3 ms·

Salt is incredibly good at both retaining gasses and sealing holes.

by DinaCoder99 3y ago

greenavocado 3y ago
How does salt help seal holes better than other material in the earth's crust?
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  As you drill down, so many of the layers of "solid rock" that would be strong enough to use as building stone, are actually somewhat porous to very porous, and the oils & gases are contained within the pores at generally higher pressures and temperatures as the depth increases. Depending on where you drill, you may encounter a layer of salt, maybe about like if some extensive undersea landscapes had been coated in salt as their waters evaporated, then had become buried under thousands of feet of overburden stone during geologic time. When drilling some exploratory oil & gas wells, as the anticipated pay zone is approached, the process will be halted and the entire drill string withdrawn from the borehole, to replace the regular drill bit with a hollow coring bit assembly. With an accurate knowledge of how deep they begin taking core samples, the drilling picks up where it left off and these samples are brought to the surface for examination and experimentation. You mainly end up with a cylindrical column of rock sample a few feet long and 3 or 4 inches in diameter. Rarely is it all in one piece since any unconsolidated layers are natural discontinuities, and weak spots often fracture during rapid transportation from the field geologist, to the laboratory geologist. In the field they would be boxed in cardboard and marked in order with the best estimate of the footage depth of each layer contained in each box. Core samples from the pay zone or close to it can be literally oozing oil & gas out of the "solid rock" for hours after initial examination. Anyway, every now and then there will be a core where it looks like a few inches to few feet or so of fairly clear glass instead of rock layers, that is the salt they drilled through to get deep enough to reach any oil or gas accumulated below. Basically lighter gases rise higher than liquids from much deeper below the pay zones for eons, and collect best under the strata that are lesser in permeability & porosity. And layers of glassy salt are some of the least permeable subsurface formations.

Salt is incredibly good at both retaining gasses and sealing holes.

greenavocado 3y ago

How does salt help seal holes better than other material in the earth's crust?

fuzzfactor 3y ago
As you drill down, so many of the layers of "solid rock" that would be strong enough to use as building stone, are actually somewhat porous to very porous, and the oils & gases are contained within the pores at generally higher pressures and temperatures as the depth increases. Depending on where you drill, you may encounter a layer of salt, maybe about like if some extensive undersea landscapes had been coated in salt as their waters evaporated, then had become buried under thousands of feet of overburden stone during geologic time. When drilling some exploratory oil & gas wells, as the anticipated pay zone is approached, the process will be halted and the entire drill string withdrawn from the borehole, to replace the regular drill bit with a hollow coring bit assembly. With an accurate knowledge of how deep they begin taking core samples, the drilling picks up where it left off and these samples are brought to the surface for examination and experimentation. You mainly end up with a cylindrical column of rock sample a few feet long and 3 or 4 inches in diameter. Rarely is it all in one piece since any unconsolidated layers are natural discontinuities, and weak spots often fracture during rapid transportation from the field geologist, to the laboratory geologist. In the field they would be boxed in cardboard and marked in order with the best estimate of the footage depth of each layer contained in each box. Core samples from the pay zone or close to it can be literally oozing oil & gas out of the "solid rock" for hours after initial examination. Anyway, every now and then there will be a core where it looks like a few inches to few feet or so of fairly clear glass instead of rock layers, that is the salt they drilled through to get deep enough to reach any oil or gas accumulated below. Basically lighter gases rise higher than liquids from much deeper below the pay zones for eons, and collect best under the strata that are lesser in permeability & porosity. And layers of glassy salt are some of the least permeable subsurface formations.