Oil Spills, Earthquakes, Volcanos, & Tsunami

The current crisis in the Gulf Coast region of The United States is only the tip of a much larger ice burg that no one seems to realize has been taking place on a global scale due to our dependence on crude oil for a very long time. Environmentalists shout to the top of their lungs for the oil companies to stop the drilling, but many of them don't have a clue why this is so important. Most will simple tell you they are protesting for clean air and water because they seem to think these are the main concerns when it comes to oil and pollution, never stopping to think about the picture as a whole.

For the past 20 years, I have voiced my opinion about the tragedies we will see occur in my lifetime due to the Oil Barron's of the world and the greed and power they influence, but like all the Environmentalists before me, our pleas always seem to fall on deaf ears because no one wants to change their way of life.

It has become so easy to just jump in the car and go to the store when we run out of something we feel we need. A pack of cigarettes, a bottle of soda, or even a loaf of bread seems to be all the reason we need to crank up the car and head out to the store. Lets not forget about the urban sprawl that develops around every city no matter how large or small it may be, forcing us to drive gas powered vehicles to our place of work just so we can afford to pay all the bills, including the ever rising prices of groceries and necessities. The prices of these items seem to rise because of the shipping costs involved in getting them to your local market and are driven up by the price of gasoline most of the time.

Most of you don't realize just how much influence oil and gas prices have on our overall economy because we never seem to grasp the scope of the world as a whole. We are content to sit in our own little world and surround ourselves with like minded individuals that are constantly complaining about the rising costs of every day life, but don't understand where the actual driving force behind the high prices originate, let alone know what they can do to change the way things are. We pay what ever price the oil companies set for a gallon of gas and wonder why we are loosing our homes, or don't have enough to eat. We have come to the conclusion that gas for our transportation is the most important aspect of our lives because our livelihood's depend on it. Our convenience of transportation has more or less created monsters when it comes to the oil companies, because they don't care if you have a place to live or food to eat, as long as they can turn billions of dollars in profits every quarter.

If you have ever noticed, oil companies measure their crude oil in barrels instead of gallons because most people don't realize just how much volume they are speaking of. We are used to "gallon" or "litter" measurements and can somewhat come to grasps of the volume involved, but when it comes to barrels... A barrel of crude oil is approximately 42 U.S. Gallons, so when an oil company reports pumping 100 million barrels of oil in a year, they are actually pumping 4200 million gallons ! If you have just 10 companies pumping this staggering amount from the earth each year, we are talking about 4200 billion gallons of oil pumped from the earth each year. These figures are just an example and I don't have any documentation to verify these results... I just want to open your eyes to the world oil production as a whole. The last I read was somewhere around 92 million barrels of oil pumped from the earth each and every year. I think “Staggering Amount” is a very appropriate phrase.

I'm not a scientist or engineer, but it seems to me when you are removing this much volume of a substance from beneath the surface of the Earth in it's liquid form, it would have to create some type of void in the area where the oil once lay that will eventually fill in with another substance to replace the void. I began to worry about this many years ago when I understood just how much volume of crude oil was being pumped from the earth every year. I voiced my concerns in a few forums around the Internet about 10 years ago, and everyone seemed to think my theories held no merit. In fact everyone seemed to think I was a little off my rocker and laughed me off the forum site.

When I first heard of the Tsunami in Indonesia, my first thoughts were how close Saudi Arabia was to the region where the the Tsunami occurred. The Saudi's and other countries in that region of the world have been pumping more oil from the the earth than anyone else because they have been doing it longer than anyone else. The thought that crossed my mind was, the oil they had pumped from the earth had created a void beneath the ocean's floor. The weight of the ocean's water over the void had finally collapsed the floor of the ocean to fill the void, which in turn created the Tsunami that killed over 120,000 people in one foul swoop, and thousands more died later due to injuries and insanitary conditions. As far as I know, I am the only one that seems to believe this theory, because everyone wants to believe the stories they were told by influential sources, without ever questioning the validity of the source.

If memory serves me correctly, it wasn't very long before earthquakes on the other side of the Arab region began devastating areas like Turkey, China, Italy, etc... I'm sure if you got out a map and plotted the disasters that have taken place in the Middle and Far East, Saudi Arabia along with Iran and Iraq, and all the other oil rich countries in the region would be conveniently located approximately in the center of all these disasters due to the simple fact, they have pumped more crude oil from the earth than any where else in the world.

Lets not forget about the earthquake in Alaska which preceded a volcanic eruption... Scientists will have you believe this is a natural occurrence due to the “Ring of Fire” around the Pacific Ocean caused by shifting plates. Since all their information is theoretical, why haven't they taken into account what influence removing billions of gallons of crude oil from the region would have toward the plates movements? Doesn't it make since that when you have created such a large void below the surface that something will have to give to try to fill in the void. The United States has been pumping oil from Alaska for more years than I care to count and were even thinking about expanding their operations by drilling on National Forrest Lands to increase our oil production in The United States. Is it any wonder George W. Bush was pushing for this legislature to pass? After all, his family is in the oil business...

The devastating earthquake in Chili could have very easily have been blamed on oil production. Since they had suffered a catastrophic earthquake within the past fifty years, they were better prepared by building stronger structures that probably saved countless lives. Haiti on the other hand was far less fortunate because of their poor economy and lack of suitable construction to withstand earthquakes, but both of these tragic events could easily be a direct result of the earth trying to balance the scales.

The truth of the matter is, we are pumping billions of gallons of oil from the earth every year as if there is an endless supply, and never taking into account the damage we are doing beneath the surface of our planet. Other than scientific theory, no one can tell me for certain how great the damage is that we have already caused. Do we know for certain that this oil that we so greedily pump from the earth isn't helping to fuel the core in some form or another. Will the removal of all this volume and weight from giant pools beneath the surface somehow throw off a delicate balance of counterweights that helps keep our axis from tipping too many degrees north or south and cause the earth to spin on a totally different axis and create new polar regions? With the global warming that has occurred from the emissions the burning of these fuels in our quest for expedient transportation has caused, the polar regions are melting to further cause an imbalance in our delicate axis.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster of epic proportions when it comes to the livelihood of everyone that depends on a clean ecological system to provide their living, not to mention the wildlife that has to suffer and die just so we can go to the store when we want. But we also need to worry about the amount of oil that we are removing from beneath the surface of the region, and not just in the Gulf waters. We have already created a tremendous void from the oil that was pumped from the land in the Southern United States and Midwest before we ever started pumping oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Over the past few years, we have been experiencing earthquakes in the Eastern United States. Relatively small on the scale of things, but this should be a wake up call for everyone.

Katrina was a disaster like never before seen in New Orleans because of all the flooding... Can you imagine what it would be like if the Gulf of Mexico's ocean floor suddenly sank to fill the void where we have pumped trillions of gallons of oil from the earth over the years !?! Every coastal city from the southernmost tip of Texas to the Florida Keys would be devastated by a Tsunami ! 120,000 lost their lives in Indonesia from similar circumstances... How many people in the Gulf Coast region would loose their lives if a Tsunami occurred in The Gulf of Mexico !?!

Everyone needs to take a step back and look at the world as a whole for just a moment to truly understand everything I have tried to explain in this short article. All of my conclusions are strictly theoretical with no scientific proof that what I am saying is correct... But then again... Who is to say I am wrong ?

( Please read the interesting comments below and join in on the discussion...)