The Peigneur Lake drilling disaster in 1980, during oil extraction, created a sinkhole that engulfed a drilling rig, several barges, trees, and most of an island.
Peigneur Lake is now the largest lake in Louisiana. (Photo: Amusing Planet).
Working in a 3-meter-deep lake, several engineers operated a drilling rig leased by Texaco. The trouble began when their drill bit penetrated deep into the earth. The drill bit pierced through the mining area of Diamond Crystal Salt, located beneath the lake. The drilling hole allowed lake water to seep into the mine and dissolve the salt. Within two hours, the drilling rig was swallowed up, but the incident did not stop there.
At that time, the salt mine was flooded by Peigneur Lake, causing several barges to be caught in a massive whirlpool. The sinkhole that formed beneath the lake accelerated the whirlpool’s creation as the water flowed inward. Such whirlpools had been deadly in the past, but all workers from both the oil company and the salt company managed to evacuate safely as soon as the water flowed into the mine.
The incident generated enough pressure to force water to shoot up 122 meters from the mine’s entrance. Peigneur Lake once drained into Vermilion Bay via the Delcambre Canal, but the flow was reversed when the lake drained, causing water from the bay to flow back into the lake. This process temporarily created a 50-meter-high waterfall before filling in the newly formed sinkhole. This was the largest waterfall in Louisiana.
Today, Peigneur Lake has a maximum depth of 61 meters, making it the deepest lake in Louisiana. The disaster is believed to have resulted from miscalculating measurement units while attempting to locate oil. Texaco Oil and contractor Wilson Brothers were required to compensate $32 million in an agreement with Diamond Crystal Salt for losses in the mine. As one of the most unusual technical disasters, this incident illustrates how a small calculation error can lead to unexpected catastrophes.
