#salt dome

[todays-xkcd]

The US uses hollowed-out salt domes to store the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and non-hollowed-out ones to store the Strategic Salt Reserve.

Salt Dome [Explained]

[meetmeonthecraton]

Getting ready for a good rant like

{Image description: Image is a geologic diagram of a rising salt dome}

[sakuraswordly]

The Arab Petroleum Engineering | Types of Oil and Gas Traps | Facebook

Types of Oil and Gas Traps Geologists who work for oil companies spend much of their time trying to identify underground traps. No two trap

Types of Oil and Gas Traps

Geologists who work for oil companies spend much of their time trying to identify underground traps. No two traps are exactly alike, but we can classify most into the following four categories.

Examples of oil traps. A trap is a configuration of a seal rock over a reservoir rock, in a geometry that keeps the oil underground.

Anticline trap: In some places, sedimentary beds are not horizontal, as they are when originally deposited, but have been bent by the forces involved in mountain building. These bends, as we have seen, are called folds. An anticline is a type of fold with an arch-like shape (figure above a). If the layers in the anticline include a source rock overlain in turn by a reservoir rock that is overlain by a seal rock, then we have the recipe for an oil reserve. The oil and gas rise from the source rock, enter the reservoir rock, and rise to the crest of the anticline, where they are trapped by a seal.

Fault trap: A fault is a fracture on which there has been sliding. If the slip on the fault crushes and grinds the adjacent rock to make an impermeable layer along the fault, then oil and gas may migrate upward along bedding in the reservoir rock until they stop at the fault surface (figure above b). Alternatively, a fault trap develops if the slip on the fault juxtaposes an impermeable rock layer against the reservoir rock.

Salt-dome trap: In some sedimentary basins, the sequence of strata contains a thick layer of salt, deposited when the basin was first formed and seawater covering the basin was shallow and very salty. Sandstone, shale, and limestone overlie the salt. The salt layer is not as dense as sandstone or shale, so it is buoyant and tends to rise up slowly through the overlying strata. Once the salt starts to rise, the weight of surrounding strata squeezes the salt out of the layer and up into a growing, bulbous salt dome. As the dome rises, it bends up the adjacent layers of sedimentary rock. Oil and gas in Reservoir.

[qupritsuvwix]

Wow

[bobbamberg]

Different version of an older picture I edited recently. I definitely prefer this one, it's more balanced and the cloud adds to the atmosphere.

[verinne-mattwin]

"How good of anchors? Like, would it be worth the effort to construct a defended base of operations there?" White was curious, but the pair walked up to a larger boulder.

"There's quite a few legends about them. Ever heard of salt domes?"

"You mean, like large caves in the salt mines?"

"Not exactly. Back in the empire, the Emperor was exploring a small well of liquid tar. They managed to pump it dry. Took like 10 years. But they then went exploring down the shaft. It was incredibly deep, I remember sightseeing inside.

It took nearly an hour of floating on one of the mage elevators, going at maximum speed. When we reached the bottom it was a gigantic cavern. They said it was 4 kilometers across, and two high. Massive, and composed entirely of salt. There was a shift of the Royal Mages going over the walls. They weren't even the smallest bit done. Glowing white and gold runes all over the floor. An absolutely massive working.

I'm sure they couldn't have completed it. This was less than a century before the Succession War.

The place was a fortress that could have been nearly unparalleled. A shame they couldn't complete it. I never heard about what happened to it."

"You think it was closed off?"

"I doubt it. The Emperor died away from the well, so it's probably just been left disused. Of course, it got buried shortly after."

"You ever think about repossessing it?"

"I have. It doesn't really fit my needs--the roof is a bit too low, and the travel time there is excessive. It would make a good hoard location though. And I've already got mine mostly tricked out."

"Contingency?"

"Possible. I'll see to it when I have a lot of spare time. I have some planned after the next three or four centuries. It's a worthy project."

"I'd love to see the result."

[stockresearcher]

Vinton Dome Field

21 November 2015 In the 1800s and four miles south of the town of Vinton Louisiana, Salt domes were virtually unknown until the Spindletop Hill well near Beaumont, Texas in 1900 which was completed in 1901 at around a 1000 foot depth, the drill hit a pressurized oil reservoir which blew the drilling tools out of the well and showered the surrounding land with crude. The Spindletop gusher blew for…

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[earthstory]

Salt: Liquid or Solid?

Most people would agree that salt is a solid, after all its what we were taught at school. However, the existence of salt glaciers happens to throw an all mighty spanner in the works.

In the Zagros Mountains of Iran and Kurdistan salt is erupting from the subsurface and flowing out across the landscape, standing stark to the rocks around it. Pretty impressive, but how does it work?

The salt would have originally been deposited in an arid environment within an enclosed basin. This was slowly buried by subsequent layers of rock, and then compressed when the Iranian and Arabian plates started to collide. The salt is significantly less dense than the surrounding rocks and therefore the pressure from the overlying strata cause it to rise.

As the salt rises it distorts the beds above forming an anticlinal (dome) structure as it moves towards the surface. Erosion then removes the overlying rocks exposing the salt below. Normally the salt would be dissolved and carried away in solution, however the arid climate of the Zagros Mountains means salt is being supplied at a rate exceeding the rate of precipitation.

Therefore the salt flows out onto the surface and, much like an ice glacier, begins to flow downhill. While these are very rare they are impressive and I hope you find them as cool as me!

References: http://1.usa.gov/1Cuj74I

Further Reading: http://bit.ly/1DbqXES

Image Credit: Bing Satellite View (You can have fun exploring even more salt glaciers here: http://binged.it/1aFLsQ2)