Oklahoma's Earthquakes Linked To Fracking 154
An anonymous reader writes Oklahoma has already experienced about 240 minor earthquakes this year, roughly double the rate at which California has had them. A recent study (abstract) has now tied those earthquakes to fracking. From the article: "Fracking itself doesn't seem to be causing many earthquakes at all. However, after the well is fracked, all that wastewater needs to be pumped back out and disposed of somewhere. Since it's often laced with chemicals and difficult to treat, companies will often pump the wastewater back underground into separate disposal wells. Wastewater injection comes with a catch, however: The process both pushes the crust in the region downward and increases pressure in cracks along the faults. That makes the faults more prone to slippages and earthquakes. ... More specifically, the researchers concluded that 89 wells were likely responsible for most of the seismic activity. And just four wells located southeast of Oklahoma City were likely responsible for about one-fifth of seismic activity in the state between 2008 and 2013."
If it's the process of putting the wastewater back (Score:1, Informative)
Perhaps companies that do fracking should be regulated to treat wastewater like nuclear waste and prevent them from dumping it back in. It would stop the earthquakes and save them from the impending lawsuits that would follow. a Win Win aside from the cost of storage which should be less than a class action. Also who's to say it wouldn't be easier to treat the water a couple of decades from now to the point where it could then be poured out.
Missed it by that much. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Now add in those earthquakes and basically the completely fracturing of the formations that waste water was injected into and well, those estimates just reflect the intent of those estimates, sheer and utter bullshit to justifying the cheapest possible method of dumping that water, short of just dumping it straight into the nearest river or stream.
seems to be a common theme (Score:5, Insightful)
The weakest part of the whole fracking operation is really sloppy treatment of the wastewater. There have been large spills [pennlive.com] in some places [capebretonpost.com], and the disposal is often questionable (as seen here). The fracking process itself gets the most scientific scrutiny, because it's what's technically new about fracking, but good ol' wastewater handling is a mess, just as it was in the mining days.
Re: seems to be a common theme (Score:3, Informative)
They could (and can) clean and recycle the water. Oil companies are very skilled at water purification - having needed to separate oil from water from steam, or detergent, injection processes. It is more expensive - so they won't do it unless water is scarce or regulation requires it.
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It's all by design. Ever heard of 'externality'?
Re:seems to be a common theme (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, nobody has ever done a single environmental impact assessment or a performed an inspection related to a fracking operation.
Why bother? There's no point to it. The oil and gas companies have explicit exemptions and exceptions to most EPA oversight.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exemptions_for_hydraulic_fracturing_under_United_States_federal_law [wikipedia.org]
It matters not a whit how damaging their actions are to the environment when there is no possible recourse available.
Re:seems to be a common theme (Score:5, Insightful)
In a democratic society, recourse becomes available after majority of population is informed of harm caused by the issue and pressure their representatives to change the law.
As a result, information and its presentation in mass media is important. Regardless of the fact that US is more of an oligarchy than democracy today.
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A democracy normally has protections to prevent the majority demanding things that do undue harm to a minority.
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While I would be inclined to agree with you, the fact that the exceptions pointed out by GP already exist seems to indicate regulatory / congress capture has already happened.
Providing information to the public may not work in this case.
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I agree with you, hence my last sentence and emphasis on "democratic society".
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majority of population is informed of harm caused by the issue and pressure their representatives to change the law.
Where can I find such a democracy?
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Switzerland comes to mind as one of the last bastions of it, as do Nordic countries, especially Iceland.
Re:seems to be a common theme (Score:4, Insightful)
There are other choices than those two. Including choice of reducing usage of natural gas and oil in the first place because they become too costly.
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Attention span of many people on the internet is about two sentences. I took three to deliver the obvious caveat. I guess I can blame no one but myself :D
Okay, so this has what to do with fracking then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies have been pumping water (usually wastewater or seawater) down wells since the start of the latter half of the 20th century, to restore pressure in oil reservoirs. So how is this anything new and anything connected with fracking?
Also, I don't unerstand why people make such a big deal out of these minor earthquakes which are general to small too feel even if you're paying attention for them. The amount of energy they're dealing with is only in the ballpark of these tiny quakes; compared to a large earthquake, it'd be like a mouse trying to push a boulder off a cliff. Either the boulder is ready to go or it's not, the mouse makes essentially no difference.
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Re: Okay, so this has what to do with fracking the (Score:2, Insightful)
...
You know what 'fracking' refers to, right? Hydraulic fracturing?
The rocks are being purposely stressed by high pressure liquids and crack under the pressure, releasing oil/gas that was previously trapped and irretrievable.
So what this has to do with fracking is that they thought that just pumping fluid back in would hold things up, but clearly that's not true. The integrity of the final rock/fluid combination is inferior to the original. Old wells were like sticking a straw in a drink and sucking it up.
Re: Okay, so this has what to do with fracking the (Score:5, Informative)
So what this has to do with fracking is that they thought that just pumping fluid back in would hold things up, but clearly that's not true.
That's not at all how it works. The fluid exists to create hydraulic pressure. They put sand or tiny ceramic balls in the water to fill the voids created by the fractures to "hold things up."
This article relates to what they do with all the water after it returns to surface. They go find another well that doesn't produce anymore (or drill a new one into a non-producing zone) and pump the water in. HOWEVER, salt water disposal (SWD) is an operation that has been going on for decades. It's not new or unique to fracturing in the slightest making this article just more incorrect bullshit, and your post only adds to that. Please stop posting if you don't know what you're talking about as this only adds to the incorrect info that surrounds this issue.
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So what this has to do with fracking is that they thought that just pumping fluid back in would hold things up, but clearly that's not true.
That's not at all how it works. The fluid exists to create hydraulic pressure. They put sand or tiny ceramic balls in the water to fill the voids created by the fractures to "hold things up."
And the interesting part is that there are quakes and there are QUAKES.
Not just energy but location. The serious risk of quakes involves some darn
deep structures. Deeper than any well and with vastly greater risk to
life and property.
Hydraulic fracturing and pumping waste to include CO2 into deep wells
can be expected to generate measurable seismic events. Some might
be felt without instruments.
Recall the coal fire and collapse in Utah generated a 3.9 on the Richter scale.
http://www.seis.utah.edu/Repor. [utah.edu]
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You don't understand how it works. After the high-pressure injection of fluids for the hydraultic fracturing, they introduce sand (propant) to hold the cracks open, and then they release the fluid pressures. So it doesn't stay pressurized. It's just the opposite, because the next stage is to pump out the hydrocarbons.
What the article describes is something else: waste-water disposal. And while hydraulic fracturing does produce a lot of waste water needing proper disposal, so do plenty of other industrie
Re:Okay, so this has what to do with fracking then (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Okay, so this has what to do with fracking then (Score:5, Informative)
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buildings on the east coast are not built with earthquakes in mind like west coast ones
TIL: Oklahoma City is on the east coast.
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As someone jocularly points out, that should be more or less "east of the Continental Divide" (rather than "east coast") -- because the eastern half of the continent doesn't have big quakes often enough to remind them to build for quakes. They've long since forgotten the massive New Madrid quakes of the 19th century.
And Oklahoma is not a seismic-free zone in the first place. Here's a handy seismic zones chart -- you may notice OK in fact has a region of routine moderate earthquake activity:
http://www.ivi-in [ivi-intl.com]
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The politics of not having my property and quality of life destroyed by an asshat company's pursuit of profits. And by the way, trickle-down economics policies don't work.
Re:Okay, so this has what to do with fracking then (Score:4, Insightful)
Reproducibility is a key element in scientific research. I've think you've demonstrated a pretty strong case for it right there.
Also: Occam's Razor. You didn't have earthquakes before and they started when the practice of crumbling the foundational geology beneath you. And this is happening in many places where they never previously experienced earthquakes. As if we even need a scientific study commissioned to determine this? The repeated, consistent anecdotal evidence is overwhelming proof enough on its own.
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http://www.ivi-intl.com/pdfs/I... [ivi-intl.com]
Oklahoma is NOT a quake-free region in the first place.
Now if western North Dakota suddenly started having quakes (since per USGS records, ND has the lowest incidence of quakes of any U.S. state, and what quakes ND has are of the lowest average intensity of any state) ....then I'd listen.
Re:Okay, so this has what to do with fracking then (Score:5, Insightful)
Standard denialist garbage. What amount of fact is enough to convince you? Think about that for a moment. What data would you have to see, to be convinced that fracking is causing earthquakes?
As to proof, how do you know anything is real? We might be living on a roughly spherical shaped object lit by a much larger nearby roughly spherical object, or we might not. We could be living in a giant simulator that is so good, supernaturally good, that we can't tell it apart from reality. God could have created the universe in 7 days. How can we tell? We can't! We understand that we can make good conclusions from observable reality, no matter whether it is real or not. To the best of our knowledge, what we observe is real, but we understand there could be a deeper reality. Whether there is or not does not affect our work.
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How about peer-reviewed data with a peer-reviewed statistical correlation?
Is that really that unfair of a requirement?
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Is peer-reviewed data with a peer-reviewed statistical correlation really that unfair of a requirement?
Maybe. If that's demanded for proof that the sky is blue, water flows downhill, the sun rises in the east, 2+2=4, or God exists, then it is an unfair requirement. Don't ask for proof for simple conclusions that anyone can reach with Occam's Razor. Don't demand proof for the unprovable. Raising those aren't expressing honest doubts, it's playing politics, using doubt to block further inquiry, delay remedial action that might impact someone negatively.
Rather, ask for proof of the counterintuitive. It m
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How about peer-reviewed data with a peer-reviewed statistical correlation? Is that really that unfair of a requirement?
There's tonnes of peer reviewed data out on this. In fact TFS has a link to one such paper. The fact that fracking causes seismic activity is not in doubt at all in geophysics circles. The correlations are dead easy as well. If you have the data, it is easy to produce graphs showing large increases in seismic activity when injection is taking place.
What's a more interesting question is whether the current data is capturing all the seismic activity being induced and whether some of the larger quakes that occ
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You do realize that making patronizing statements with "standard denialist" in your litany is actually counterproductive to any sort of rational debate, don't you? Either facts stand on their own in the face of dissent or they don't. And the "facts" of today might not be the "facts" of tomorrow, assuming we are continually collecting data (defined as the result of scientific measures/experiments).
As for "masses of anecdotes resulting in data," I would point you to all the "we can light our tap water on fire
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A majority of them are too small to be felt, but we have had 5.9's and 4.0's before. ..... ......
The big deal is that it's starting to damage buildings.
Historic building codes in OK are not seismic risk aware.
Only recently have the codes in the hot spot around New Madrid
been partly addressed. In Calif there is a major industry
retrofitting buildings. It is costly and it is being driven by
an industry that profits from it. It is a good thing to reinforce
buildings, it is less good when the invoice arrives.
The cost of seismic retrofit in the Midwest could bankrupt
many states... and for the same reason tornado shelters
are not part of all schools, office
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My house is developing a few cracks here and there, and some people are even getting serious enough as to having some foundational issues.
This also happens in central Texas, where there aren't baby earthquakes happening. It's caused by ground settling under a slab foundation due to drought, and then again from the reverse when the drought ends. It's also the reason you don't have basements in Oklahoma or most of Texas, because eventually the foundations would just get floated out of the ground. Just because baby earthquakes are happening at the same time as cracks in the walls doesn't imply cause.
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Ground water pollution. (Score:1)
It's the ground water pollution [scientificamerican.com], for one.
For the other, this is completely different than the old days of shooting sea water or many times they used steam; so comparing fracking to old ways of getting oil is irrelevant.
Thridly, there are quite a few issues that are coming to light but the industry - like all induestries - is stone walling and as far as I am concerned, lieing until proven otherwise because ALL businesses will lie through their teeth to protect profits.
Money rules. Human wellbeing drools - in
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The "ground water contamination" is, if you look at the article, from METHANE, where some water wells have had methane for decades. Its not a big deal, you can drink water with methane in it, and you only need a simple construction to vent off the dissolved gas so that it doesn't accumulate in the house and blow something up.
Methane in drinking water occurs naturally, and as a result of coal mining operations, and sometimes any sort of drilling, with or without fracking. The whole thing is yet another "Le
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My Dad's water well had methane, not the "chemical analysis report" kind of methane but the water fizzed like soda pop kind of methane. There were no oil or gas well, nor were there any coal mines, just an oil seep down by the river. We pretty much avoided glass water glasses because pressure surges from the methane would knock the glass out of our hands.
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Companies have been pumping water (usually wastewater or seawater) down wells since the start of the latter half of the 20th century, to restore pressure in oil reservoirs. So how is this anything new and anything connected with fracking?
Also, I don't unerstand why people make such a big deal out of these minor earthquakes which are general to small too feel even if you're paying attention for them. The amount of energy they're dealing with is only in the ballpark of these tiny quakes; compared to a large earthquake, it'd be like a mouse trying to push a boulder off a cliff. Either the boulder is ready to go or it's not, the mouse makes essentially no difference.
The difference is where the fluid is going. In a normal oil well, the introduce pressurize fluids to increase pressure and push the oil up the well. They're introducing fluid to a geological area that's had fluid in it for millions of years. There's no real change there, no reason for the earth to shift.
What this study shows is that after they are done fracking they need to dispose of their fluids so they're digging a NEW well and pumping the fluid down to an area that's been dry for millions of years. They
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Because doesn't fracking fracture the strata and thus make the ground more unstable? Correct me if I'm wrong here. I don't know the magnitude, but it doesn't sound like a good thing to do overall. The whole thing is a bad idea period. How about just ending our addiction to oil? Nope. Can't do that while there is ground to rape and destroy so some cartel can stay in power for a few more years.
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I wonder... (Score:1)
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Regulation will happen when most of the resources that fracking allows us access too have been used up.
No accountability (Score:4, Insightful)
It's really interesting to see the lengths that fracking companies put between themselves and wastewater, basically outsourcing the wastewater manage process to entirely separate companies explicitly for the purpose of no longer being responsible for the wastewater. They've done this pretty much from the start, too.
At the beginning it was most likely to give themselves a buffer when the environmental problems or health problems arose due to all those unclassified chemicals of dubious safety used in fracking that remain in the wastewater. Now it may provide them another buffer when it comes time to blame a party for the cause of these earthquakes.
Much like the GMO argument, it is the strange and suspicious actions of the companies that raises concerns rather than what they are doing. I'm sure more ethical businesses could frack and dispose of wastewater safely; none do. Just as I'm sure Monsanto could make GMO products without such bizarre legal actions that leverage their product to punish farmers.
People wouldn't bat an eye if the fracking or GMO industry had transparency, honesty, and responsibility rather than endless misdirection and threats.
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It's really interesting to see the lengths that fracking companies put between themselves and wastewater, basically outsourcing the wastewater manage process to entirely separate companies explicitly for the purpose of no longer being responsible for the wastewater. They've done this pretty much from the start, too.
Actually the reason for that is not as nefarious as you think, and its the same reason for outsourcing construction, operation, commissioning, maintenance and many of the other activities various companies outsource.
The idea is simple. The companies make their money by getting shit out of the ground and selling it. Their value lies in the exploration rights and their proven reserves. Everything else is technical details. Most upstream oil companies are staffed with geophysicists, geologists, and anyone capa
A good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
That makes the faults more prone to slippages and earthquakes.
If my meager understanding of earthquakes is correct, these small slippages release in small bits the tectonic stress that could otherwise build up until a bigger quake happens. So, frack away?
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Mod parent up. NOVA had a earthquake eposide. The more the plates stick, the more energy builds up and then leads to a major quake. The actually can calculate the amount of energy that is current stored because of the sticking.
So frack away.
Re: A good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Both. Since you can't be bothered to read what I wrote attentively, I'll tryoto expand and break it down:
Fracking releases the energy in the faults, thus fracking triggers quakes. But the energy doesn't come from fracking - it comes from plate tectonics. And the quake would have happened anyway, possibly causing more damage like a pressure pot with a defective release valve. So fracking doesn't cause *additional* quaking - it replaces a few (possibly) big quakes with several smaller ones.
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That's like someone pushing you off a cliff and then blaming gravity for your death.
OK, Nostradamus, we believe you...
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Then why does it generate quakes in areas that previously had no big ones on record? What you say does happen sometimes, but often the slippage might never have happened at all, at least not for thousands of years.
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Yes, there's a reply to my original post that the fillers do not stabilize the damage well enough, and that's causing new dynamics in faults that were until now quiescent.
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Except that it increases the energy in the next sticking point causing it to build faster than the little quakes they naturally have can release it. So they get a big quake they never would have had.
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fact of the matter is, these are NOT relieving stresses that would prevent a larger quake. the stresses that cause big quakes are typically much deeper in the crust than the quakes triggered by fracking, and deeper than the fracking itself occurs at. in fact, these only serve to make a big quake more likely by removing the tectonic structures that have so far been holding the deeper forces in place.
source: i study this crap for a living.
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Yes, another /.-er said that weakening of the gas-rich strata changes the stress field, causing reacommodation in places that were previously stable. Is there any serious before/after record of displacements / etc (besides seismic events) to build a solid case in court / regulators ?
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Now we're talking. There's one thing that doesn't add up to me: does the energy delivered by the process approximate the energy released seismically?
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I'm not clear why it should. If you have geological structures under stress, there is already considerable energy in the system, and it may only take a small amount of additional energy to release the much larger amount being pent up.
If you have a bowling ball balanced at the top of a cliff, the energy released by it falling and hitting the ground far below is far greater than the energy required to push it over the cliff.
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That analogy doesn't resemble fault dynamics at all. Perhaps a better one would be pushing a heavy object along a hard floor; as it moves, some points of contact stick, flexing the structure a tiny bit until the stress exceeds the static friction, and every little jolt is like a seismic event. That's how regular fault accommodation causes quakes, and the longer the points of friction are stuck a bigger jolt becomes more likely.
But never mind - there are other replies to my top-level comment that propose oth
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The analogy seems fine to me. In both cases you have a large amount of potential energy (in one case gravity, in the other frictional forces) and in both cases a catalyst of relatively small amounts of energy can upset the system and cause a much larger release of energy.
Re: Not a good thing (Score:2)
Yes, the "small force triggering a big release" part is alright. The flaw lies in assuming theres a single bowling ball; to follow your analogy, imagine that balls keep coming in at a more or less constant rate until the shelf flexes and all come down (avalanches work like this too). Wouldn't you rather shake the shelf to make one ball fall at a time? (IIRC, avalanches are sometimes triggered on purpose).
Plate movement doesn't stop either, and the fault can accommodate and dissipate its stress in big or sma
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Your honor, I assure you those people would have died eventually anyway. I didn't kill them, I just got it over with a few decades early!
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A 3.0 is noticeable without a seismograph. While a single 3.0 is no big deal, 240 of them in a year can crack your foundation.
So if you prefer, "Your honor, I assure you, his house would have been condemned eventually, I just got it over with 40 years early.
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I learned after posting that comment that some of the quakes happened in places without a significant seismic history. And thar the fracking may have caused a redistribution of stresses by weakening the gas bearing strata. (Which is not the same as crowing "You said you weren't causing quakes and now you can! Which is it, huh? Huh?")
The fun part will be taking Big Oil to court. How well have the areas where they operate been monitored?
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Not in this case. These earthquakes are occurring on previously quiescent faults. The faults don't have tectonic stress accumulating (or if they do, the accumulation is very slow) because they aren't on plate boundaries or in other geologically active areas.
The energy that's being released in these earthquakes has been in these rocks for millions of years. It would never have been released at all, if it weren't for the fracking.
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Re: A good thing (Score:3)
Huh? Don't all quakes release energy?
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That makes the faults more prone to slippages and earthquakes.
If my meager understanding of earthquakes is correct, these small slippages release in small bits the tectonic stress that could otherwise build up until a bigger quake happens. So, frack away?
Well, that's why a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. The problem is that they are pumping wastewater back into the area they just fracked thinking they can use the same mediocre methods of disposal and stability management used in non-fracking well processes. What we are seeing is that the hydraulic fracturing used to release the oil and gas from inside pockets of shale that are trapped inside other geologic strata. If the fracturing only affected the shale there may not be so much issue, but the fractu
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So it's not really about faults accommodating plate displacement, but about new dynamics created by collapse in the fractured rock. And the statistics suggest that something is indeed changing. Are there any measurements of the strata backing up this?
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Unfortunately, the oil companies probably have that data and seeing it might be impossible. Getting independent data would be prohibitively expensive and would require the permission of the land holder, in this case the oil company. And it's not new dynamics. The stresses were there but had eqilibrized over time, so yes, you do have pressure/stress/tension built up in the rock that the water can't replace once that structure within the strata has been compromised. Just like what happens when you disturb any
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And build pressure upstream at the next sticking point so those people can have the big quake instead.
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Hi, exploration geophysicist here.
Existing faults exist with various levels of stress. Some of them are sitting on a hair trigger to release massive amounts of energy. Maybe it naturally would have been another 50000 years before it would go off. And the hair trigger can be indirectly disturbed by a smaller nearby quake.
Smaller quakes can relieve pressure in one place but this then puts more pressure in another place further down the line, the ground is all connected. That's what happened in Haiti, the faul
Re: A good thing (Score:2)
I thought all quakes dissipated energy reducing the total stress, but this may still be true while increasing concentration elsewhere as you suggest. Another reply to my comment says that the fractured layer isn't as strong as before, resulting in new shifts and accomodation in faults that were stable. What do you think?
Power rule rules! (Score:2)
But it would be impossible to hold the owners of these four wells accountable for anything. There are "experts" available for hire whose specialization is to muddy the waters and raise enough reasona
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If extraction is causing property damage, then property owners should be compensated. If other forms of environmental damage are being caused by these practices, the practices should be evaluated.
A small problem... (Score:3, Interesting)
They're nice enough to put their numbers and charts online. Which is great. https://cornell.app.box.com/okquakes/1/2137038978/18684174734/1
Unfortunately, their own charts show a bit of a problem. Specifically Figure S1.
The increase in earthquakes over time is definite. And it's NOT generally where the actual injection wells are. Sure, there's a few quakes recorded in the middle of the injection well area, but they're not consistent, and they don't map with time.
The earthquakes do map well with one thing, though: they seem to swarm around active seismic stations that aren't near fracking disposal wells. Which seems to either show that seismometers create earthquakes, or that they have some instrumentation issues.
Re:A small problem... (Score:4, Informative)
If you look at the charts again, you'll notice the earthquakes occur generally near the fault line, which is not surprising, is it? And the stations are near the fault line too, which probably is a good idea, don't you think?
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The small fault that seems to be generating most of the seismic activity in the study is not only quite a few miles away, it's not connected to any of the major faults in the area - and there's a long, major fault (Nemaha Fault) in between the injection wells and the earthquake zone. (Figure S9 shows this dramatically)
It gets better. According to the notes for Figure S3, water is extracted on the west side of the Nemaha Fault and re-injected on the east side. Which means that the earthquakes are increasing
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Rocks at depths like these don't allow water to flow very fast, so the earthquakes form a kind of spreading halo around the injection site that moves slowly away and eventually dissipates if you stop injecting.
...except that no such effect appears on their maps.
Not to mention the other thing - where the wells they extract the water from originally are on the side of the fault where the earthquakes happened, and the wells where they inject the water are on the other side of the fault, away from the earthquakes. Not only is it counterintuitive, it's the opposite of what they claim in the study.
Earthquakes are deep, oil wells are not. (Score:1)
I dont get it. The average depth of oil/gas wells here in Oklahoma is approx 5,000 ft. The typical depth of earthquakes here in Oklahoma is approx 16,000 ft. I'm not seeing a connection between the two. But there is a geographical correlation and here's why.
When I worked for a large oil exploration company here in Oklahoma, I wrote software to search for "fault zones" because areas where the formations are broken up due to tectonic activity is also an attractive place to explore for and produce oil, in oth
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Oil company employee finds no problem with oil extraction. News at 11.
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The water follows the cracks... (Score:2)
I dont get it. The average depth of oil/gas wells here in Oklahoma is approx 5,000 ft. The typical depth of earthquakes here in Oklahoma is approx 16,000 ft. I'm not seeing a connection between the two.
First: You're looking at the wrong wells. What's the depth of the injection wells?
Second: The depth of the well doesn't particularly matter, as long as it connects the water to a fault system. The water spreads out through the fault, turning it into a hydraulic jack the size of a small eastern state or so
Just wait.. (Score:2, Funny)
One of these days, Fracking is going to cause an earthquake so large that it is going to cause Oklahoma to separate from the continental united states and drift off to sea.
A complete lack of understanding (Score:1)
The ignorance of the science of geology here is astounding. Many of you don't understand the difference between hydraulic fracturing and deep waste injection. You don't understand the mechanisms of earthquakes, You don't understand rheology (look it up). You probably think that Zorin's plan in a "View to a Kill" was feasible.
Lies! (Score:1, Informative)
It's All Good (Score:1)
1. Good to relieve pressure in these mostly tiny, barely noticeable quakes
2. We need fossil fuel, that's reality for now
3. It's just Oklahoma for fuck's sake, so who gives a shit?
Better Pray! (Score:2)
Bullshit headline (Score:1)
First of all, injection wells are not "fracking" (which is properly spelled fracing) and injection wells used for disposal of wastewater are not injecting only water from hydraulic fracturing. There are thousands of wells drilled with traditional vertical drilling methods in Oklahoma that produce water. There are wells that produce 90% water and 10% oil for most of the life of the well and this is common in some formations in Oklahoma (e.g. Mississippi Lime). That water has to be disposed of because it ha
The number in the article is a bit off (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"fracking" refers to the whole process. and that process as it is right now seems to cause earthquakes. if that is because the company owner have godlike powers or because they pump water back in causing issues is irrelvant.
Re: (Score:3)
That's weird, I found unknown shoes in my closet this morning and now everything tastes blue.