Just wondering if the ground is going to collapse or give-way due to all the oil we’ve pulled out of the ground leaving extremely large voids in the earth, capable of collapsing in ?
I know where i live in Tx there are old oil wells every few hundred yards, from where there was once oil.
It might be possible. But the voids are eventually filled back up naturally.
February 15th, 2010 at 1:13 am
It might be possible. But the voids are eventually filled back up naturally.
References :
February 15th, 2010 at 1:55 am
Oil is not occupying volume in the underground, it is basically filling the void in the matrix of a rock. Which otherwise would have been filled by air.
In some areas after years of producing some surface areas have deepened by few inches.
Usually for a good recovery of the oil, companies tends to inject water form one side and produce oil from the other so oil is being replaced by water to fill the voids.
In short no the ground will never collapse or create large voids on surface of earth due to oil producing
References :