Has anybody considered this in Global Warming

Question

How much of the worlds water has been pushed under the Earth to flush out oil when the wells were close to giving out. A solution of salt water is often used for this purpose. Could there be an enormous amount of the worlds water now trapped deep within the Earth never to return to the Eco system and possibly causing the oceans to get shallower? Gotta calculate everything when your looking for answers.

Stan

Answer 1

Don't think so--------- just imagine how much RAIN falls out of a thunderstorm and soaks into the ground -- eventually leaching into our HUGE underground aquifers. Like this one:

http://www.twdb.state.tx.us/mapping/maps...

Answer 2

Then the ocean levels should decrease, wouldn't they?  I mean these freakin liberals are talking about ocean rises of twenty feet by the end of the summer or whatever, yet we are worried about a decrease???  Liberals need to make up their minds!

Answer 3

I don't why this practice should still be used as it has been found that dry oil wells left alone for a few years, refill, as has been found in Russia. An oil well in Russia in the fifties ran dry and was capped. Then in the seventies, was recommissioned and has found to have more oil than was there in the first pumping. Leads one to believe that maybe oil isn't running out the way the so called experts are telling us.

As for the water being pumped into the earth then I would say that since the planet is always on the move that the water would eventually get back to the surface. It must comes to a point where it just not economical to keep pumping to those depths for the amount of return.

Answer 4

Eventually, all ground water tables are at the same level as sea level except in rare cases where the land is lower than sea level (e.g. Dead Sea, Netherlands).

Thus pumping water from the ocean to ground water will, eventually equalise and have no impact upon levels at all.

There may be some rare cases where there is no connection to the sea and pumping water into those wells would indeed lower the sea level.

But by how much?

A quick back of envelope calculation gives:

- Total oil in the world, past & present: 2.5x10^12 barrels

- Assume we are roughly about mid-way in using all of this (estimates - range from we have just passed the mid-way point to we will reach mid-way in 15-25 years): 1.25x10^12 barrels have been pumped.

- Assume 20% of wells are refilled with sea water (this is probably high but...: 2.5x10^11 barrels of water

- Assume 10% of these are not connected to the sea: 2.5x10^10 barrels of water pumped

- A barrel = 0.159 cu metres: 4x10^9 cubic metres of water

This is equivalent to 4 cubic kilometres of sea water that may have been pumped out of the sea and not returned.

There are 361,419,000 sq. km of ocean on this planet - spread over this, the 4 cu km of water calculated above would result in a net reduction to sea levels of .001cm - less than a human hair width!

(If you don't like my guesstimates, feel free to change the percentages but the overall magnitude won't change significantly)

P.S. Compare this 4 cu km to the 3.5 MILLION cubic kilometres of ice in the Greenland ice sheet alone waiting to return to the sea....

Answer 5

Most of the oil extracted from the ground is actually under pressure and doesn't need anything to displace it. I have never heard of water being used "to flush out oil", but I may be mistaken.

Ground water or sea water may well seep into underground areas where oil has been extracted, but this would be a trivial amount compared with melting ice caps and depending on the permeability of the surrounding rocks may never occur at all.  

Answer 6

I believe global warming is caused by the government using chemical bombs in wars.

Answer 7

The amount of water in oceans have actually been increasing because of the melting of the poles. I highly doubt the water will make as much of a difference on the globe than the burning oil, but you're right that the water will probably not return to the surface.  

Answer 8

Well, I know that there are caves around the world that are recorded as deeper than sea level at some points, and carry water the further down it goes. So I would say that yes, there could be enormous amounts of water that are trapped in the earth.

Answer 9

An interesting thought--but no.  Granted that's a lot of water in human terms. But it's simply not enough to matter when compared to the size of the oceans.

Answer 10

When you calculate how much water has been pushed into the ground to flush out oil, you also have to consider how much water has been pumped out of the ground for municipal usage.

much of our drinking water is pumped out of the ground, to the point that in most areas the water table has dropped drastically.