Prithvi Raj on Great Flood

In Chapter four of his book ’19,000 years of history’, Prithvi Raj tackles the Great catastrophe or as we call it, the great flood. Again he is informed by the mass of Indian scripture rather than physical observation and the logical assemblage of such data. What we get is a series of telling observations that conform to the physical model that I have previously described. Prithvi largely presents the observations and accepts them while translating into modern language so it becomes properly accessible. This is a huge help.

Although he reports on four flooding events of which the last three were significantly weaker than the first, the first is clearly the main event. We are able to dispose of the last three events as major melt water releases. Geologists already know that massive amounts of fresh water was impounded by the highlands surrounding Hudson Bay and that this was blocked by a remaining Northern Ice Barrier or ice flow filling Hudson Strait that required much longer to be reduced. This melt water was sufficient to permit outflows into the Mississippi and into the Columbia Valley through explosive floods in the scab lands. Later, the St. Lawrence valley was also a major release point. That still left a lot of water contained by the basin. It is not hard to visualize a first release that flowed south, a second release that perhaps released the main mass of water from the Bay, the strait then resealing and a partial refilling setting up the last release.

That lets us return to the main event. Now new readers will have a problem swallowing what I am about to discuss, so in fairness please read my long chapter on the Pleistocene Nonconformity (Viewzone.com for a complete article in one place) in which I resolve the difficulties. This has led since to additional observations and fresh inferences that are also compelling. It is now rather clear that this was a man made event aimed at ending the Ice Age. In short we are well down the road in developing a full and creditable understanding of the underlying events.

The Indian sub continent sat close to the travel arc of the crustal shift. That meant, unlike Africa, that it absorbed the maximum distortion during the shift itself. It also received the maximum exposure to inundation on its coasts. More importantly, the Punjab sat on the Equator while the remaining land was south through twenty some degrees.

Fairly obviously, a thirty degree shift north would impose compression on the northern most lands into Tibet while been fairly neutral for the southern lands that rode from one side of the equator to the other. However, further south in what is the Indian Ocean, stretching effects would have been observed as lands and sea bottom approached the equator.

Coincidentally, we have two major compression arcs on Earth both in the right place to absorb unusual compression. These are the Andean Mountain Arc and the Himalayan Mountain arc. It is reasonable to think that these raw structures have been around for a long time and simply represented a convenient release point when the insult of the crustal shift hit.

Those are the visible consequences. On the other side of the equator we want to see subsidence events. We certainly have that with the Gulf of Mexico and environs, while whatever we may have in the Indian Ocean is as yet not understood. The question then is does the cultural record give us a hand? Obviously, a stretching event should see lands subside under the ocean and mountains in particular to behave strangely while sinking.

We will now return to the cultural record prepared by Prithvi.


‘Be the legend as it may and be the beliefs as they are, I think that this tale is talking about land mass submergence to the south of India. There must have existed a landmass to the south of Kerala that was probably ruled by a righteous and well-loved king called Bali. And in the colossal catastrophe of 9500 BC, this landmass got submerged into the ocean. The submergence of the landmass has been woven into the allegory and legend of the locals, which survive to this day. The people still remember it fondly as a lost paradise; they still reminisce about their king, and the festival of Onam is still celebrated with great festive fervor in remembrance of the lost paradise, with a probable philosophical’

And we also have:

‘Can you observe something here? A huge mountain is jutting out of the ocean at a point that is visible to the Indians. This can only be to the south of India, most probably in the Indian Ocean. And the mountain has collapsed into the ocean! You can notice that each and every legend of Vaishnavite thought enumerated in this chapter is talking about a colossal destruction that has taken place at some point of time in Indian history, all over India, especially to the south of India in the oceans. Huge mountains jutting out of the oceans to the south of India seem to have simply tilted to one side and disappeared from sight, probably creating huge and monstrous disturbances in the oceanic waters, the effect of which must have in turn been felt on the humans in the surrounding lands deep inside.’

And much other also describing flying mountains and the like, but mostly reflecting relative land movement and how it might have been seen to an observer on a high peak looking out over the ocean and seeing mountains shifting position while surrounded by clouds and mist.

Mountains sinking and moving along faults are plausible subsidence events. Volcanic stacks collapsing along such movements are also plausible. The real surprise to me is that the whole process appears to have been fairly gently from a physical viewpoint and possibly lasted for a longer time period that imagined. In fact it suggests that the movement velocity, once initiated approached around twenty mile per hour and was halted by the developing compression caused by the changing curvature. Therefore it is quite reasonable to presume that the whole event lasted several days at the least.

Of course, once it came to a stop, however quickly, the mass of the ocean would have invaded the lands very directly in a massive tsunami overtopping ordinary hills near the coast. That was certainly the flood of floods.

My point in all this is that the reported observations conform to the physical model that I and others have proposed and suggest many other prospective targets. There are prospectively a number of collapsed volcanoes in the Indian Ocean. There is also a Mount Meru that was a center of civilization whose existence has been attested by cultural sources around the world. This was part of a larger land mass that also subsided and collapsed. These are all pretty specific claims that should respond to exploration in the Indian Ocean.

These structures will have subsided both geologically and also by the succeeding sea rise and could be far deeper than normally anticipated.

The important news is that the cultural information is conforming smoothly to the physical data we have brought to bear and is not presenting us with a major conflict. It does not prove but it certainly does not disprove and both methods are now supporting each other’s position

The good news is that Prithvi chose to accept the observations reported without trying to modify them by changing them to fit his own model. This is way too easy to do and we are all guilty of it. Right now, we can say that this new data does fit comfortably even though details will confuse.

By knowing that we are dealing with several days of travel for the crust, the implied violence is minimized, and survivability is hugely enhanced. One did have time to stagger over shaking ground to high ground and wait it all out. Mountains did have time to be reduced in height substantially as reported, and movements along faults had days to work out. Mountains could travel miles.

Like others, I assumed these Indian scriptures were fairly recent. The reports on observations related to the four separate floods make this source at least ten centuries old with good continuity ever since. The other floods impacted coastal cities but had little impact inland. This was hardly true of the first event. Thus it is plausible for scriptures to be preserved.

Solving the Chalk Mystery

The behavior of chalk has always been a challenge. Having it wreck the integrity of an important oil field was unprecedented and triggered a major research effort. It seems to finally be yielding answers. It also tells us how to avoid similar situations.

Chalk is not all that common in the oil business except when it shows up as a major reservoir rock such as the Austin chalk. The lesson we seem about to draw here is to be careful about pumping in saline water to displace the oil. Your structure may start breaking down.

Here we ended up with dramatic sea bed subsidence.

Curiously, in the right circumstances, this may be a nifty way to release the oil in the first place. Normally chalks have to be fractured to induce some oil recovery. Fracturing with saline water that is then turned into some form of water flood could access a lot of oil.

Maybe the problem is the solution – no pun intended.


Solving the chalk mystery

April 24th, 2009

http://www.physorg.com/news159792763.html

A piece of chalk in a laboratory at the University of Stavanger in Norway may be the key to unlock a great mystery. If the mystery is solved, it will generate billions in additional income for the oil industry. Associate Professor Merete Vadla Madland at the Department of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Stavanger is leading a group of geologists, petroleum engineers, rock mechanics, physicists, mathematicians and chemists who are now switching between modelling and experimental testing at the chalk laboratory. They are about to uncover the mechanisms behind water weakening. The answer to this riddle is crucial knowledge for oil companies to be able to predict the reservoirs’ behaviour.


It was just before Christmas, an excited post doctor at the International Research Institute of Stavanger (IRIS) spotted something quite extraordinary through the scanning electron microscope she was using. Tania Hildebrand-Habel immediately called the manager of her research team to tell her the news: A dense layer of recently precipitated minerals had formed on the chalk grains she had been studying for some time.


To appreciate the importance of this discovery, we need to go back in time to an event which has sparked a lot of brain wringing within the oil industry. In 1984, it was revealed that the North Sea oil field Ekofisk, situated 70 metres below sea level, had subsided by 1-2 metres. This was not the first time in history that a reservoir had compacted as a result of oil and gas extraction.


But the scale of the seabed subsidence was unprecedented. The explanation to this phenomenon lay in the specific rock formation in this particular field. The Ekofisk rock reservoir is mainly made of chalk, as is the neighbouring Valhall field. The oil contained in the reservoir was subjected to high pressure and contributed to uphold the layers above. As the reservoir was depleted, the chalk had to withstand an increasing weight. We now know that the stress became too big, and the chalk formation eventually gave in.

Wrong predictions

The Ekofisk subsidence represented a huge challenge to both the field operator and the Norwegian authorities. It sparked two fundamental questions that needed to be answered: Was this going to affect future production from the field? And was it possible to prevent further subsidence? Engineers from all over Europe were involved in finding a solution to the problem, and in 1987 the platforms on the field were jacked up by six metres. But the problem of subsistence persisted, and another solution was introduced during the 1990s: The field had to be developed all over again. In 1998 production started from Ekofisk II, constructed to withstand a further 20 metres of subsidence.

Even before the dramatic subsidence was uncovered, engineers had observed that the mechanical properties of the Ekofisk chalk reservoir were completely different from what they had expected. Consequently, scientists were already involved in solving the puzzle, and in 1998, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate launched its Joint Chalk Research Programme. Tens of millions of Norwegian kroner were spent on rock mechanical testing of the mysterious chalk.


But the scientists were unable to fully map the chalk's properties. They predicted that the rate of subsidence would decrease in the near future, but they were wrong. The Ekofisk field continued to sink. The models were obviously not good enough, and intensive research on the correlation between pore pressure and the rock's properties was inconclusive.

Water injection, as a means of keeping up the reservoir pressure and improve the oil recovery rate, was introduced on Ekofisk in 1987. To this day, water injection is the prime countermeasure to further subsidence on the field. But the problems of unstable wells, compaction and subsidence persist. The puzzle of the chalk's water weakening effect remains unsolved, and scientists are still confused as to why this happens.


Up until the new millennium, scientists were adamant that temperature was irrelevant when conducting research on rock mechanics. Hence, testing had been carried out in room temperature. In the 1990s, capillary effects were the most common explanation to reservoir subsidence. Chemical effects on the chalk had been introduced as an alternative explanation, but this line of enquiry was dismissed after a few laboratory tests.


However, by the end of the decade, Professor Rasmus Risnes at Stavanger University College had demonstrated that physical forces alone could not explain the subsidence phenomenon. His pioneering work is now carried on by Merete Vadla Madland and her team of researchers. Together with senior research engineer Aksel Hiorth at IRIS, she is managing the ‘Water weakening of chalk: Physical and chemical processes' project. They are now close to verifying the hypothesis they presented together with Professor L. M. Cathles at Cornell University a year ago: Seawater flooding induces chemical processes which cause significant changes in the mechanical properties of chalk, thereby weakening the chalk's strength.
"Chemistry - and implicitly temperature - is important," says Dr Madland.
"Until now, rock mechanics have not been too concerned about chemistry," adds Dr Hiorth. "But the chemical models we apply are very conclusive. When chalk is exposed to saline water, mineralogical changes are triggered. These changes also seem to affect the way oil flows through the reservoir. As we gain a deeper understanding of these processes, this knowledge will be extremely important in order to be able to maximise oil extraction," he says.


Through the looking glass

At the core of the research project, there are twelve mechanical test cells with adjacent pumps. Inside these cells, which are operated from own developed computer programmes, the scientists are testing the chalk's behaviour when exposed to the same temperature as in the actual Ekofisk and Valhall reservoirs - which is 130 and 90 degrees centigrade respectively. The chalk contained inside the cells is also exposed to high pressure, and seawater is injected from below and flooded through it, as it is in the field when oil is extracted.

The chalk sample and the seawater are examined before and after testing. The porous rock is studied by applying rock mechanical testing, chemical analyses and a scanning electron microscope (SEM). By applying the SEM, chalk pores are examined down to nanometre scale - i.e. one billionth metre - which has barely been done prior to this project. And it was through this very microscope post doctor Hildebrand-Habel made her big discovery of the newly precipitated minerals.

"Our experiments show that flooding of seawater at high temperature affects the chalk so that minerals are precipitated," say Hiorth and Vadla Madland.

"It causes chemical reactions, in this case the precipitation of minerals which contain calcium and magnesium. We believe this precipitation of minerals leads to a dissolution of the chalk structure itself, which in turn may be one of the reasons why the sea bed collapses when oil is extracted and seawater injected. We assert that this dissolution and precipitation may be a key ingredient in the understanding of the water weakening effect - an effect which has been studied by scientists, including here at the UiS and IRIS, for the last twenty years."

In short, these findings add new elements to explaining the mystery of sea bed collapse in chalk formations - a chemical explanation in addition to the prevalent physical and chemical one.

Designing new models

Following the experimental observations performed in the lab, the scientists are now developing a completely new model for calculating the water weakening effect, based on chemical equations. This mathematical model will enable the scientists to predict how the injection of seawater dissolves the chalk, and is designed in collaboration with Professor L. M. Cathles at Cornell University in New York, USA.

By applying this model, they will also be able to prevent the chalk from collapsing. Right now, the team is about to find the answer to which water mixture is the most suited to achieve this aim.

Hiorth and Vadla Madland say the model is continually improved by performing new experiments. "This is a two-way street: The new results yielded will be fed into the model and thereby improving it, and the model will provide us with information which can be applied to perform better experiments. We are enjoying a very good scientific collaboration here, and we don't think there are many who are as fortunate as we are, being able to switch between experimental and modelling research in this way."

The oil industry is following the project closely, cheering the research team. Tron G. Kristiansen is Rock Mechanical Advisor with BP, the company which operates the Valhall field.

He believes the results from this project will help the company predict the effects of water flooding more precisely and for a longer period.

"A better understanding of the physical and chemical interaction between seawater and chalk at high temperatures and under high pressure, will also improve our understanding of other surface-related processes which are important to the oil industry - such as wettability, precipitation of calcium sulphate, and the stability of production wells. The scale of enhanced oil recovery from water weakening will differ from field to field and within the reservoirs themselves, but water injection may improve oil recovery by five to ten percent. Depending on the oil price, this may give us billions in additional income," Kristiansen concludes.

More information: M.V. Madland, B. Zangiabadi, R.I. Korsnes, S.Evje, L. Cathles, T.G. Kristiansen & A. Hiorth 2009. Rock Fluid Interactions in Chalk with MgCl2 and Na2SO4 Brines with Equal Ionic Strength. To be presented at the IOR 2009 symposium (EAGE) in Paris, France 2009