Posted on 03/19/2005 4:50:11 PM PST by The Grim Freeper
Today, my mother asked me to come see something in their Los Gatos back yard. She took me out to the corner of their large lot (large for Los Gatos, anyway), and she pointed out to me some black, shiny substance seeping out of the ground in patches, and along a line about 10 feet in length. The last heavy rain had made this substance come to the surface.
I said "It looks like oil," and she said she thought so, too. I stuck my finger in it, and it was black, slick, and after I'd rubbed it around to almost a drying point, a little bit gunky. Like crude oil.
We know my parent's property sits on a water table, because the last big earthquake, they weren't anxious to sit in the house, so they sat on the ground, and the ground was all wet (even though it hadn't rained in months).
Also, the heavy rains have caused a number of cracks to appear and/or widen in the brick work and driveway and porches and patios of my parents older home. We definitely are expecting a "big one." We just don't know when, of course. We weathered the Loma Prieta earthquake with a minimum of property damage and some major "rattled" nerves.
But all that is to say, has anyone here ever heard of such a thing? Could crude oil be seeping to the ground surface due to the heavy rains? Could it be something else? If it's oil, what do we do? Do we report it?
Thats great!It's nice to find a little bit of history that is still there.
Better have Agents Mulder & Scully check it out. Black slime durn near did in Fox. If you you see any floating in your eyeballs after handling it, its too late.
It may be from an old buried oil tank.
Standard Oil/Standard of California bought the oil rights up en-mass in the entire Bay Area, if not most of northern California, at least a century ago.
Once in a while, a parcel is found to have been missed, but it is rare. After the Korean War, my oldest brother bought a rare 160 Northern California acres parcel that still had primary water, mineral, and timber rights attached to it.
If you get it tested, I wouldn't tell the company doing the testing where it came from. If it is something toxic, the state could make you pay to clean up the property.
Now you know why your chosen profession is called a practice.
;^)
>>>Effing simpleton!<<<
I'll see your effing simpleton and raise you an effing scumbag lawyer!
Preliminary calculations suggest that about 1 billion barrels of oil may have been generated from source rocks within the Monterey Formation in the deepest part of the subsurface sedimentary basin between Los Gatos and Cupertino. Most of this oil was probably lost to biodegradation, oxidation, and leakage to the surface, but some oil may have accumulated in as-yet-undiscovered structural and stratigraphic traps along the complex structural boundary between the Santa Clara Valley and the Santa Cruz Mountains. Although some of these undiscovered accumulations of oil may be of commercial size, future petroleum exploration is unlikely because most of the area is currently devoted to residential, recreational, commercial, and industrial uses.
... Stanley said the oil poses no major hazards but did say, "It would be wise to drill [water] well bores carefully, in case any oil moves up [the line] and contaminates water supplies. And if people find traces of oil in their water, it is likely from the oil underground—not man-made pollution."
That one looks like it's a quart low, better throw it back.
You may have an indication of a pending earthquake.
Thank you for the ping to a very interesting thread!
Interesting thought, there is precedence for what you suggest. And Los Gatos is damn close to the San Andreas fault (about 2 miles south). However, the epicenter for the Loma Prieta earthquake was also located very close to Los Gatos and one might expect sufficient strain for a big one, not to have returned so quickly.
We'll see, I'll be keeping an eye on the USGS website Maps of Recent Earthquake Activity in California-Nevada.
--Boot Hill
Yikes!
Bubbling crude, Texas tea, black gold.
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