BP Blowout Causing Arkansas Earthquake Clusters?

Survivalist News ^ | 07/03/2010

[EBH]

Do an experiment for me. Take a balloon, inflate it. Get two books and place one on each side of the balloon opposite each other. Now deflate the balloon and notice what happens to the books. The books shift towards each other.

The massive pressurized oil and methane reserve now blowing out south of the Louisiana coast is just like a the deflating balloon. As this reserve empties a huge cavern is being created under the gulf floor. Usually these caverns are back filled with seawater as the oil is removed to stop a catastrophic collapse and make extracting the oil easier. Unfortunately the BP blow out is not being equalized in this manner.

Could the shifting walls of the oil cavern cause the earthquake swarms in Arkansas? Will the quakes grow in magnitude as more oil and methane is released? Could the shifting wall of the oil cavern destabilize the New Madrid fault? How big of a tsunami would be created if the oil cavern collapses?

[UCANSEE2]

I think they are going to have the new CAP in place sooner than expected.

The new CAP is now sitting on the bottom while they attach the hoses to it.

The old CAP has completely lost any seal it had, and it appears to be leaking about as much as it was when the CAP was off. The CAP has been bouncing around for at least two days.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Here are two relevant links:

http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2002/11nov/rift_zone.cfm

http://culturelifesciencenews.blogspot.com/2006/02/52-earthquake-dead-center-in-gulf-of.html

[TigersEye]

That sounds like good news. I see a lot of people say they don't know how to stop this well. People like Bill 0'Reilly to put a point on it. But it's not true. They are drilling relief wells and working on other measures like the cap to re-capture oil and gas.

Well blow-outs like this have been uncommon but they have happened and they have been dealt with.

[Hardraade]

A bit overheated. In other news, I see they’re doing brisk business in “evacuation kits”. Or at least trying to.

[Paradox]

Take a balloon, inflate it. Get two books and place one on each side of the balloon opposite each other. Now deflate the balloon and notice what happens to the books. The books shift towards each other.

Sometimes, the models and metaphors just don't do justice to the reality. First, EVEN IF the "cavern" were deflating, the volume escaping is infinitesimal compared to the volume of the earth. Second, as another poster has said, there is no "cavern", its rock, lots and lots of it, porous rock and strata...

[crescen7]

This is retarded. It can only be considered by the numerically illiterate. The volume of oil in the gulf leak is about 1 quadrillionth the volume of water in the gulf. If one were to try to descibe the volume in terms of earthen land mass it would be an order of magnatude less significant.

[cripplecreek]

Someone recently told me that we should expect a massive earthquake in Michigan because we haven’t had one for millions of years.

I gave up on trying to explain the stability of the region. There is an ancient rift valley under lake superior but the southern part of the state sits in a vast stone bowl that can be seen running north northeast from Greenbay, along the southern edge of the upper peninsula, curving down southward to create Georgian bay in Ontario.

Geology is pretty cool and I wish more people paid some attention to it.

[Minn]

The source doesn’t say, but I’m guessing the unidentified author is no geologist. One could further speculate that the little illustration with a balloon and books demonstrate a profound ignorance of geology on his/her part.

[Candor7]

The sky is falling, the sky is falling, we are all gonna die!!!!! AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaah!

( sarc.)

[Cold Heat]

Good grief! The amount of oil leaking is a pimple on a ants butt compared to the amount extracted over the past 50 years. Where were those Earthquakes?

Geologically speaking, all the oil extracted from the gulf over the past 50 years is a pimple as well.

[My Favorite Headache]

Correct

[TigersEye]

Stop living in de Nile. It’s your turn for a massive earthquake. ;^)

[muawiyah]

Blowouts like this at that depth and pressure have never happened. This is all new stuff.

[TigersEye]

Ah, another deNileist shows up. You will believe in Balloon Earth Theory when the whole thing goes Pop!

[PreciousLiberty]

I believe it’s sensationalist BS. First of all, the thousands of other Gulf oil rigs remove more as a matter of course. The leak site has lost something like 2% of its oil so far.

Is it causing a seismologic crisis? Very unlikely...

[Cold Heat]

Actually they have, but just not in the US.

It amazes me why the media never mentions the blowout only 650 miles to the west that blew oil for 9 months.

I guess that is because it was shallow and Mexican so that oil is different then BP oil and did not destroy the environment as a result....

But then we are building electric cars powered by coal to replace petroleum powered cars for 3-4 times the cost.

And we call others stupid.

[TigersEye]

It is not all new stuff. The technology of deep water drilling rests on over 100 years of oil drilling technology and experience. There was a first-ever on land well blowout. There was a first-ever shallow water well blowout. There was a first-ever well fire.

[Red_Devil 232]

Bingo! If this accident had not happened BP would have plugged this well and started drilling a bunch more into this reservoir and produced more oil than is escaping from this disaster each day.

[hennie pennie]

*ping*

[muawiyah]

There was a first ever MILE DEEP IN THE OCEAN blowout.

They knew it would be different so they came prepared with robots. They appear to have not counted on everything getting iced up with methane so quickly.