Can oil in the ground be poisoned by an underground nuke.Could such condition ruin the oil?

Question

Is there anything that could stop the Iranians from doing such a thing. If we leave Irag, there'd be precious little time for the Iragi's to repell and ground attack, aimed at Iraq's oil rich econonmy

Answer 1

What a question.

Answer 2

Remember the oil has been sitting underground, under pressure, for a hundred & fifty million years. It has probably gotten far more radiation in that period than a any nuke would cause. Most nukes are tested underground at much lesser depths than those at which oil is found. Underground nukes simply don't cause that much damage; their energy is absorbed by the earth, which is the precise reason for testing them underground. If someone could actually get a nuke down to the depth of an oil field & set it off, it would probably blow the crap out of the drilling equipment & possibly increase the oil flow in its limited area due to heat & pressure fracturing rock & liquifying the clay in which the oil is suspended. Once new wells are drilled we probably couldn't tell the difference between oil released by nuclear explosives & any other oil. Back in the 60's or 70's some engineers actually suggested using nukes to increase production in declining fields.

Answer 3

It's not so much a matter of it being poisoned (it's nor organic) or contaminated (that can be filtered out during processing).

It's that an underground nuke could set the oil fields on fire, which would cause them to burn for years (if not decades) and turn much of the area into a big sea of glass (molten sand).

Answer 4

Yeah, the oil would be pretty useless, and impossible to get to
if nukes were used.