Drilling for Earthquakes - Geoscientists are Increasingly Confident about the Link Between Earthquakes and Oil and Gas Production [Wastewater Injection], yet Regulators are Slow to React

Oil & Natural Gas / Conventional Oil & Gas Resources / Related Environmental Issues / Brine and Injection Well Issues

Anna Kuchment, in Scientific American, reports that until 2008 not a single earthquake had ever been recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey from the Dallas... Fort Worth area. Since then, close to 200 have shaken the cities and their immediate suburbs. Texas is experiencing a sixfold increase in earthquakes over historic levels. Oklahoma has seen a 160-fold spike in quakes, some of which have sent people to hospitals and damaged buildings and highways. In 2014, the state earthquake rate surpassed that of California. Researchers at the USGS and other institutions have tied earthquake surges in eight states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Kansas and Arkansas, to waste water disposal by oil and gas operations.

Some state regulators have been slow to accept scientist findings. This is a public safety issue, and there has been a lot of denial and ignoring of the problem, says Wallace, who has joined neighbors to push for the shutdown of nearby wastewater injection wells. As scientists continue to study the phenomenon, they have found more reason for concern. Evidence suggests that earthquake risks can spread for miles beyond the original disposal sites, and can persist for a decade or more after drilling stops. And although the biggest earthquake from wastewater injection was a 5.6 on the Richter scale, near Oklahoma City in 2011, scientists think that temblors as powerful as 7.0, enough to cause fatalities and damage buildings across a wide area, are possible, although unlikely.

Geologists have known since the 1960s that pushing fluids into the ground can set off quakes. In 1961 crews drilled a deep well at a chemical weapons plant outside Denver, known as the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. Within months after workers started pumping hazardous waste into the well, residents felt tremors between 1962 and 1966.

For more on Oklahoma conditions, see ... https://i2mportal.com/resource_detail.php?resource_id=5609

Original working URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/drilling-for-earthquakes/?WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20160330