possibility of seafloor collapse?

NICE

Why is this a crazy question?

To the OP.....the question is nothing to be dismissed so easily. All of the assholes laughing at your question would have also laughed at the question of if this type of spill/disaster could happen in the first place and still be gushing millions of gallons per day 72 days later!

Could it happen, sure it could. The chances are pretty slim of that series of events occuring, but way stranger things have happend.

there is the concept of reservoir compaction -- where the volume of oil, gas, and saltwater removed from an individual reservoir is so great that the reservoir actually compacts on itself.

reservoirs are not just giant pools of oil. they are rock, typically sandstone, w/ some combination of oil, gas, and saltwater existing in the individual pore spaces within the sandstone. so imagine your cement slab in your driveway as the sandstone, then imagine that the pore spaces within the cement are filled w/ oil & gas. that's a fair illustration of what a reservoir looks like.

over time, what can happen is that as the volume is removed from the pore spaces and the pressure decreases within the reservoir, the reservoir rock will be unable to resist the weight of the earth above it any more and start to compact.

this is a well understood phenomenon in petroleum engineering. some people may be familliar w/ the discovery channel specials on the phillips' ekofisk platform in the north sea, where this phenomenon occurred after many years of production, and the platform had to be jacked up and the legs lengthened to get it sufficiently above the water line again.

keep in mind that reservoir compaction on the order of a few feet over the entire thickness of the reservoir -- so like 5' over a 100' reservoir after a huge amount of volume and pressure has been removed. also, this is not a phenomenon that happens over night, it happens gradually over the producing life of the well.

for the record, there are reservoirs in the deepwater w/ multiple wells in them that are flowing at = or > total rates than the macondo well is blowing out today.

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We have had subsidence issues in the GoM. But nothing that would cause a tsunami.

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inland marshes of LA as well.

someone above posted about the possibility of an underground blowout -- which would happen if the 16" csg failed and allowed uncontrolled flow into a shallow reservoir. personally, i think that as long as they don't shut the well in at surface w/ the full oil column back to the reservoir, that is unlikely, as the path of least resistance continues to be to flow up to the mudline.

you'd have to find an oceanographer on that one.

although the point of my post was that compaction / subsidence is happening right now all over all of the producing regions in the world, and there's never been an oilfield related tidal wave.

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there are reservoirs in the deepwater w/ multiple wells in them that are flowing at = or > total rates than the macondo well is blowing out today.

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Exactly.

I have sad news to report to ya'll.

I work in Gretna. The past two times its rained hard here, i've noticed oil in the puddles in the parking lot. For those that laugh at the notion it can't rain oil, i dare you to look at the puddles. The proof is there.