With all these earthquakes lately in 2008...can of the drilling for oil & natural gases increase the activity?

Question

With all these earthquakes lately in 2008...can of the drilling for oil & natural gases increase the activity?

Answer 1

An earth quake is a massive thing, usually when 2 plates move, the plates are massive (we are on the same one as China). drilling for oil is a tiny hole in the ground, these are insignificant in the whole scale of things, and couldn't cause an earthquake. to put the holes into perspective, if you look carefully at a squash ball, it has tiny microscopic holes in it, if you were to blow the ball up to the size of the earth (in proportion) the wholes would be around 20 miles deep, and even further across.

Answer 2

Probably not. But drilling will only cause prices to go down about a nickel over the next decade at the best. It's not going to have huge longterm effects except on the environment. Even if the US drilled all over the country we'd only have 2-3% of the needed national supply. We can't depend on oil. We have to find alternative sources of energy.

Answer 3

If you dropped a Nuke down the San Andreas fault the things might happen. No plans for doing that to Southern California yet (unfortunately).

Answer 4

Extracting oil and water changes the pressure relations inside the crust and can result in earth movements in the area of the change.  Small movements.  This is well documented.  

Global events are not connected to localized minor changes such as result from extraction.  Scratching a pimple won't make you go to the bathroom either. (not too proud of that analogy but it works...)

Answer 5

No.

Answer 6

An unlikely connection, the sheer scale of the Earth means even the largest excavations are nothing bigger than a pinprick from the Earth's POV.