Energy issues

I spent a good part of my early life in Kermit, a small town in deep West Texas that most likely would not exist, were it not for the vast oil and gas industry in the Permian basin. It is filled with really great folks. But, Kermit was, and is, a town with few natural recreational opportunities or interesting natural features. There are no forests for strolling, no mountains for climbing, and no lakes, rivers or streams for swimming. In fact, the area has few natural features of any interest, unless you are a fan of rattlesnakes, skunks or coyotes.

Located in a semi-arid (at best) region, the land around Kermit resembles a kitty litter box in need of cleaning. The one natural feature the landscape contains that offers any relief from the endless, flat, semi-arid hard scape is “sand hills.” The sand hills are a series of rolling sand dunes—some 20 to 30 ft high—covering substantial acreage not far outside of town. They are visually striking and fun to climb up and slide down. But that is about it—or was.

Now Kermit has, and shares with neighboring Wink, Texas, some eight miles away, two rather impressive sinkholes. The first (Wink Sink No. 1) is closer to Kermit, while the second (Wink Sink No. 2) is nine-tenths of a mile south of No. 1, and closer to the town of Wink. Perhaps you are wondering what the big deal is about. There are thousands of sinkholes around the world. Most are formed in Karst terrain, where bedrock can be dissolved by ground water. The slightly acidic ground water dissolves elements of the bedrock supporting the surface terrain and—voila—the surface collapses into the void, creating a sinkhole. More than 160 of these collapses, most less than 10 ft in diameter and 10 ft deep, were reported in Missouri, alone, between 1970 and 2007.

But the Wink Sinks appear to be different. First, they are an order of magnitude bigger. Wink Sink No. 1, the smaller of the two, is more than 360 ft across. Wink Sink No. 2 measures 900 ft across at one place. Wink No. 1 is some 80 ft deep. Both sinkholes continue to subside. Wink No. 1, which collapsed in 1980, is experiencing subsidence of up to 1.6 in. per year in an oval-shaped feature surrounding the main hole. Wink No. 2, which collapsed in 2002, is subsiding at a rate of 1.2 in. per year.

Not only are the Wink Sinks bigger, they appear to be caused, at least partially, by oil and gas activity. The area has been in production since the mid-1920s, reaching peak output in the 1960s. The cause of the sinkholes has undergone recent examination by a team of geophysicists from Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas. The team found two probable causes for the sinkholes’ appearance and growth. The first was ground water dissolving a subsurface salt bed in the Permian basin area. That salt deposit is underlain by the Ogallala Aquifer. Fluctuating ground water levels in the Ogallala have intruded into the overlying salt, dissolving it and creating voids.

At the same time, oil and gas operations have lifted millions of barrels of oil, billions of Mcfs of gas and millions upon millions of gallons of water from underlying formations, leaving depressurized, porous reservoirs that are conducive to collapse—and they do. Because of this process, and continuing activity, the Wink Sinks, unlike normal Karst sinks, continue to grow, posing dangers to the surrounding human population, and to the extended oil and gas infrastructure of pumpjacks, separation and treating equipment, tank batteries, pipelines and flowlines, and the transportation networks that connect all that equipment.

Deterioration continues. In a Feb. 23, 2014, article, the Odessa American quoted Winkler County Sheriff George Keely as saying, “this looks like something from the moon, or Jules Verne or something.” The sheriff said that not much scares him, ‘but I do not like being out here.’” Keely has reason to be uneasy. The subsurface deterioration is continuing. According to SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu and Jin-Woo Kim, the sinkholes are unstable and appear to be expanding. “Additionally, areas around the existing sinkholes are [also] unstable, with large areas of subsidence detected via satellite radar remote sensing. That leaves the possibility that new sinkholes, or one giant sinkhole, may form.”

According to Lu and Kim, “some ground that doesn’t even border the edges of the two sinkholes is also subsiding . . . an area more than half-a-mile northeast of No. 2 sank at a rate of 1.6 in. in just four months.” And, an area seven-tenths of a mile northeast of No. 2 is subsiding at a rate of more than 5 in. per year. “Additionally, ground along a road traveled by oilfield vehicles, about a quarter-mile directly north of No. 2, is subsiding about 1.2 in. a year.” While not a crisis—yet—it is a serious problem.

This topic fascinates me for several reasons, not the least of which is my association with Kermit. But it is part of a larger concern. Living in the Houston area, I am well aware of local subsidence along the coastal regions resulting from large and continuous oil and gas operations dating back, in some instances, to the turn of the century (19th to 20th). I am not the only one. The United States Geological Survey notes that (due to oil and gas extraction) “wetland losses in the northern Gulf Coast region of the Unites States are so extensive, they represent critical concerns to government environmental agencies and natural resource managers.”

I don’t know that there is an easy answer, but it is a problem that won’t go away. 

About the Authors

William J. Pike

World Oil

William J. Pike has 47 years’ experience in the upstream oil and gas industry, and serves as Chairman of the World Oil Editorial Advisory Board.