Giant Louisiana Sinkhole Now 22.4 Acres

http://beforeitsnews.com/environment/2013/06/giant-louisiana-sinkhole-now-22-4-acres-2473074.html

Giant Louisiana Sinkhole Now 22.4 Acres
Tuesday, June 25, 2013 5:58



0
(Before It's News)

 The sinkhole — now a 22.4-acre opening underneath floodwaters inside containment levees surrounding a 82-acre swath of swamp — emitted more tremors and another burp about 10 p.m. Thursday

I've said this a million times now but I'll say it again (why not? lol). What scares me the most is the FACT that this failed, collapsed salt cavern is one of MANY (the others haven't failed, yet). The United States Strategic Petroleum Reserves US SPR ARE HOUSED IN THIS SYSTEM OF HOLLOWED OUT SALT CAVERNS!!!   That's 727 million barrels of oil give or take.

"
The SPR management office is located in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The reserve is stored at four sites on the Gulf of Mexico, each located near a major center of petrochemical refining and processing. Each site contains a number of artificial caverns created in salt domes below the surface.
Individual caverns within a site can be up to 1000 m below the surface, average dimensions are 60 m wide and 600 m deep, and capacity ranges from 6 to 37 million barrels (950,000 to 5,900,000 m³). Almost $4 billion was spent on the facilities. The decision to store in caverns was made in order to reduce costs; the Department of Energy claims it is roughly 10 times cheaper to store oil below surface with the added advantages of no leaks and a constant natural churn of the oil due to a temperature gradient in the caverns. The caverns were created by drilling down and then dissolving the salt with water.
Existing[edit]

• Bryan Mound - Freeport, Texas. 20 caverns with a storage capacity of 254 million barrels (40,400,000 m³) with a drawdown capacity of 1.5 million barrels (240,000 m³) per day.^[6][7]
  
• Big Hill - Winnie, Texas. Has a capacity of 160 million barrels (25,000,000 m³) with a drawdown capacity of 1.1 million barrels (170,000 m³) per day. This facility is planned to be expanded by 250 million barrels (40,000,000 m³) with a new drawdown capacity of 1.5 million barrels (240,000 m³) per day.^[7]
  
• West Hackberry - Lake Charles, Louisiana. Has a capacity of 227 million barrels (36,100,000 m³) with a drawdown capacity of 1.3 million barrels (210,000 m³) per day.^[7]
  
• Bayou Choctaw - Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Has a capacity of 76 million barrels (12,100,000 m³) with a maximum drawdown rate of 550,000 barrels (87,000 m³) per day. This facility is planned to be expanded to 109 million barrels (17,300,000 m³) with a new drawdown capacity of 600,000 barrels (95,000 m³) per day.^[7]"
  

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve}