This might sound a little odd, a little out there but I just wondered....

When oil companies are finished with a location, they usually plug it up to avoid potential disaster. Would it be possible for some unscrupulous members of the companies to force a team to leave an area without plugging up the hole they drilled? Whether it be land or sea, could it/would it happen? If so, what are the potential dangers in doing so, especially in certain areas?

What if they claimed to plug the Gulf of Mexico but actually showed an image of another location while slowly allowing that hole to spew its contents?

I know I don't believe it was BP's fault for that particular disaster and I was pretty disgusted at American vitriol toward them while forgetting their own US based disaster that was worse than the Gulf of Mexico's but lets imagine for a moment that location or others on land or sea were left unplugged.

What then?

There are 1000s of earthquakes in the ocean area, and those quakes sometimes produce cracks in shallow oil deposits, leaking that oil into the oceans. Oil is a product of the Earth, mucus is a product of the body, if you covered yourself in mucus would you be in mortal peril? How about blood? Tears? Etc.?

The media has ways of blowing things way out of proportion to instill a constant fear base vibration among the viewers. The Gulf disaster was a bit much, but that was a man made/influenced disaster. You never hear about when the earthquakes crack the ocean floor and flood oil into the oceans... no money to be made from that news.