Lake Peigneur is located in Louisiana near the Gulf of Mexico.
Before 1980, it was an approximately 10-foot deep fresh water lake with an island in the
middle.
Next to it, and partially under it, Diamond Crystal Salt Company maintained a salt mine,
with salt being mined near the lake since 1919.
Around large underground salt domes, you can often find oil.
As explained by one Dr. Whitney J. Autin, "...salt moves upwards and it pierces through
surrounding strata... and this piercing produces faults and folds within the surrounding sediments
producing an ideal mechanism to trap oil."
As such, Texaco was doing some drilling in the lake.
On November 20, 1980, crews on the oil rig in the lake ran into a problem.
At just over 1,200 feet, their drill seized up.
Not a major problem normally, they worked to get it loose.
In the process, they heard several loud pops then the oil rig tilted like it was going
to collapse.
The men got off the rig and to shore as quickly as possible.
Not a moment too soon.
Just 19 minutes after their drill had seized up, they watched from the shore as the huge
platform (150 feet tall) overturn and sunk into the 10 foot deep lake...
Next, the astounded drillers watched as a whirlpool slowly formed, soon reaching a quarter
mile wide and centered over the site of the oil drilling.
Whoopsadoodle.
At the same time the oil workers were watching their $5 million drilling rig disappear into
the lake, workers in the salt mines below the lake noticed something was wrong as well;
a stream of water was found flowing along the floor of the mine shaft at about the 1,300
foot level of the mine, which went down to about 1,500 feet at its deepest.
As water wasn't supposed to be in the mine, the evacuation alarm was raised.
Foreman Randy LaSalle then drove a cart around to the regions of the mine where the alarm
signal could not be seen, making sure everyone knew about the evacuation.
By the time those from the deepest areas of the mine made it to the elevator, they encountered
knee-deep water.
Despite the fact that the mine was rapidly filling with water and the exit elevator could
only take up eight people at a time, all 55 miners were evacuated successfully.
It wasn't clear to the miners what had happened at the time, but from the evidence at hand,
the theory is that the drilling crew miscalculated their location and instead of being several
hundred feet from the salt mine, they had instead been directly over a portion of it
and penetrated the salt dome.
The initial hole resulting from this mistake was only 14 inches wide, but water spraying
in at extremely high pressure quickly widened the hole.
The water also dissolved the salt pillars that supported the ceiling of the mine, causing
the shafts to collapse.
The widening of the hole and the collapse of the mine gave strength to the whirlpool
on the surface of the lake, which caused major damage.
Docks, another drilling platform, a 70 acre island in the middle of the lake, eleven barges,
vehicles, trees and a parking lot near the lake were all sucked into the mine below.
The pull of the whirlpool was so strong that it reversed the flow of the 12-mile-long Delcambre
Canal that drained the lake into the Gulf of Mexico.
Three hours after the first signs of trouble, the three to four billion gallons of water
that had made up the lake were almost all gone, having dropped into the mine below,
leaving a gaping crater.
The backward-flowing canal formed a 160 foot waterfall that gradually refilled the lake,
this time with salt water from the Gulf.
The 10-foot deep freshwater lake was now a saltwater one, approximately 1,300 foot-deep
in a good sized portion of it.
Amazingly, there were no deaths or serious human injuries as a result of the disaster,
though the ecosystem of the lake was forever changed.
Further, three dogs died in the event.
Many lawsuits were filed, all settled out-of-court, costing Texaco about $45 million in damages,
with about $32 million of that going to Diamond Crystal.
Bonus Facts: Speaking of drilling for oil, ever wonder
why oil is measured in barrels and how much that is exactly?
Well, wonder no more: One barrel contains 42 gallons (159 liters) of crude oil from
which, in the U.S., typically 19 gallons (72 liters) of gasoline are produced.
So why barrels?
The market for crude oil really took off after Abraham Gesner began distilling kerosene in
1846.
This lamp oil became very popular and as demand increased, so did the need for the crude oil
it was derived from.
The first successful drilled oil well (previously, it was all gleaned from "natural seepage")
was in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859.
In the mid-1800s, all liquids that needed a tight container of any size were stored
in wooden barrels.
Skilled coopers (barrel makers) had been producing watertight 42-gallon wooden barrels since
Richard III set the size of a tierce of wine at 42 gallons in 1483-1484.
However, to catch the oil booming from the new wells in Titusville, early producers were
using any watertight container they could get their hands on, including "wooden tierces,
whiskey barrels, casks and barrels of all sizes."
Nonetheless, the size of the container quickly became standardized around the 42-gallon barrel,
due to practical considerations.
As noted by the American Oil&Gas Historical Society,
“A 42-gallon tierce weighed more than 300 pounds – about as much as a man could reasonably
wrestle.
Twenty would fit on a typical barge or railroad flatcar.
Bigger casks were unmanageable and small were less profitable.
“ By 1860, in Pennsylvania the 42-gallon barrel
had become standard.
Because Pennsylvania was at the forefront of the early oil boom, its practices were
soon adopted across the country.
In 1872, 42 gallons became the standard for the Petroleum Producers Association and in
1882, the U.S.G.S. and the U.S. Bureau of Mines adopted the standard as well.
Despite transportation methods of oil evolving to the railroad tanker car, supertankers at
sea, and oil pipelines, measuring crude oil in barrels has stuck around anyway.
Going back to natural disasters, another bizarre lake disaster of the 1980s occurred on August
21, 1986 when Lake Nyos in Cameroon suddenly emitted approximately 100,000 - 300,000 tonnes
of carbon dioxide which asphyxiated 1,700 people and 3,500 animals in nearby towns.
How did this happen?
A vein of magma lies beneath Lake Nyos.
Carbon dioxide leaks from the lava into the water resulting in the lower, cooler levels
of the lake water ultimately becoming supersaturated.
The lake normally remains stable this way, but a tipping point was reached on August
21, 1986 and the CO2 erupted from the lake, in something called a limnic eruption.
To prevent a recurrence, tubes have been installed that siphon water from the bottom layers of
the lake to the top, allowing carbon dioxide to be vented continually over time, rather
than building up.