

“Protect the lake,” Mills says. “She has suffered enough.”

(See: Bubbling bayous smell of oil mafia, and Senator: Louisiana sinkhole a catastrophic Lake Peigneur genocide in progress )

After years of complaints, Louisiana’s DNR sent field agents to investigate bubbling at Lake Peigneur, right where natural gas is stored in its large salt dome.

“We found foaming residue on the top,” said DNR spokesman Patrick Courreges. The foam “is the result of something happening.” 

At times, lines of bubbles like over-boiled spaghetti-foam has stretched up to 3,000 feet across the lake, with its moss-decked trees and a fine resort, strategically situated on the opposite side of the lake from the unsightly salt dome oil and gas operation.

Courreges had said it is too early to speculate what might be causing the bubbling. Again, Crowley and her group have been reporting the odd bubbling on Lake Peigneur since 2005. 

Bayou Corne sinkhole disaster bubbling

Bayou Corne’s salt dome “sinkhole” disaster in Assumption Parish, 50 miles from Lake Peigneur, exacerbates Lake Peigneur residents’ personal safety concerns.

Since the recent viral video of the monster sinkhole sucking tress right down into its greedy gut, perhaps people in other Louisiana towns and cities and even other states might become equally concerned.

“In the past, when Bayou Corne residents asked about the bubbling, the answer was, ‘It’s swamp gas,’” said Gloria Conklin, of Abbeville, also active in Save Lake Peigneur. “To Lake Peigneur residents, that sounds familiar.”

Officials now officially admitted that the methane substantially more than 50,000,000 cubic feet of gas below surface near giant sinkhole covers over two square miles — “enough to do “very serious damage” and very rapidly “if uncontrolled.”

At the Feb. 19 Senate Committee Hearing on Bayou Corne about the “sinkhole,” geologist Dr. Gary Hecox stated, “The gas across here is between 2 and 10 feet thick[…] around 50-60 psi pressure.

“It is enough to have large volumes come to the surface very rapidly if it’s uncontrolled,” Hecox said, reemphasizing, “It’s enough to do very serious damage to anything on the surface if it’s not controlled.”

Hecox said his team had estimated the volume of gas in the MRAA to be 50 million cubic feet in place, but that probably, updates would be “substantially bigger than the 50 million.”

Increasingly for 14 months, gas from an unknown source has bubbled in South Louisiana’s Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou area in Assumption Parish, an “unprecedented,” globally “historic” event.

Two months after first reports about the gas there, a large sinkhole appeared that has been expanding ever since.

It grew from 400 feet in August 2012 to 9 acres in February to 24 acres today.

It went from having a fews gas bubbling sitesin August 2012, to over 40 bubbling sites in February, to well over 100 such sites today.

Gas officially detected under the Bayou Corne community have caused both local community members and officials there to fear night and day that a giant explosion is a real possibility.

“Bubbles can indicate pathways where oil could soon follow,” the Times Picayune reported in July 2010 about the BP Gulf oil catastrophe. Bayou Corne’s sinkhole disaster has well demonstraed this: spewing not only gas, but also crude oil – also from an unknown source, into the Cajun swampland waterways and communities

At least some state elected officials suchas as State Senator Fred Mills and State Rep. Joe Harrison express concern about the “sinkhole” in Assumption Parish saying “it is getting more and more out of hand.” 

That “there has been nothing with the potential of this sinkhole” is acknolwdeged by officials and scientists globally.

Harrison agreed it is “very possible” that a big explosion could go off and that “this is absolutely unprecedented.”

In February, Harrison said, “They haven’t been able to identify all the chemicals coming out of the ground,” and “the chemical compounds are mixing together and they’re trying to get a link as to where they’re coming from.”

“We have no plan,” he said.

The late Matthew Simmons had said in 2010 that, due to gas leaking from the Gulf since the BP-wrecked Macondo Prospect (MC-252), Louisiana needed a plan – to evacuate its southern region.

Gulf Methane

Macondo Prospect is in the same vicinity as highly pressurized gas migrating below the Gulf floor. 

It remains to be officially reported that there is a connection exists between new gas leaks, such as Apache’s migrating gas and bubbling gas in Assumption Parish. in 2010, however, Matt Simmons said about the BP-wrecked MC-252, Macondo oil well, “It is an overlooked danger in oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well contains vast amounts of natural gas,” as Associated Press reported.

Methane is typically trapped in small amounts beneath the earth’s surface. In the Gulf, an abundance of the gas is in the seafloor.

Methane caused the original Macondo well explosion. A chemical reaction of settling cement created heat that in turn, converted a pocket of methane hydrate crystals into a bubble of compressed gas. That, in turn, grew as it rose up the drill column and caused the rig to explode.

“A small bubble becomes a really big bubble,” said top oil expert Dr. Robert Bea, a UC Berkeley professor and government consultant. “So the expanding bubble becomes like a cannon shooting the gas into your face.”

“The gas flooded into an adjoining room with exposed ignition sources, Bea said, causing the first explosion, and others followed. According to one interview transcript, the gas cloud caused giant engines on the drill floor to run too fast and explode, setting ‘everything on fire,’” the Tribune reported.

Methane, the volatile gas that triggered Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon oilrig operated by BP, comprised at least a third the total volume of material subsequently discharged into the Gulf,according to the Herald Tribune in Feb 2011. 

“While the crude oil received all the attention, methane was largely overlooked as a component of the spill, despite its potential to also cause environmental damage,” the Tribune reported.

According to marine scientist Dr. Samantha Joye, 1000 times more methane was involved with BP’s Gulf oil catastrophe than normal levels.

In June 2010, “A BP spokesman said the company was burning about 30 million cubic feet of natural gas daily from the source of the leak, adding up to about 450 million cubic feet since the containment effort started 15 days ago.”

By July, scientists reported four gas “seeps” at or near BP’s blown-out Macondo well soon after the supposed capping (a “sham” TV performance to fool the public, according to Simmons). Bubbles were spotted: 1) on the seabed about three kilometers from the well, 2) a few hundred meters from the well, 3) at the base of the original blowout preventer on the well, and 4) coming out of a gasket in on the installed capping stack. 

Pressure had been rising in the well, a good sign indicating it might have been sealed — “But the readings are much lower than expected — 6,811 pounds per square inch and rising an inch an hour — igniting a debate over whether the well may have a leak somewhere,” the Times Picayune reported Day 81 of the well gushing.

An expert warned soon after Macondo was supposedly capped that doing so could have unintended consequences. “Gas hydrate crystals could be plugging any holes in the underground portion of the well, and they could get dislodged as pressure builds,” said Bill Gale, a California engineer and industrial explosion expert who is a member of the Deepwater Horizon Study Group [formerly Chief Loss Prevention Engineer for Bechtel in San Francisco].

In other words, methane crystals might have destroyed part of the steel well casing temporarily plugged by methane. It was speculated that the well capping might slowly raise the pressure in the well to the point that hydrate crystals were dislodged and the well would start leaking even more. 

Scientists said the methane could even disturb the seafloor itself, as St. Peterburg Timesreported Carol Lutken of University of Mississippi expalined. “Disturbing those [methane hydrate] deposits — say, by drilling an oil well through them — can turn that solid methane into a liquid, leaving the ocean floor unstable.” 

Almost a year later, in June 2011, Joye and other experts argued that the odorless yet potent methane still seeped into the Gulf, contradicting reports that a bacteria ate the methane within four months of the Gulf’s Macondo well catastrophe.

(See: Methane still seeps in ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil horror story (Photos)

“Off-camera, Joye and other scientists were bombarded with phone calls from furious officials, from NOAA and other government agencies,” the Guardian reported in April 2011.

“I felt like I was in third grade and my teacher came up to me with a ruler and smacked my hand and said: ‘You’ve just spoken out of turn.’ They were very upset,” Joye said.

After BP’s crude continued leaking over a year, and another attempt made to kill the stricken well, the cofferdam leaked due to methane gushing out of the well, accumulating and clogging the cofferdam, and making it float.

The cofferdam is the 40-foot-tall, 86-ton steel containment dome used in early stages of the BP Gulf oil catastrophe response in attempt to trap the leaking oil and funnel it to the surface. 

“Methane crystals also clogged a four-story containment box that engineers earlier tried to place on top of the breached well,” the Christian Monitor reported in June 2010 in an article, Gulf gas: BP oil spill increases methane in Gulf waters.

Simmons was highly vocal on nationwide news programs, making claims that led some people to question his sanity along with blowing the whistle on BP and Government. But was Simmons’ predictions of migrating gas sound?

He pointed to a strong possibility of several Gulf leaks, not just one the U.S. media and BP showed in videos and the live-stream capping of a well. Simmons first suggested this on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan program on May 26th, 2010.

Responding to a question about a second leak, Simmons replied that much oil was six miles away, and said, “I think that’s where the wellhead is.” He mentioned telling government officials that.

On June 7, 2010, Simmons predicted a discovery of an open hole with no casing in it, about seven miles from where BP had been trying to fix the little tiny leaks in the drilling riser . He said BP had done everything wrong.

Before his untimely death, Simmons blew the whistle not only on BP’s lies, but also Government lies about the Gulf catastrophe. Based on his close connections to other oil industry insiders and top government officials charged with regulating the oil industry, he said claims of only 5,000 barrels of oil leaking were “preposterous,” and instead conjectured minimally 120,000 barrels of BP’s oil leaking into the Gulf.

He reported leaks 5 to 7 miles from Macondo, later confirmed by NOAA in the Thomas Jefferson. By mid-July 2010, BP admitted possible leaks from the seabed some distance from the Macondo wellbore.

In a July 17, 2010 interview with Eric King on King World News, Simmons warned about the gigantic “lake” of crude oil pooling under great pressure 4000 to 5000 feet down in the “basement” of the Gulf’s waters. 

“It was painful to speak out,” Simmons told King. “When I believe something, I believe it’s kind of my responsibility to speak out about it.”

“Are people in danger?” King asked Simmons, who responded affirmatively, saying that methane “could be the greatest loss of life from a non-war disaster.”

Simmons revealed that NOAA ships discovered a huge underwater plume of oil at 1100 meters below the surface that could possibly cover up to 40% of the Gulf of Mexico, as NOAA and the federal government were publicly denying underwater oil plumes.

After BP faked “capping” the Macondo well, Simmons stood by his earlier claims: The well capping was fake and BP’s second well in the Gulf was gushing crude and methane.

“The perjury going on has just been astonishing,” he told King.

Simmons made national headlines by stating BP would go bankrupt due to not having enough money to clean the Gulf and that Macondo well’s integrity and pressures were so high, nothing short of a small nuke could close it. He said that until then, it would continue leaking an inexhaustible amount of oil and gas.

When King asked Simmons if he had whistleblowers feeding information to him, he replied yes but they were also pleading, “Help me. I need some help.

“Some of these oceanographers on these research vessels have said, ‘Mr. Simmons, I’m so proud of you, but I need your help. I’m having my professional career tarnished by saying I’m lying about this just to get money.’”

Simmons recommended that experts with methane gas expertise provided advice for the safety of Gulf Coasters.

Like nitrogen, methane is an asphyxiant, meaning it can kill people by displacing oxygen. It can also be the source of explosions if a spark ignites it, as Bayou Corne “sinkhole” area residents and officials justifiably fear some 100 miles from Macondo and the migrating gas.

Simmons said people, “especially in Louisiana,” needed to be evacuated due to the Gulf’s “open hole.” “There will be a vast amount of methane gas coming out of there.”

Last-minute evacuation would likely be disasterous with highways jammed hopelessly, drivers out of gas, and then gas stations out of gas, he’d warned.

BP should be barred from media airwaves since they lied to cover up their criminal negligence and culpability, Simmons asserted. Instead, District Judge Carl Barbier ruled BP will not even be liable for the full $21 billion in fines for dumping millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf. 

“That’s less than the oil giant made in 2012 alone – when they raked in profits of over $25 billion,” Thom Hartmann said. “There’s no dollar amount that brings back the 11 workers killed on the Deep Water Horizon.”

There’s no dollar amount that brings back the estimated thousands of deaths from what more than one victim has called “chemical genocide” from BP’s Gulf oil catastrophe.

“We should give BP the corporate death penalty and revoke their right to do business in our nation,” Hartman asserts. 

Furthermore, BP has had the gaul to sue the government for the temporary Gulf drilling moratorium.

The oil and gas continue to migrate. As biological oceanographer at Florida State University researcher Ian MacDonald said, “When discussing the spill, it has been the tendency of both the government and BP to completely ignore the gas that was released. I think they are responsible legally and ethically.” 

Rather than really holding BP responsible, however, the government, even The Washington Post, according to Gulf victims’ lead attorneys, is allowing BP to rewrite history, while its catastrophic crime is quite likely rippling along from Gulf shores to further inland, gurgling into Cajun country bayous, where a monster sinkhole emerged and regurgitates the carcinogenic brew.

Sources: NOAA, Dr. Sherwood Gagliano, Vampire of Macondo, The Washington Post

Photo Credit: Sherwood Gagliano

Human Rights news reporter Deborah Dupré is author of “Vampire of Macondo, Life, crimes and curses in south Louisiana that Powerful Forces Don’t want you to know,” mainstream media-censored victim stories and previously untold facts about the BP-wrecked Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico that continues catastrophic human and environmental devastation.