I was just watching some footage from the 1st Gulf War. They showed some footage of the oil wells that had been lit up. It took about 6 months to put them all out… which got me thinking…
Could an oil field blow up? Would a simple spark do it or would you need some other process?
When oil burns or explodes, it is combining with oxygen. When oil is in the ground, there’s usually not enough air in there with it for it to burn or explode.
I’m not aware of it ever happening, but if you had a decent sized cavern underground that had been filled with oil and it was mostly empty, then the air that replaced the missing oil would contain enough oxygen to support combustion.
The mixture which supports combustion is pretty lean, just a few percent fuel & 90+% air. So any underground reservoir needs to be very close to empty to be combustible.
Also, the common image of oil exporation is of large caverns full of liquid. Not so.
The reality is a lot closer to a kitchen sponge saturated with liquid. The well-end pulls fluid from one particular spot inside the sponge & ambient pressure causes the liquid to flow from elsewhere into that local spot. So over time you can extract all the liquid just by pulling from one spot. But that doesn’t cause or require a large void anywhere.