Tag: Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

Seeker.com
In west Texas, they call them the “Wink Sinks.” They’re two giant sinkholes between the towns of Wink and Kermit, the after-affect of a lot of oil being pumped out of the ground in the area more than 60 years ago. And now researchers have discovered that the oddball landmarks — already the size of multiple football fields — are unstable and likely to grow even bigger.

Southern Methodist University geophysicists utilized a time series of radar images captured by an orbiting satellite 435 miles overhead to study the sinkholes. They used a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR, to detect changes that aren’t visible to a person at ground level.

Their study, published in the journal Remote Sensing, found that the extent of subsidence in the area has increased significantly over the past seven years, and that the instability originally caused by oil drilling now is being driven by changing groundwater levels.

As the groundwater increases, it dissolves a massive underground salt formation in the area, which then causes the ground to sink.

That’s a problem, because the Wink Sinks already are pretty big. Wink Sink No. 1, which is closer to the town of Kermit, has grown since 1980 to 361 feet across. Wink Sink No. 2, which is nine-tenths of a mile to the south, is about 900 feet across at its widest point.

But to make matters worse, other parts of the area around the sinkholes is sinking as well. The highest rate of ground subsidence is in an area about seven-tenths of a mile northeast of No. 2, which is collapsing at a rate of more than 5 inches per year.

“This area is heavily populated with oil and gas production equipment and installations, hazardous liquid pipelines, as well as two communities,” research scientist Jin-Woo Kim, who co-authored the study with SMU professor Zhong Lu, explained in a press release. He explained that a more massive collapse “could be catastrophic.”

By Tom Uhler
Star-Telegram
A couple of giant sinkholes in the West Texas oil patch are apparently expanding, and might eventually converge into one gigantic hole.

The sinkholes are about a mile apart and sit between Wink and Kermit off I-20 west of Midland-Odessa. They were caused by lots of oil and gas extraction, which peaked from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s, according to researchers at Southern Methodist University.

Satellite radar images indicate that the giant sinkholes are expanding and that new ones are forming “at an alarming rate” as nearby subsidence occurs, they report in the scientific journal Remote Sensing. One is 361 feet across, about the size of a football field; the other is larger, 670 to 900 feet across.

“A collapse could be catastrophic,” said geophysicist Jin-Woo Kim, who leads the SMU geophysical team reporting the findings.

In addition to Wink and Kermit (combined pop. about 7,000), there’s lots of oil and gas production equipment and installations and hazardous liquid pipelines in the area, Kim said in the report. The fresh water injected underground in the extraction process “can dissolve the interbedded salt layers and accelerate the sinkhole collapse.”

There’s something not too dissimilar happening in Daisetta, east of Houston.

Officials have fenced off the area around the sinkholes between Wink and Kermit and they’ll be monitored, but residents don’t appear to be worried about them.

“They’re a ways off from the highway; if nobody mentions it, then nobody is interested in it,” Kermit City Manager Gloria Saenz told the New York Daily News.

A preacher of the Apocalypse from Indiana had a decidedly different take, exclaiming on YouTube: “Here’s my concern. It’s like hell is being enlarged, and that without measure.”

Well, maybe not quite.

By Anthony Izaguirre
New York Daily News
Two massive, rapidly expanding sinkholes in Texas are at risk of collapsing into each other and causing a “catastrophic” natural disaster, scientists warned.

Geophysicists at Southern Methodist University found that the land around the gaping sinkholes between the west Texas towns of Wink and Kermit is deteriorating — which could end up either forming more holes or creating one giant sinkhole.

These sinkholes, which were caused by the area’s oil and gas extraction industries, are nothing new to Texas residents.

The first hole, Wink Sink #1, opened up in 1980 and is currently about as wide as a football field.

Wink Sink #2, the larger of the two holes, opened in 2002 and stretches for 900 feet at its widest point.

The sinkholes are a little less than a mile apart, but that distance is closing as the land directly around both holes subsides about 2 inches each year.

“This area is heavily populated with oil and gas production equipment and installations, hazardous liquid pipelines, as well as two communities,” Jin-Woo Kim, a coauthor of the report, said in a statement. “A collapse could be catastrophic.”