Earthquakes in the gulf

This well was at an extreme depth under the sea compared to other wells. They were kind of on the cutting edge of new deep sea drilling.

And yet they knew that the blowout preventer was vital and yet it sounds like there were numerous critical problems cited with the device. So many in fact it sounds like a comedy of errors. (i.e. Rubber seals found from the well, non-working electrical componants on the device, etc)

When hurricanes Katrina and Rita cut a swath through the Gulf of Mexico last fall, 3,000 of the 4,000 platforms were in the direct path of the storms. Nonetheless, while the coasts were devastated, "There was no loss of life associated with offshore energy production. Carefully designed offshore safety devices were a success story. They held. There were no well spills. All of the shut-off valves, below the ocean floor, worked as designed," he added.

www.govexec.com...

I wonder if we are getting the full story here.

Something else strange is that unexplained earthquakes have occured in the gulf.

There are no major fault lines there right?

Here is a map and a list of recent earthquakes off the coast of louisiana since 1978.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/def3677cdf92.gif[/atsimg]

neic.usgs.gov... TH=&EDAY=&LMAG=&UMAG=&NDEP1=&NDEP2=&IO1=&IO2=&SLAT2=0.0&SLAT1=0.0&SLON2=0.0&SLON1=0.0&SUBMIT=Submit+Search

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/06bf4749b4ff.jpg[/atsimg]

elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com...

[edit on 23-5-2010 by Freedom or Death]

Hmm.

It's possible.

I don't pretend to know everything so I cannot discount this as a possibility.

There are a myriad of other possibilities.

Do you have any information regarding how deep those quakes were?

That area is on a seismic hazard map of CA:

earthquake.usgs.gov...

USGS doesn't really say why. Most of the other maps I've seen only show the coastline, I don't think there are necessarily no faults there, but that they haven't been considered important enough to map on the public site until now.