Will the continuous exploitation of oil destroy the internal structure of the earth in the long run?

Oil is constantly being mined from the ground. If it is not controlled and there are no protective measures, oil exploitation may indeed lead to ground subsidence or small-scale earthquakes. However, there are few related reports, mainly because the process of oil exploitation has little impact on the ground.

The exploitation of oil can be compared with the application of groundwater. Groundwater was widely used in the development of early human cities. Due to the continuous growth of population, the exploitation of groundwater exceeds the speed of natural infiltration of groundwater, which leads to the formation of underground cavities. Without the support of water, the ground is more likely to collapse, or buildings will settle and tilt, causing safety problems for residents' lives. Problems such as road collapse that are often reported are often caused by groundwater exploitation.

Only later did I know the existence of this problem. The city develops tap water on a large scale, takes water from high-quality natural water sources, and then forms clean tap water through disinfection, filtration, reverse osmosis and other measures, and delivers it to thousands of households through pipelines, thus solving the problem of over-exploitation of groundwater.

The storage of oil is similar to groundwater, and there will be natural geological strata underground, which will produce some gaps to allow liquids or other substances to exist. Because of its relatively low density, oil exists in the hydrocarbon-generating layer in a dispersed state, then migrates into the reservoir and accumulates in geological traps with good preservation conditions to form oil and gas reservoirs. At the same time, other mobile substances such as water and natural gas can also penetrate into oil and gas reservoirs.

So the structure of oil mine is oil layer, water layer, oil layer and gas layer, and the upper part is rock layer. The exploitation of oil is to penetrate the surface rock layer, penetrate the pipeline into the oil mine, and extract the oil by atmospheric pressure. In fact, the principle is a bit like the previous rural hydraulic wells, which often pump out a mixture of water, oil, gas, sediment and other substances, and the refined oil needs to be separated before it can enter the market.

If oil exploitation is not controlled, it will naturally lead to the long-term existence of underground cavities, which may indeed lead to land subsidence. However, after oil exploitation, due to the consideration of geological stability, the produced water is injected into underground strata after treatment, which on the one hand slows down the change of crustal structure and prevents the groundwater layer from being polluted. On the other hand, due to the high density, the water injected into the ground will drive oil to gather in oil reservoirs, which will make oil exploitation more efficient, and oil mines will continue to gather in caves like water.

Therefore, it is difficult for oil exploitation to leave a completely empty underground space, and the natural accumulation of liquid substances can still better support the stability of the superstructure. Therefore, news related to oil exploitation and land subsidence is not common, and there is no need to relocate all the residents in the oil mining area.

As for causing the earth to break, it is impossible. At present, the exploitation of oil is concentrated in the range of 3-5 kilometers, and the extremely deep well can reach about 8,000 meters, while the average thickness of the crust is 17 kilometers, and the average thickness of radius of the earth is over 6,370 kilometers. Therefore, the exploitation of oil can not affect the internal structure of the earth, because it can't be touched at all. The earth is a huge rocky planet, and gravity makes matter shrink, so the earth becomes a fairly uniform spherical structure, and the binding energy can reach10.32 Joule, which is an energy level that humans have not yet mastered. It is fantastic to break the earth because of human activities. It is impossible to destroy the earth by detonating all the atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs made in human history underground.

Mining solid minerals is a threat to life on the ground. Originally, mineral deposits and rock strata supported the upper rock strata together, but mining solid minerals would lead to underground cavities. Although from the perspective of environmental protection and safety, there will be means of backfilling, but the cavity can not be completely filled. The mined-out area has long ended in natural collapse, and the ground collapse caused by coal mining in northern China has occurred from time to time. Therefore, in coal mines and other mining areas, the relocation of immigrants is a common operation, which needs to be combined with the relocation for mining, and can not be exploited at will. In areas where residents are concentrated, oil exploitation can often be seen, mainly "kowtowing insects"