My father noticed an article in the Wall Street Journal, and I went to the library and read it..it was about last Weds +/- 1 day (8 days ago).
It was about submarine landslides from Hurricane Ivan that tore up pipelines from oil production platforms...they were having to do hires undersea mapping just to find the ends of the platforms. I've discussed this here in the past...I think that it could happen, when Ivan was coming in. I guess there was just a phenomenal amount of material that moved around...10 m over some area deposited...and, in pretty deep water. In the case of Gulf of Mexico, the faults are normal faults (most are, not all). Depositing material on the hanging-wall above the fault would tend to trigger earthquakes. But, many of these faults would be shallow-rooted, and may just slide along without quakes. I mapped one of these faults systems offshore Texas...the same trend that part olf which was called the Brazos Ridge fault. There is a surprisingly large slip on this fault...as much as 20 km of dip-slip. It may reappear as thrust faults at the base of the continental slope (there are thrust faults there). Just a mega landslide. This particular trend was most active 10-15 million years ago, but farther offshore they are active now.

I heard somewhere that 1 million barrels a day of oil had to be shut in....the article was talking about 150,000 barrels a day for single companies...some part of that is probably back on line. That is one reason I don't believe that oil will cost as much in 6 months or 1 year....but it will probably be more in 5 years...because we are going to be short of it sooner or later.
Chris