13 billion liters of water disappeared? Freshwater lake suddenly turned into saltwater lake? What happened?

At the end of the last century, Lake Pinnell in Louisiana, USA, which held 13 billion liters of fresh water, completely dried up in just a few days. If I didn't tell you that all this was caused by a wrong coordinate mark on a blueprint and a disaster in human history caused by a drill bit of only 36 centimeters, you might not believe that the Earth, a place where humans have survived and reproduced for generations, would be irreversibly affected by a tiny human behavior.

Lake Pinel

▏Source of disaster: rich underground resources

Louisiana is located in the southern United States. The Mississippi River, the mother river of the United States, flows through the eastern part of the state and eventually flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Therefore, Louisiana can also be regarded as the estuary of the Mississippi River. However, it is precisely such geographical conditions that make Louisiana the lowest state in the United States. After all, most of the land in the southern part of the state belongs to the alluvial plain of the Mississippi River. Although it is very flat, the altitude is very low. However, low terrain is not necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, such geological conditions have given Louisiana natural agricultural planting conditions and rich mineral resources. Especially oil resources, that is, oil deposits, its reserves account for 11% of the United States. Therefore, many oil companies set up headquarters here and are committed to the development of these oil and mineral resources. This makes Louisiana's petrochemical product output very amazing, accounting for about 25% of the United States.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that the state's oil resources are not only stored under the land, but also under the seabed. Therefore, oil companies often mine on land and at sea at the same time to drill more crude oil and refine it on the spot. According to existing statistics, Louisiana's oil refinery production ranks third in the United States, and it can refine nearly 15 billion gallons of gasoline each year, which is about one-tenth of my country's annual oil imports. This shows the amazing degree of its production. Of course, the height of production also determines the thickness of the profits of each oil company. This made a group of oil capitals begin to go crazy. As long as there are oil mines, no matter how bad the actual conditions are, they are bound to mine them. In such a frenzy, a small town called New Iberia came into the vision of oil capital.

New Iberia is a city in southern Louisiana, which was famous for its abundant salt mines in the last century. The finances of the entire city also mainly rely on the mining and development of salt mines. Why is mining salt so attractive to local people? The huge demand for salt mines in the local area does not come from daily life, but from industrial needs. As one of the most basic raw materials for the chemical industry, salt is known as the "mother of the chemical industry" and has a wide range of uses in industry. Under the ground of Lake Pinel, there is a resource called "lake salt". After proper processing, this salt can be used in various industrial production and product processing, bringing considerable benefits.

However, underground salt mines are different from other minerals. Most of them are formed by sediments of ancient lakes and oceans, so they present an uneven shape underground. At the same time, the salt rock itself is also very airtight, which means that if the bodies of ancient creatures are piled up in these uneven spaces, large oil fields may be formed. After research, geological exploration experts concluded that the existence of a large number of salt mines often also means that there are oil fields with astonishing content nearby. Therefore, the salt mines in New Iberia have become the focus of oil companies. However, to everyone's surprise, this also became the beginning of an industrial disaster.

A huge vortex formed on the lake after the accident

▏The core of the disaster: salt mines and oil fields

According to the situation at the time, the salt mines of New Iberia were mainly concentrated under the lakebed of Lake Pinel, so oil companies also mainly explored around this area. However, to conduct oil exploration, it is necessary to obtain permission from the local government, which triggered a competition. In the end, Texas Oil, a large oil company headquartered in New York State, obtained the exploration license for this area through many efforts. Oil exploration was a very attractive industry at the time, and Texas Oil Company must have spent a lot of money to obtain exploration rights. Therefore, after obtaining the exploration license, they announced the official start of the exploration work.

However, the actual situation of Lake Pinel is very complicated. The salt mine is located just below the lakebed, and according to the model calculation of the company's experts, the oil field should be located in the area between the lakebed and the salt mine, which makes the survey work very difficult. After some intense discussions and precise calculations, Texas Oil decided to build a huge drilling platform on Lake Pinel, which has an average depth of no more than three meters, to drill and explore the area under the lakebed on the spot. Although this sounds a bit "overkill", Texas Oil plans to extract oil immediately once it is discovered under the lakebed, so as to save construction costs and time costs to the greatest extent, thereby balancing the huge initial investment.

However, the construction of the drilling platform aroused opposition from local residents, because the beautiful Lake Pinel is their holiday paradise, and building a steel giant on the lake will inevitably destroy the natural tranquility. The people's demands were conveyed to the New Iberia government, and officials came out to warn Texas Oil. However, what the local government was worried about was not the people's complaints, but the salt mines under the lakebed.

Despite this, the survey team did not listen. They accelerated the construction progress and inserted a 36-centimeter-diameter drill into the lake to drill the lakebed. At first, the drilling work went very smoothly. The lake bottom was not hard and the drill bit penetrated easily. However, when the drill bit penetrated 400 meters, it suddenly got stuck. Experienced workers felt something was wrong and tried to retract the drill bit, but as the drill bit moved, a muffled sound came from the bottom of the lake, and the drilling platform also vibrated and tilted. This made the workers on the platform feel dangerous, and they immediately decided to evacuate all personnel to the shore.

The workers who came ashore originally guessed that there was a problem with the foundation of the drilling platform, but in fact the situation was even worse. The drill bit actually penetrated the barrier between Lake Pinner and the salt mine, and a large amount of lake water began to flow into the salt mine. The riverbed pressure changed dramatically, causing the drilling platform to be unable to maintain balance. The workers working in the salt mine noticed the influx of lake water and immediately activated the evacuation alarm. At this time, the seepage was not serious, so all 55 salt miners working underground were evacuated safely. However, just after everyone completed the evacuation, the seepage became more and more serious, and the original 36-centimeter drill hole became a giant funnel with a diameter of 55 meters, and continued to expand.

The big hole under the lake swallowed up a lot of lake water and sucked in the drilling platform, 11 barges and 1 ship on the lake. A huge whirlpool with a diameter of 400 meters appeared on the lake. This is because salt mines and the common table salt in the home are essentially sodium chloride, which is easily soluble in water. After the lake water poured into the mine, a large amount of unmined salt mines were dissolved, the space in the cave expanded infinitely, and more and more lake water could be absorbed. Next, everything around Lake Pinner suffered. Also sucked into the underground was 390 acres of land, including the botanical garden on the island in the center of the lake. In the end, the entire lake sank into the salt mine.

To make matters worse, Lake Pinel is connected to the Gulf of Mexico. The disappearance of the lake water caused an imbalance in pressure, prompting seawater to backflow for two consecutive days. Due to the large collapse caused by the mine, the lake bottom collapsed, forming the highest waterfall ever in Louisiana, reaching an astonishing height of 50 meters. The once freshwater Lake Pinel has disappeared, replaced by a saltwater lake with a depth of up to 60 meters. Amazingly, the barge that was previously caught in the whirlpool miraculously floated from the bottom of the lake after the seawater backflow and floated on the surface of the saltwater lake again.

Although it was a disaster, fortunately there were no crowds around Lake Pinnell at the time, and the few hours were enough to evacuate the surrounding people, so no serious casualties were caused. Except for three unfortunate dogs, there were no other casualties. This series of disasters brought huge debts to Texas Petroleum, and it eventually paid $32 million to Diamond Crystal Salt Company and $12.8 million to the affected plant nursery. This incident made the financial situation of Texas Petroleum very bad, and it was eventually acquired by Chevron Oil in the 21st century. After the integration of the two, it became the famous Chevron Group today.

Inside the former lake bottom salt mine

▏Disaster enlightenment: Environmental protection is no small matter

Although the high compensation and the closure of the salt well put an end to this mistake, the ecosystem can no longer recover due to the sudden increase in the salt content of the lake. For the creatures living in Lake Pinel, a small mistake by humans could be a disaster.

After the Lake Pinel incident, people began to question why Texas Company, a professional salt mining organization, and the Wilson brothers, a drilling contractor, made a mistake in the deviation of drilling coordinates. Experts found that this mistake might not be due to carelessness, but due to the different use of coordinates. The engineers responsible for exploring the salt mine should have used the Cartesian coordinate system, but they actually used the Gaussrug projection coordinate system. Since each projection coordinate system has a unique plane rectangular coordinate system, when Texas Company and the exploration company set the same coordinate point, the place marked on the map was actually completely different. Drilling according to the wrong drilling positioning point would have made it impossible to achieve normal salt mining.
Who would have thought that the Pinel incident, which can be regarded as one of the most "spectacular" engineering disasters in history, started with a well drilled in the wrong place with a 36-cm diameter drill? These accidents not only caused casualties and property losses, but also brought irreversible damage to the ecological environment. In addition, the Pinel Lake accident also made people realize that safety issues are not only problems that need to be solved within the company, but also issues that the entire society needs to pay attention to.

Life safety and environmental protection are major issues of common concern to the whole society. As a member of society, each of us should pay more attention to these issues and always improve safety awareness to avoid similar accidents from happening again. At the same time, the government and enterprises also need to assume greater responsibility, strengthen safety management, and improve the level of safety facilities to fundamentally avoid safety hazards. Only by working together can we create a safer and healthier living environment and lay a solid foundation for a better life in the future. (Picture from the Internet)

Author | Kiwi

Graduated from Lincoln University, New Zealand, with a major in finance. Has a strong interest in popular science knowledge and has published popular science articles in many popular science journals. Focuses on facts and actively explores cutting-edge technology.