Texas Brine shifts blame to Occidental Petroleum, others for causing Bayou Corne sinkhole
Firm blames Occidental Petroleum for creating 31-acre sinkhole by David J. Mitchell|
dmitchell@theadvocate.com
July 15, 2015
... But the new court papers from Texas Brine, along with another batch filed recently against oil driller Adams Resources Exploration Corp., operator Browning Oil Co. and other parties involved in the oil well, provide the most detailed account yet of the history of the oil well, known as Hooker No. 1. The papers also raise allegations that Occidental Petroleum knew drilling too close to the salt dome posed a risk for the Texas Brine-managed caverns.
Those claims rely on internal letters and other documents that have emerged during discovery in the series of suits still pending in the 23rd Judicial District Court in Napoleonville.
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Texas Brine also charges that Occidental Petroleum should have known that oil and gas extraction would cause a pressure drop in the oil formation that posed a risk to the Oxy 3 cavern.
After years of sporadic extraction ended in mid-2001, Texas Brine claims a pressure difference of about 2,000 pounds per square inch existed on the salt wall standing between the depleted oil formation and the pressurized salt dome cavern.
About a year before Texas Brine plugged the well to the problematic Oxy 3 cavern, the Hooker oil well was plugged in May 2010, but Occidental failed to repressurize the oil formation with water or other fluids, Texas Brine says.
This lingering pressure difference combined with possible cracks in the salt that Texas Brine says the earlier oil well drilling caused ? suggested by other unearthed documents ? led the salt wall to break...
