Is Texas sinking?

[Music] this area is still kind of slowly sinking may I read you a headline for my phone here absolutely large portions of West Texas sinking at alarming rate new report finds there it is oh my gosh that's just a giant hole I feel like any rate would be pretty alarming if if it were just sinking down there's no good rate of sinking [Music] the research is funded by NASA and I'm going right to the guy that did the report dr. Zhang Lu he's a geophysicist at SMU who studies the earth using satellites these areas syncing auto-off Mitra poet whoa that's more than a foot and a half and Lu says that's alarming because that much change to the Earth's surface might normally take millions of years here's a good look at what he's talking about this is an old oil well site the tan area shows sinking from 2011 the brown area is from 2016 in that time the sunken area has spread almost 240 percent the factor here is about a favoritest in the meter per year what I'm referring to yeah right at that crossroads yes right where those two roads meet is sinking 50 centimeters a year yes in this area that you're studying yes is oil and gas the cause of the sinking related to all young the kind of activities oil and gas activity is causing the sinking and in West Texas yes [Music] I'm near the town of wink Texas to see this for myself okay you really wouldn't know there's a sinkhole here just look dr. Bob Trentham is a geologist at the University of Texas Permian Basin in Odessa he's showing me there are places where the earth is just kind of sagging but then there's also this a huge sinkhole in Wenck Texas there's one sink one right now it's like it got hit by an asteroid from outer space what the heck is happening here this area of West Texas is called the Permian Basin bob says under the earth's crust here there's up to 1,000 feet of salt bob says oil drillers in the 50s pumped water below the salt layer to increase oil pressure making the oil flow faster over time some of that water has leaked washing out the salt with nothing to support the crust it falls in they've had to abandon and and decommission a couple of well storage tanks over there so that would be oil pipeline you can haul pipeline huh and what's happened is because of the because you know I'm talking about different pieces moving in at different rates yeah and it caused that to pop up so this is a dormant this was dormant before it happened yeah is the geology so unique here that it's this phenomenon is only gonna happen in this area of Permian Basin yes because we don't have that same kind of scenario existent in North Texas Central Texas or East Texas close to the Winx Inc is an even bigger sinkhole Winx Inc number 2 the earth surrounding it is cracking and sagging towards the hole and you can see new rocks about to fall in so this has to go in that spot on top of the nail all this movement is being measured by scientists and students who are using GPS mystic 50 measurements from this location location yes and then you can take and then you go do that at 40 locations for any location is a lot of data you think there's any snakes down there that might be out you need to be careful here that's like I would say this this area is definitely sinking this area is how you could see it right you can see how new is this depression here depression is old it's not new so this like a hundred years or no no no no it's like 20 30 years 20 30 years this happened driving up on this and seeing it was very surprising fifty miles to the south in imperial the earth is also sinking over the last 15 years satellite images show a new lake has formed and this is a road and it's going down and it stops at the end of the lake presumably this was a road that went all the way across at some point and nearby the sagging and sinking is causing a highway to slide down this hill the Department of Transportation has already spent a million dollars shoring it up and may rear out it all together for another 15 million so is West Texas sinking well obviously not all of it is falling into the abyss but technically the answer is yes there are some contained areas that are sinking but it's hard to know the scope of this total problem because scientists have only looked at 5% of this massive area if you've got something you want verified send me an email

Channel: Verify Road Trip

Views: 329,588

Rating: 4.7006698 out of 5

Keywords: verify, reporting, journalism, news, truth, david, schechter, wfaa, tegna, authentic, accountability, sink hole, sink, hole, west texas, oil and gas, drilling, earth, geology, geophysics, salado, salt, fracking, hydraualic fracturing, what the frack, gasland, environment, green, alternative energy, solar, wind, natural gas, climate change, sinkholes 2018, induced seismicity, permian basin, oil wells, caught on camera, video news, tomo news, is texas sinking

Id: tIm20sGTupo

Length: 5min 34sec (334 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 19 2018