If we pump out all the oil from underneath us, will we fill it in with something ells? Is it necessary?

Question

Should we be concerned of anything collapsing and mabe causing another tsunami or earthquake? Just asking.

Answer 1

good question.

Most oil reserves are under high pressure (the oil is usually trapped in the pore spaces of sandstone layers in the earth) and once that pressure is released you would think there would be a problem, well, never fear. The loss of pressure creates a sort of vacuum in the rocks, and water comes and replaces it (as natural gas and oil reserves are beneath the water table...except perhaps in the beverly hill-billiies world). In fact oil reserves are usually only pumped until they have recovered 70% of the oil availiable. Smaller companies have started buying these "used" oil fields and have incorporated a method of pumping water into the reserve to raise oil out again.

After all that junk... main point.... I wouldn't worry about it.

Answer 2

It's a thought-provoking question.

Here in Arizona that very problem is surfacing, but from water use. Water has been pumped from aquifers which cause land subsidence & the earth cracks or "fissures" - linear crevices a hundred feet or more deep which expand whenever it rains. People are starting to sue each other over selling land with these cracks.

I'm not completely certain that it applies to oil because the aquifer is only a couple hundred feet down here, whereas oil is generally found deeper than that, but not always.

In Texas oil was found in geological formations called salt domes. When the oil was all pumped out, these enourmous underground caverns were used for disposal of liquid hazardous waste. The process is called deep well injection. The salt domes are very deep (~10,000 ft) & so are considered a "safe" way to "dispose" of the material.

Personally I consider it making jobs for our decendants of the far future when it finally needs to be remediated. (cleaned up)

;-)

Answer 3

The 'holes' you're talking about are tiny (less than 1 millimeter) The oil is trapped in rocks that are underground and are subjected to high pressure which compresses the rock. The small voids are often filled with liquid such as water or oil.

There is no observed effect to the ground (settling, forming large voids) due to the pumping out of oil. Water replaces the oil in the voids.

Imagine, for example an empty glass with a straw in it. Now fill the glass with a dry sand. Even though the glass is full of sand (you can't get any more sand in there) you can add water to it. So if you fill it up with water so that you can't add any more sand or water, you can use the straw to suck out the water, the sand won't settle or collapse.


I already answered this one last week, here's the link to that question.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aheqtbkole1x6bnsYfWQlmbsy6IX?qid=20061210201113AAAvp4g&show=7#profile-info-ac3286ccd052a51b46cff53fc944eecdaa

Answer 4

oil doesn't form in giant caverns.... it tends to form in porous rock, and pumping it out doesn't leave giant holes in the earth. No worries

Answer 5

they fill it with water