A new study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America has confirmed that 77 earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from 1 to 3 that occurred between March 4 and March 12 in 2014 were related spatially and temporally to active hydraulic fracturing operations. The drilling company, Hilcorp Energy, was forced to halt operations by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources on March 10 after one of the largest earthquakes caused by fracking in the United States, struck the state.
Fracking involves high-pressure injection of water, sand and chemicals into rock to break it up and release trapped oil and gas. In Ohio, fracking triggered earthquakes on a hidden fault in ancient crystalline rock beneath a natural gas well in the Utica Shale. A spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources told the Times that existing fracking wells were still in production but further fracking has been banned. No earthquakes were ever recorded in this region before fracking started, and the shaking stopped after the well was shut down.
“These earthquakes near Poland Township occurred in the Precambrian basement, a very old layer of rock where there are likely to be many pre-existing faults. This activity did not create a new fault, rather it activated one that we didn’t know about prior to the seismic activity,” said Robert Skoumal, co-author of the study.
Skoumal mentioned that it is difficult to predict when an earthquake will occur, and so drilling companies and local authorities needed to evaluate risky areas carefully before proceeding. “We just don’t know where all the faults are located,” he said. That puts the state at risk of activating previously unknown faults and increasing the risk of more damaging earthquakes.
In October 2014 another study suggested 400 small earthquakes in Ohio were triggered by fracking in a three month period during 2013. Ohio is now on a similar trajectory to Oklahoma, which saw a five-fold increase in earthquakes in 2014, and therefore it could get worse for Ohio if fracking increases.
From 1975 to 2008, Oklahoma averaged one to three earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater a year. In 2009, that number jumped to 20. In 2011, the state experienced its largest recorded earthquake with a magnitude of 5.7. In 2014, there were 564 quakes with a magnitude of 3 or greater, compared to only 100 in 2013. And 19 of those earthquakes were magnitude 4 or greater.
In May 2014, a Oklahoma Geological Survey and the US Geological Survey analysis found that the increased rate of earthquakes in Oklahoma significantly increases the chance for a damaging magnitude 5.5 or greater earthquake. A likely contributing factor to the increase in earthquakes is triggering by wastewater injected into deep geologic formations – injection-induced seismicity.
EnergyWire’s review of earthquake data indicates that Oklahoma’s seismic action has been spreading north into Kansas, which had only 2 earthquakes in 2013 but 42 in 2014. Most were near the Oklahoma border.
Source:
http://ecowatch.com/2015/01/06/fracking-cause-ohio-earthquake/
do not fuck with the earth… this is our planet. We are here because of a splendid synergy. Nature is so much more responsive than stupid, greedy people think.
Black text on a gray background. Who created this webpage? I could barely read it.
Someone should overlay this seismic event map over a map of where all the underground city/installations are and see how it sizes up.