I just saw a couple articles on possible links between shale extraction and (smallish) earthquakes.
This doesn’t sound like nonsense to me, based on the studies mentioned and linked to in the articles. Is it though? And would it only be smallish earthquakes it could cause if it really can cause earthquakes?
BGinCHI
I’m not sure how to connect this to the GOP presidential field, nor to the Paterno scandal, but I’ve got my best man on it.
cathyx
Let me guess, the companies deny any relationship to the earthquakes and they have scientists to back that up.
Dave
I wouldn’t be surprised by this at all. Or that the gas companies knew about it and simply didn’t give a shit.
fasteddie9318
Wrong Again DougJ is, no surprise, wrong again. All this breathless reporting about imagined earthquakes ignores the fact that the ground where I am is perfectly still. Why won’t Wrong Again DougJ acknowledge that there are lots of places you can go where there are not currently any earthquakes?
And that Joe Romm dude should try a little eyeshadow and some freaking hair transplants. He’s not helping his credibility looking like that.
kindness
It isn’t fracking.
God just hates Oklahoma. Of course the benevolent FSM does. Who doesn’t?
@fasteddie9318: trolling or over the top snark. Can’t tell.
Dream On
Oklahoma? 5.6 earthquakes? It really would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Fracking has also been linked with a series of earthquakes in Blackpool UK – not earthquake territory by any stretch. It is planned that this technology will be applied in Scotland.
4tehlulz
Al Gore is shaky.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
You know, California has had earthquakes without fracking, so there must not be a connection. See Winter::Global Warming.
Downpuppy
It’s real, but no big deal. These are things you couldn’t even feel. A 1.8 is 1/10,000 the strength of the east coast earthquake that did no real damage a few months ago.
This is on the scale of blasting a road cut.
DougJ
@Dream On:
It doesn’t seem to be pure speculation.
fasteddie9318
@BGinCHI: Maybe the ground is shaking because Herb Cain just tried to stick its hand down his pants.
Actually you can use the same line for the PSU scandal.
Martin
Well, ‘earthquake’ is an overly broad term. The Lockerbie crash registered a 1.6. Basically, almost anything can be measured as an earthquake.
But overall, yeah, there should be some collateral damage from extraction. I know up in the central valley, the land has subsided about 10 feet or so due to oil extraction. Take something out, and the land is going to shift. How big an earthquake probably depends on how broadly you’re extracting (one site vs thousands of sites) and how quickly you’re extracting, and whether some seismic activity was inevitable and this served as a trigger.
DougJ
@Downpuppy:
That’s what it sounded like to me, as well.
Dream On
@DougJ: Why speculate? There’s a clear link to me. Oklahoma? WTF?
BGinCHI
@fasteddie9318: I was going to invoke Angry Baby Jesus, but it was too early in the thread.
The Ancient Randonneur
Why even bother to look into it if Al Gore is STILL fat. The answer should be obvious.
PeakVT
And would it only be smallish earthquakes it could cause if it really can cause earthquakes?
For the most part there are no oil or gas deposits in areas where there is a high amount of accumulated stress, e.g. subduction zones and large slip-strike faults, so we haven’t tested this. I doubt subduction faults could be affected because the point of contact is so deep. But if somebody started pumping fluid into the San Andreas, it could potentially cause a large locked region to finally come loose.
AFAIK there’s been no fracking in the SoCal fields…. yet.
MattF
I’d have found it hard to believe, but there’s this from the AP:
Oklahoma had about 50 earthquakes annually until 2009. Then the number spiked, and 1,047 quakes shook the state last year.
Added: … and here’s the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/smaller-tremors-follow-record-setting-56-magnitude-earthquake-in-central-oklahoma/2011/11/08/gIQASChEzM_story.html
Just coincidentally in 2009, the fracking operations started. So, it’s not so ridiculous.
Villago Delenda Est
Let’s just say that it’s a tad too early to draw any conclusions. It’s not like you’ve got 30 years worth of numbers to draw on in the case of climate change.
You can rest assured, however, that the frackers and their allies amongst the wingtards will state, for the record and with metaphysical certitude that there is no connection, no way, no how.
Petorado
The connection between drilling, fracking, and earthquakes has already been demonstrated in Arkansas.
Oklahoma has 195 drilling rigs actively operating right now, that compares to about 118 for Saudi Arabia. Most of the Oklahoma wells are horizontal/ fracked.
What do expect when you are drilling hundreds of wells in a confined area and injecting millions of gallons of water and tons of sand below the surface at very high pressures with the intent of breaking apart underground rock formations — that you won’t alter anything else in the process? Hubris, man, hubris.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@BGinCHI:
“a tumblin down
a tumblin down. . .”
Linda Featheringill
Fracking could logically cause the ground to subside.
The numbers in Oklahoma, though, are very interesting. What about other states?
cathyx
Now all we need to do is add the Tar Sands Pipeline through here and we can have a huge environmental catastrophe.
Linda Featheringill
@Petorado:
Okay. We seem to have similar results from Arkansas. Hmmm.
jwb
The paper today carried a nice article, almost certainly paid for by the fracking industry, that admitted that fracking can cause small earthquakes (the article reassured us that these earthquakes were the equivalent of dropping a milk jug on the floor). Although pooh-poohing those who worried that fracking might pose the risk of triggering a significant earthquake, the article couldn’t help but mention that the oil and gas fracking releases tends to follow fault lines and that pumping that water into the area both provides additional lubricant along the fault as well as pressure to produce additional space between the rocks, both of which would make a small earthquake more likely. The article then confidently stated that the limits of a manmade earthquake were surely in the 5s, while admitting that no one really knows, and so concluded that it would be best to just shut up now so that no one gets too concerned. I found the article amusing, in a read the news like we’re reading Pravda in the old Soviet Union kind of way.
Someguy
I think it’s more likely that Gaia is really fucking pissed at us for sticking pipes in her, Penn State style, and the Earthquakes are her feebly swatting at us with tiny T-Rex arms.
But seriously, this is a pretty good argument that could be used to stop all fracking until further study could be completed showing that it’s not the case.
The prophet Nostradumbass
This isn’t specifically about “fracking”, but it absolutely is known that water injection can cause earthquakes.
Kola Noscopy
Golly gee whiz by golly whillikers, DougJ, I just don’t know!
But there is this thing called google, and another thing called the Internet. Maybe you could do some research and get an answer, ya think?
SectarianSofa
@Linda Featheringill:
I know there have been some reports in Ft. Worth, Texas. The first search I found gave me :
from http://www.iacenter.org/environment/frakingquakes090511/
trollhattan
I could imagine scemarios where fracking might “trigger” quakes in fault areas by accelerating the slippage already occurring, but not causing quakes in non-seismic areas. And the possibility of unleasing a big quake on a major fault simply isn’t viable.
In any case, it’s a distraction from the real issue: contamination of groundwater and surface water. The manner in which these operations are being conducted assures in situ cleanup will be impossible, and the asshats doing the extraction will be long gone and won’t be held accountable. “So long, suckers!”
That’s reason enough to stop, yesterday. Burden of proof, drillers, burden of proof.
Yutsano
@Kola Noscopy: Pedo.
Punchy
“Fracking” sounds like copulation with a white person.
BTW, Sully is now blaming earthquakes for impregnating Sarah Palin and her irregular child.
Kola Noscopy
Psycho.
Yutsano
@Kola Noscopy: Shut it pedo.
gbear
@Petorado:
I expect the ground to eventually turn into a giant bowl of rice pudding.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@BGinCHI:
Those so-called earthquakes are really signs of intelligent shaking. They mean that God is angry with us for leaving all of that oil down there in the ground when it was meant to be up here running through the gas tanks of exurban SUVs and ride-on lawnmowers.
dmbeaster
No, fracking is not going to cause a significant earthquake, nor can it be implicated in the recent OK quakes. I am sure it induces small quakes in the area of drilling (as pointed out above, all sorts of surface activity can induce very small earth tremors), but the forces involved wont ramp up to a larger scale.
Most earthquakes occur far deeper than any drilling. The OK quake was shallow at three miles deep. The pressures and forces involved at that depth far exceed anything caused by fracking, and you are not influencing anything at that depth with fracking.
Maybe fracking right on an active fault line could provide the additional 1% needed to trigger built up strain, but that is doubtful. Earthquakes result from truly massive amounts of force stored up in rocks under great strain – fracking is ant-like in proportion to those elephantine forces.
Southern Beale
DougJ:
Did you see THIS about last week’s oil industry conference?
Jesus this is a fucking war. GET OFF THE OIL TIT people! HIt ’em where it hurts, their wallets.
Assholes.
Southern Beale
DougJ:
Did you see THIS about last week’s oil industry confab?
Jesus this is a fucking war. GET OFF THE OIL TIT people! HIt ’em where it hurts, their wallets.
Assholes.
Kola Noscopy
@Yutsano:
Cram it psycho.
Wag
I have a nifty little weather app on my iPhone (eWeather HD) that includes a program that allows you to see where earthquakes have occured in the preceding 24 hours, including the strength and depth. There was a 3.6 magnitude earthquake at 12:05 MST in OK at a depth of 3 miles. Yesterday there were 4 quakes in the same region, including a 4.7 magnitude. It is really striking to look at how closely clustered these
Check out this map of the past week’s quakes, then zoom in on OK.
cleek
@Punchy:
in the BSG universe, “frak” (also “frack”) is a synonym for “fuck”.
celticdragonchick
Cool program called reactiva that allows you to vary fluid pressure, confining pressure and prevailing force directions with respect to a pre-exsisting fault line that may or may not slip again according to your parameters. I got to use it in structural geology a couple of yearas ago.
Yes, pumping a bunch of fluid down a deep hole can reactivate fault lines.
http://www.geociencias.unam.mx/~alaniz/AlanizASA2000.pdf
Chris T.
@jwb: Just remember: v Pravde net izvestiy, v Izvestiyakh net pravdy!
Moonbatting Average
@dmbeaster: I’m inclined to agree. Gas companies use the microseismicity from fracking operations to “see” how the fractures propagate. It’s not a big secret that those small (2.0-3.0 mag)seismic events happen. A 5.6 magnitude quake is 1000 times stronger than a 2.6 (magnitudes are log scale), so it’s not realistic that fracking caused the tremor directly, though as others have noted, it’s possible (though I’d argue not all that probable) that injection could activate an existing fault under strain.
Sometimes quakes just happen in odd places (see: Washington, D.C.). There are real issues about fracking, mostly having to do with bad well completions contaminating groundwater, and dealing with the disposal of the flowback water (I think in AR and the UK, the seismicity was caused by injection disposal rather than fracking its self). Those are serious issues that regulators should be encouraged by us to act on. The seismicity from fracking is probably not that big of a deal.
Moonbatting Average
Also, here’s the USGS writeup on the quake
Mouse Tolliver
@Downpuppy:
“No real damage” my ass! Here’s video of the “no real damage” from the east coast earthquake. It shows a car that was flattened by a collapsed brick wall. If anyone had been in the car at the time, they would’ve been killed.
Liberty60
@dmbeaster:
My thoughts as well; From the little I know of earthquakes, they result from the movement of tecttonic plates many miles underground, far below anything we have drilled, and from forces that are continental in scale.
However- not all earth movements are earthquakes. Drilling and pumping have often triggered landslides, subsidence, sinkholes, and the like. It isn’t unreasonable to suspect that extensive drilling and messing about with groundwater could trigger small localized earth movement.
But contra the Wurlitzer, I will wait for actual scientists to weigh in.
Moonbatting Average
@celticdragonchick: Cool paper. There is a mountain of geological literature dealing with the interactions between fluid pressure and fault slip. Most of my reading has dealt with whether elevated fluid pressure could allow slip on normal-fault planes that aren’t Andersonian “ideal”.
It sure seems to me like if fracking were causing significant quakes, the gas fields in the Rockies and the Basin & Range would be where it would be more likely to happen (e.g. the Hilliard, Mancos, or Lewis), given the much more active, and recent, tectonic history.
celticdragonchick
@Moonbatting Average:
\
I believe there was some incidence of fault reactivation in Colorado at an Army depot where liquid waste was being flushed into a deep core well back in the 60’s.
ZaftigAmazon
Ditto CelticDragonChick.
When I was in Junior High (mid- to late- ’60s, about 60 miles north of Denver, Colorado), we started having small earthquakes. At the time the Army was disposing of hazardous materials,at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, by pumping them deep underground. This went on for several years. It did come to the attention of local authorities. When the Army stopped this deep-site waste disposal, the tremblors subsided.
Bill
@Moonbatting Average:
RE: the quake in DC, weren’t they fracking north of there in Pennsylvania?
dmbeaster
@Moonbatting Average: Thanks for posting that article that speculated about the likely cause of the OK quake. I was assuming that would be the cause based on what is know about the king of this type of fault activity in that part of the MidWest – the New Madrid fault. However, it is impossible to know much about these types of buried faults that show no surface rupture, nor any other kind of surface feature that enables a more educated guess about underlying structure. The inference based on a 300 million year old event is itself speculative, but is the best theory at the moment.
evinfuilt
I know I’m a day late, and no one will read this. The important lesson learned from the Colorado “experiements” was that smaller fault lines can be lubed. We also know that those smaller quakes may loosen a major fault line, which would trigger a much larger quake.
Think back to Mt Helens, when it finally blew, the trigger wasn’t the build up of pressure underneath, it was a small quake that caused a land slide, which meant the mtn could no longer hold back the pressure. Smaller events can easily add up to something much larger, much more dangerous.
This is why in California they’re afraid to lube any of the fault lines, it may relieve pressure, but at the same time it may also trigger a much larger quake taking advantage of that small shift.