Geologists believe that southern Luzhou to the Gulf of Mexico are all prehistoric sedimentary basins that may contain oil, while Lake Pinel is less than 20 kilometers away from the Gulf of Mexico, so Texaco Oil Company also wants to try its luck on Lake Pinel, and the drilling of Wilson Brothers Company has undertaken this drilling task!
However, unlike other lakes, there is an ancient salt lake dozens of meters below the Penie Lake. After evaporation, a large number of salt beds were covered by geological movements, forming rock salt mines. Diamond Crystal Salt Company developed this salt mine with an annual mining capacity of100000 tons, which brought huge profits to the company. At the same time, more than 50 miners of Diamond Crystal Salt Company are mining rock salt day and night in the salt mine.
Drilling in salt mines? Is this Wilson Brothers Company really killing itself? Don't worry, the drilling site is several kilometers away from the lake above the salt mine. At 4: 30 in the morning, the rig made a dull hiss and then came to an abrupt end at a depth of 65,438+0,300 feet. Experienced drilling workers immediately reacted that this 36 cm diameter drill bit should be stuck! According to the normal operation, reverse the car, and then lift the rig slightly before starting drilling. The yawning workers quickly resumed their busy appearance and threw themselves into intense work.
But in the process of drilling, there were several loud noises underwater, as if they were in hell! Osiris, the king of the underworld, is roaring! The drilling platform under the workers' feet soon began to tilt, and everyone quickly jumped on the barge next to the platform, decisively evacuated this precious platform, and returned to the shore to watch the drilling slowly fall into the lake.
At this time, the workers of Diamond Crystal Salt Company, which is hundreds of meters deep under the lake, are working in full swing. Several workers suddenly heard a strange sound coming from the distant tunnel, which seemed to be the sound of all kinds of empty barrels colliding together in the tunnel, and there was a growing sound of water. Experienced workers are keenly aware of the danger. At the top of the salt mine is a big lake. It must be submerged!
Trained workers were summoned by the drill emergency evacuation signal, and they successfully climbed the wells one by one from the underground. When the last group of workers evacuated, the tunnel in the distance collapsed, and the turbulent lake instantly filled the underground tunnel, but all the underground personnel had been evacuated. At this time, the driller who was withdrawing from the well to the shore was dumbfounded at the lake, because the location where the well fell was forming a huge whirlpool.
Due to the successful drilling into the salt mine shaft, which is located in the three-layer salt dome of the diamond crystal salt mine, the extremely high water pressure with a depth of several hundred meters directly breaks through the gap between the drill bit and the cave wall, and is injected into the salt mine below, so that the salt dissolves rapidly in water and the cave wall expands rapidly. In the process of lifting the drill bit, the dome of the salt mine partially collapsed and made a loud noise. What the drillers heard was the loud noise of the collapse.
The lake water was quickly injected directly into the salt mine from this nearly 40 cm "pipeline". With the scouring of the current, it quickly expanded for several meters and then began to collapse. Swirls began to appear on the lake. The swirling lake brings everything floating on the lake to the center of the vortex, and the lake is also shallowing, and the shore of the lake also collapses into the lake, and the berthing ships on the lake are also pushed to the center of the vortex.
1 1 barge on the lake, several temporary houses by the lake shore, a tugboat and a large forest were all swallowed up. After only three hours, 3.5 billion gallons of lake water disappeared, leaving only a big hole in the original well.
The Gulf of Mexico was flooded by seawater, and the freshwater lake became a saltwater lake.
Is it over? Far from it! Because Lake Pinel has a Delcan mine canal leading to the Gulf of vermillion, and then to the Gulf of Mexico. After the disappearance of Lake Pinel, this canal, which was supposed to inject fresh water into vermillion Bay, began to flow backwards. At first, because the outlet of the lake was relatively high, the water flow was not large, but with the landslide along the shore of Lake Pinel, it also spread to the canal.
Finally, the lakeshore at the mouth of the canal flows back into the lake, forming a waterfall with a drop of 164 feet. Unexpectedly, it became the waterfall with the highest drop in Luzhou history. It took nearly two days for this backward-flowing canal to fill this "brand-new" Pinel Lake.
The last "climax" moment has arrived. When it was almost full, the high-pressure gas compressed by the lake in the salt mine rushed back to the mouth of the cave, throwing up the drilling platform, barge and a lot of debris stuck in the mouth of the cave and rushing back to the lake. It also formed a 400-foot-high fountain, which lasted for a long time before it slowly subsided.
The deepest part of New Pinel Lake is as high as 200 feet, and the lake is much bigger than before. Freshwater lakes have also become saltwater lakes. The salt in the water does not come from the salt mine at the bottom of the lake, but from the seawater in vermillion Bay, which is diluted by fresh water to form a peculiar "saltwater lake".
It is a miracle that the accident did not cause casualties. However, it is reported that three onlookers fell into the lake with the collapsed shore, but no one remembered how desperate the lost fish were in the salt mine tunnel at the bottom of the lake. Maybe people will be very surprised when they dig them out of the salt mine in millions of years. How can there be fish fossils in rock salt mines? Can prehistoric fish survive in such a high salinity lake?
How to drill through the salt mine by drilling according to the drawing?
Texaco Oil Company, also known as Texas Oil Company, was established in 190 1 and is one of the largest oil companies in the United States. The 1980s was the peak of oil exploration in Louisiana, and Texaco Oil Company obtained the right to explore Lake Pinel.
Wilson Brothers is the drilling contractor of Pinel Lake Drilling Company. They got the exploration drawings from Texaco Oil Company and located the building according to the drawings. How could it go wrong? According to the published investigation data, Wilson Brothers Company made mistakes in the projection method when converting the obtained drawings into construction positioning signs.
It should have been calculated in the horizontal Mercator projection coordinate system. Therefore, the company uses the universal horizontal Mercator projection coordinate system. The two coordinate systems seem to be only two words apart, and they look similar, but the farther away from the equator, the greater the error.
Universal transverse mercator projection
The global map of universal horizontal Mercator projection looks pleasing to the eye on rectangular maps all over the world. It is estimated that many friends are used to this way of drawing. After all, they are used to it, but this map is far from reality, especially in high latitudes.
Transverse Mercator projection
The earth is a rough sphere, so a map drawn into a rectangle will become a spindle stick with sharp ends in the later stage. If the same horizontal Mercator projection is mixed, the higher the latitude, the greater the difference, except for the equatorial position. In Pinel Lake area with latitude of 29.438+0, the error deviation will reach hundreds of meters.
So it should be drilled in a safe zone thousands of meters away from the salt mine. As a result, the coordinate system was wrong, and it was drilled directly on the salt mine. Fortunately, after drilling through the salt mine, it did not collapse immediately, but was flooded, expanded and then collapsed. This time, the workers of the diamond crystal salt company below were allowed to escape, otherwise more than 50 underground workers were trapped, which must be a super disaster.
It is said that junius Gardison, an electrician in the underground of Diamond Crystal Salt Company, contributed a lot. At that time, he suddenly heard a loud noise in the tunnel, then he heard the roar of the flood. He immediately sounded the alarm, according to the agreed escape signal: the mine flashed three times, and all 50 workers received the alarm. They immediately assembled in the elevator in the well, and eight people climbed the well at a time, and successfully climbed the well several times in a row.
When the last group of people got on the elevator, they were all soaked by the lake, but fortunately, they all managed to escape. In this process, there is no doubt that the timely alarm of electrician junius Gardison is closely related to the orderly escape of absenteeism.
The unlucky Texaco Oil Company and the Wilson brothers, the drilling contractor, paid $32 million to the diamond crystal salt mine and12.8 million to the nearby plant nursery LiveOakGardens through out-of-court settlement. Finally, the salt mine was completely abandoned.