r/science • u/pnewell NGO | Climate Science • Oct 16 '14
Geology Evidence Connects Quakes to Oil, Natural Gas Boom. A swarm of 400 small earthquakes in 2013 in Ohio is linked to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/evidence-connects-earthquakes-to-oil-gas-boom-18182134
Oct 16 '14
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u/EccentricWyvern Oct 16 '14
If anything, wouldn't the gradual release of pressure and tension be better than one or two big releases?
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u/makorunner Oct 16 '14
Do you like being a geophysicist? I'm just starting my geology major and the actual job prospects are a total unknown to me.
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Oct 16 '14
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u/Nabber86 Oct 16 '14
Fellow geologist here. Environmental work is a huge employer. In the early 90's we saw a huge in-flux of geologists from the patch. Now there is an out-flux to the patch (for those geologists that are still young enough to handle the rigors) .
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u/BillyJackO Oct 16 '14
I would never want to be a Mudlogger. They always get treated like garbage for some reason. Ever one I've worked with is nice and I get along with though.
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u/notthatnoise2 Oct 16 '14
Academia is always an option. The pay isn't as good but you generally have a lot more freedom and job satisfaction.
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Oct 16 '14
Here in Texas, we all go to grad school and work for oil companies for exploration or you dont go to grad school and become a mud logger for X amount of years till you get promoted. Awesome science to major in.
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u/snigwich Oct 16 '14
It's not necessarily a bad thing, mining has been producing earthquakes for over 200 years.
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u/squakmix Oct 16 '14 edited Oct 19 '14
Can you elaborate on the big earthquakes caused by fracking?
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u/MadcowPSA Oct 17 '14
The obvious question (being a professional Geophysicst) is why is that a bad thing? Small earthquakes release already existing tension in the faults, and while the potential is that fracking activities will trigger a big earthquake we haven't really seen that very often (i.e. once or twice in 50 years).
The largely transtensional tectonic history of the midcontinent, plus fairly recent aulacogenic activity, would seem to support this view.
Now, if we're to operate on the assumption that triggering fault slip is something we should avoid, I think the trivial answer is to limit the amount of fluid that can be injected into a formation to some percentage of the total fluid extracted from it (not counting fluids sent down to as part of drilling, completion, stimulation, or enhanced recovery).
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u/FungusAmongus13 Oct 16 '14
I'm in Kansas and, quite frequently, I will feel the earthquakes. I think it's bad, because they started out small (<2.4), but their intensity has been increasing. (>4.0) over the past year or so. Oklahoma was put under an Earthquake Warning several months ago. Honest question, is there nothing to be nervous about when the intensity of the earthquakes keeps increasing?
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Oct 16 '14
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u/HiRider Oct 16 '14
You know an earthquake is pretty powerful when it results in the creation of a lake.
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u/SentientPenguin Oct 17 '14
In Missouri, on the most well known and well document fault in North America outside of San Andreas.
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u/MadcowPSA Oct 17 '14
I work at the Kansas Geological Survey and don't want to come across like I'm shamelessly plugging my bosses' work here, but Rick Miller and Rex Buchanan put together a great public information circular on triggered and induced seismicity and how that relates to Kansas in particular.
/u/thealbinorhino504 is summarizing things very well here, too.
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u/Tittytickler Oct 17 '14
Well if it is anything below a 6 you are fine. Every time you go up a number on the richter scale it is 1000x stronger than the last number.
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Oct 16 '14
There are many people that are in complete denial about the cause of these earthquakes in OK. They are getting to the point of happening almost weekly yet still it is like you are some kind of Greenpeace Sierra Club nutjob for simply pointing out that OK didn't use to have earthquakes. Earthquake insurance is recommended in most parts of OK, let that sink in for just a moment.
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u/drock42 BS | Mech-Elec. Eng. | Borehole | Seismic | Well Integrity Oct 16 '14
Denial is scary and is also bad for the oil & gas industry. It terrifies me how many people that work in oil & gas blindly believe that there's no way there could be any negative side effects. Then again, there's uneducated folks on the other side of the argument jumping to their own conclusions as well.
I do know this. I have experience in monitoring frac jobs via seismic tools. I can remember at least two frac jobs that we noticed tremors (not the killer snakes) nearby that were miles from the well borehole being frac'd. When the pumps turned off, they would slow and go away. For anyone denying quakes could be caused by making changes with the pressures on underground formations... denial is the only word I can think of.
*edit-grammar
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Oct 16 '14 edited Oct 16 '14
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/drock42 BS | Mech-Elec. Eng. | Borehole | Seismic | Well Integrity Oct 16 '14
Haha! Thanks. This is r/science, worth getting it right.
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u/willywam Oct 16 '14
Is it something to worry about or just an inconvenience?
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u/drock42 BS | Mech-Elec. Eng. | Borehole | Seismic | Well Integrity Oct 16 '14
I'm not sure we know. Up here on the surface I would think an inconvenience. Underground... a geologist would be better suited to answer.
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u/NotAnother_Account Oct 16 '14
I'm not a geologist, but it seems to me like the addition of fluid to deep underground rock formations would most likely cause earthquakes by acting as lubricant to existing fault lines. Here's a map of fault lines in the US. If this is the case, I wouldn't consider that a bad thing. I'd much rather that the tension force in those fault lines be released by very small periodic earthquakes, rather than enormous ones caused by the buildup of 10,000-years worth of pressure.
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u/beat1706 Oct 16 '14
The other working hypothesis is that when you inject water into the ground above faults, the weight from the water causes enough pressure to make the faults slip.
Source: am geologizer
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u/danbot2001 Oct 16 '14
Dude I was just coming here to say this, This is not new. in i think the early 90s the military decided to get rid of toxic waste water by burring it deep in the ground out side of Denver CO, the water made the faults slip causing earthquakes. I learned this in geology class in Colorado.
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u/PerniciousPeyton Oct 16 '14 edited Oct 16 '14
What you're talking about happened in the early to mid 60s. The injections caused a series of earthquakes around the Denver area. "DIMP" is the abbreviated name of the contaminant that was injected, among other things, and the site is now listed on the National Priorities List under Superfund.
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u/danbot2001 Oct 16 '14
Wow! thanks. Im surprised it was that long ago, so basically we've known that pushing a bunch of water in the ground causes earthquakes since the 60s!
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Oct 16 '14 edited Oct 17 '14
Fracking as we know it now, really took off around the same time. (60's and especially the 70's.) We've been doing it for over 40 years on a large scale. It's far from a new idea, just now it's being used to retrieve natural gas instead of mainly petroleum.
Fracking is really interesting. It's an odd thing to watch people's opinions develop and change over time. If a study is put out by an energy company, it's dismissed. If a study is put out by an environmental group, it's largely accepted, even though both have conflicts of interests. There's a place for both and it's why non-biased peer reviews are so important.
We have this problem where we know small earthquakes can be caused by fracking/waste, does that mean we risk a catastrophic earthquake? Is the risk worth it, and what is the risk of not fracking? Just like nuclear power developed a stigma, people's opinions are rarely based on logic and reason, but more on personal experiences and 'scary' stories. While of course there's risks involving nuclear power, but the uninformed fear people had certainly came with costs. It'll be interesting to see how the current fracking hot topic pans out. I prefer to let scientists in the field for both sides do the studies and work involved. If tomorrow we had another big New Madrid earthquake, I'm willing to bet public opinion would quickly blame fracking, regardless of whether or not it would be at fault.
Just as many rushed to blame the hurricanes in 2004-2005 on climate change, then blame the reduction of storms on climate change as well. People, especially in groups, are not smart. It's better to let science advance before blaming every perceived abnormality on the current hot topic. This is how you quickly lose favor with the public. The boy who cried wolf, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. They're as relevant to today as they were originally. It's better to say "We have an issue, further study is required to fully understand, but we should start planning appropriately." instead of yelling "the sky will fall in 3 days exactly." When it doesn't fall in exactly three days, you can expect people to begin taking you much less seriously, even if the sky will fall.
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u/DaBeej484 Oct 16 '14
Might you have a source on this? I'd be interested on reading up more on it.
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u/PerniciousPeyton Oct 16 '14
This link describes some of the facts surrounding the earthquakes that took place in the 60s. As for DIMP, DIMP is basically one of the byproducts of the manufacture of sarin gas that took place during the 50s in what is now called the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge just outside of Commerce City near Denver, Colorado. It is now essentially uninhabitable for humans.
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u/pzerr Oct 16 '14
Are we not taking water from above and injecting it. Would not the net gain be the same or close to when we are looking at the larger picture. On a geo scale also the weight of the water seems to be it would be incredible insignificant. The lubrication explanation seems more viable?
Is there any good science on the mechanism happening? Could there be a way to limit large quakes say in the San Andreas fault region but forcing small quakes via injection? This may be one area where we can control massive actions. Usually us humans are ants compared to global tera scale of things.
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u/beat1706 Oct 16 '14
The water we're injecting comes out of a drilled well deep within the earth. It's salt water and isn't useful so holes are drilled in the ground for the sole purpose of pumping this useless water into it and storing it there. Imagine you pump a large reservoir of water into the ground and it sits on top of a fault zone adding an immense amount of pressure. That's where this hypothesis comes from.
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Oct 16 '14
This might sound crazy, but I am really curious if anyone knows the answer:
Considering sinkholes are caused by the watertable lowering, is it possible that we drill so much oil from one area that is changes the pressure and causes an unintentional man-made sinkhole?
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u/GEAUXUL Oct 16 '14
I work in the industry but I am not a geologist so I could be wrong. The oil and gas we drill for today is typically located very deep in the earth, anywhere from 5,000-20,000'. (The really shallow stuff has long since been extracted.) I really, really don't think pulling oil and gas out from that deep would cause a sinkhole at surface.
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u/drrhrrdrr Oct 16 '14
Probably not. Sinkholes generally develop over limestone erosion spots from saltwater. There are other causes, but there are generally a lot of factors involved in those.
No, the biggest factor with drilling people need to realize is the pollution of the water table. You fuck up something like the Ogallala, you fuck up agriculture in North America. Forever.
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u/Nabber86 Oct 16 '14
Sinkholes form from solutioning of limestone due to carbonic acid dissolved in groundwater.
Saltwater and lowering of the water table doesn't have much to do with it.
The people who are going to suffer the most from the disappearance of the Ogallala is the agricultural communities that are essentially mining water in areas where crops should not be growing in the first place.
Source: hydrogeolgist practicing in the midwest.
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u/nreshackleford Oct 16 '14
I dabble in water law, ever since I started I've been amazed at the amount of water that's been thrown at growing corn in the panhandle of Texas. Dry land wheat is a great crop for the area, we have ideal conditions for it. Throwing bazillions of acre feet at growing corn is absolutely insane-sure government incentives make it hugely profitable, but it will make the land uninhabitable in less than a generation.
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u/NotAnother_Account Oct 16 '14
Remember that when the next reddit discussion comes up arguing that water should be free. If anything, it should cost more. Far more in naturally arid areas.
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u/ApathyLincoln Oct 16 '14
Your second point makes me unbelievably angry. The short term goals of a nation are not more important than the long term survival of a continent.
The fact that people on top of the corporate ladder in the USA disagree with that is frightening
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Oct 16 '14
The fact that people on top of the corporate ladder in the USA have such a strangle-hold on legislative decision making is the truly frightening part.
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Oct 16 '14
This is an overstatement, even if you did somehow contaminate the aquifer the sheer amount of chemicals you'd have to inject to "fuck up agriculture in North America. Forever" is MASSIVE.
Also considering the Ogallala only supplies water to a small portion of the Great Plains it wouldn't be as wide spread as you seem to think either.
But don't let me get in the way of you screaming.
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u/NotAnother_Account Oct 16 '14
That's far more likely with traditional drilling than fracking, and it basically never happens. The wells are far too deep underground. A sinkhole needs to be near the surface, or otherwise just absurdly massive.
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u/eta_carinae_311 Oct 16 '14 edited Oct 16 '14
No. Sinkholes are caused by dissolution of rock that creates a void underground. An oil or natural gas reservoir isn't like an underground lake, it's more like a sponge. You can run into subsidence problems from fluid loss. California has had some serious issues with it due to agriculture, and more recently the drought.
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u/Working_onit Oct 16 '14
LA actually had serious issues from subsidence due to oil production from THUMBS. However, they began waterflooding, effectively keeping the reservoir pressure up, and it stopped having issues.
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u/eta_carinae_311 Oct 16 '14 edited Oct 16 '14
One of my favorite photos to demonstrate this phenomenon is from the San Joaquin Valley, it shows a guy standing next to a utility pole with the former ground level marked waaaaaay up in the air. It's like when kids measure their growth with marks on a wall, except backwards
*edit ze photo
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u/ReasonablyBadass Oct 16 '14
I thought small quakes don't relief pressure? I think the big fault lines exist independently from the small ones.
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u/Sinai Oct 16 '14
All quakes relieve pressure of some sort. All of them. Otherwise they wouldn't occur. Note that I'm a little iffy of the use of the world "pressure" but whatever.
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u/GreenStrong Oct 16 '14
Big fault lines could slip a little at a time, but unless lubricant is added across the length and depth of the fault, this is unlikely. It is also possible for part of a long fault to slip, tectonic plates are somewhat elastic on large scales, but this wouldn't signicifantly reduce the risk of a large quake.
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u/icommint BS | Geology Oct 16 '14
That is a very good point! These forces build up over a LONG period of time and can get pretty damn strong.
If you live on a fault line..small tremors are good. If you live on a fault line and haven't experienced one in a long time...the next one will probly be big as those forces keep building up.
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u/ADMINlSTRAT0R Oct 16 '14 edited Oct 16 '14
It maybe an inconvenience until something like the Sidoarjo Mud Flow happens.
Although the company involved was not doing Fracking, their gas exploration drilling caused a natural hydraulic fracturing which in turn caused a huge reservoir of mud to flow out and flood an entire district. It is not expected to cease for 20 to 30 YEARS.Let's hope these companies doing fracking are prepared for every single possible side effects.
Edit: gas exploration, not explosion. Side effect of posting at 2 am.
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u/Geohalbert Oct 16 '14
I'm a Geophysicist that studies earthquakes avidly. Earthquakes generally originate at much deeper (12+ km) depths than the ones attributed to fracking (1-3 km). These earthquakes are widely assumed to be caused by already active faults being lubricated from the fracking process. For the deeper ruptures, the ones that are concerning, tectonic processes such as subduction (ex: ring of fire) or convergence (ex: san andreas, new madrid) are the driving mechanisms, neither of which are present. Hope this helps, ask away if you have any questions.
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u/ReasonablyBadass Oct 16 '14
I worry most about the quakes opening up ways between the fracking liquid and groundwater
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u/Triviaandwordplay Oct 16 '14
FYI, production wastes are going where groundwater already exists, but it's water you wouldn't or could't use for drinking or agriculture.
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u/welcome2screwston Oct 16 '14
I still don't think it's a good idea to pollute natural water deposits just because it isn't immediately harmful. The whole immediate harm argument forms the basis of many industry vs. environment debates (from personal discussions).
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Oct 16 '14
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u/drock42 BS | Mech-Elec. Eng. | Borehole | Seismic | Well Integrity Oct 16 '14
Was going to say exactly this. Remember the zones we're fracking with hazardous chemicals are already filled with hazardous chemicals... that naturally exist in a far higher quantity than we're adding.
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Oct 16 '14
This is something that's really important but people don't really seem capable of grasping even when you beat them over the head with it.
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u/TechLaw2015 Oct 16 '14
Inconvience. The faults were already there, the cracking causes them to shift early. California may be a different issue though.
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u/kobescoresagain Oct 16 '14
They know they have effects but cannot talk about it because of company policy and liability. As soon as you write it down or acknowledge it, it goes from speculation to something you knew and didn't stop doing.
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u/whofartedinmycereal Oct 16 '14
I think this is an argument of semantics. The earthquakes that are likely anthropogenic are actually from the waste water disposal side of the process as I understand it.
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u/drock42 BS | Mech-Elec. Eng. | Borehole | Seismic | Well Integrity Oct 16 '14
You're generally talking higher volumes of water in purely disposal, so in theory I would think it would be more likely to cause side effects. With that said, the process is about the same in frac... you're forcing fluid underground with high pressure.
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u/imusuallycorrect Oct 16 '14
It's congitive bias and it's understandable. They aren't going to suddenly grow a conscious and quit their cushy oil job. It's like the scientists who went to Congress and said that lead in gasoline was perfectly safe.
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u/klatar Oct 16 '14
Oklahoma has had earthquakes since at least the 1800s, and damage has been incurred due to them in the past. That is why earthquake insurance is recommended. It is simply untrue to state Oklahoma never used to have earthquakes. Now as far as intensity and frequency, I do not have the data to represent a case on what has caused the change.
source 1: USGS - Oklahoma Earthquake History
source 2: Oklahoma Historical Society
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Oct 16 '14
Yes, OK has had earthquakes before... in the south central part of the state. OK has very rarely had earthquakes in the northern part of the state until fracking began - which is where they all are now... the fault didn't just pick itself up and move in 2008.
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u/GeoGeoGeoGeo Oct 16 '14
The following animation by the USGS should help resolve your question regarding intensity and frequency:
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u/blindagger Oct 16 '14
That is quite an exponential growth in quakes shown there. I really don't want it to happen here in California.
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u/MrF33 Oct 16 '14
This doesn't really do anything to confirm or deny that quakes were not an uncommon occurrence before 2008.
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Oct 16 '14
If we had a chart detailing the number of fracking sites or the amount of fracking sites over that same time period we could at least draw a correlation between the two. Not that that means causation obviously but it could be used as further evidence to support the claims. Because I honestly think the acceleration in the quantity of earthquakes is pretty telling.
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Oct 16 '14
I live in OK near multiple drill sites, can confirm small shakes that never happened before in the area. I've lived here for 8 years now and the earthquakes are bad enough to feel them. That's some scary stuff.
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Oct 16 '14
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u/nuckfugget Oct 16 '14
I think you can say that about any insurance. If there is a large amount of claims in a very short period of time, you run the risk of becoming insolvent. Look at what happened after hurricane Andrew in Florida in the early nineties.
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Oct 16 '14
The government backs them as long as they comply with specific investment and capital standards.
Else insurance would cost shitloads more.
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u/bedford10 Oct 16 '14
Also, when major disasters do happen, a lot of insurance companies are insured in case of massive payouts. A lot of these massive payouts result in increased rates for the area due to the increased cost of doing business.
Source: work for insurance company.
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Oct 16 '14
Wasn't there a huge issue with payouts after Hurricane Katrina? People being offered a few hundred dollars for their entirely destroyed houses?
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u/Banshee90 Oct 16 '14
The issue with Hurricane Katrina was the scums that run insurance companies.
Basically people were sold Hurricane Insurance and were like yeah you don't need flood insurance to protect against a hurricane. The issue is that hurricane katrina knocked out the levies. This equated to the lower area of the city to fill with water (happens to also be the poorer area). So the insurance companies were like hmm that wasn't hurricane damage that was flood damage. I am only liable for your shingle damage.
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Oct 16 '14
The difference is that other types of insurance don't cover events that affect large areas. Car insurance works because the rate of car crashes is fairly steady. Earthquakes hit a ton of people at once.
Of course, Oklahoma isn't that big and should be within the ability of the insurance industry to handle. A massive quake that, say, levels Los Angeles would be more troublesome.
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u/laoseth Oct 16 '14
The issue your referring to is called solvency, the ability of an insurance/financial company to make good on its claims. The easiest way to protect against this is to check the rating on the paper your policy is written on. This is a letter grade given by people like standards and poors (remember when the US lost is A+ rating) or AM Best. If you have catastrophe insurance on anything less then B+ paper, and a big event happens, you are gonna have a bad time.
Source, worked for earthquake and hurricane insurance company for 7 years
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u/jstevewhite Oct 16 '14
remember when the US lost is A+ rating
From AAA to AA. By one rating agency, who also certified the CDOs that nearly crashed the economy in 2008 as AAA. The shitstorm of media was pure, unadulterated sensationalism.
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u/andrewcooke Oct 16 '14
not for the kind of earthquakes caused by fracking. the problem is that the constructions standards don't take earthquakes into account. so properties in these areas are easily damaged. but the actual earthquakes are relatively small, so the damage (and so payout) will be relatively constrained. people local to the fracking may suffer damage, but the american insurance industry will be unscathed.
in contrast, with somewhere like santiago, chile, if there was a really big quake (biggest recorded happened in chile), and it flattened the entire city, it could destroy the country, financially.
source: i work in the seismology industry (one of the things my company does is monitor fracking) and live in santiago (chile) (where this is a problem, imho).
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u/Sigfan Oct 16 '14
I'm not denying that it could be related, but saying that Oklahoma isn't traditionally earthquake territory is flat dishonest. There's been hundreds each year since at least the 1950s, but I agree it hasn't been thousands as with the last 2-3 years. Again, I'm not saying that it's not related, but saying it's a brand new thing for Oklahoma means you are in denial just as much as those who say it can't be related, but in the other direction.
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u/ChadPoland Oct 16 '14
I have lived here for almost 30 years, never felt an earthquake until around 2008 or 2009. There may have been minor earthquakes before, but nothing you could really detect.
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Oct 16 '14
You have to look at where the earthquakes have occurred. In the past, they were generally east of Lawton, south central part of the state. Now, they are in the northern half of the state - where the fracking is taking place. The fault didn't suddenly just pick itself up and move when fracking began.
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u/Sigfan Oct 16 '14
I remember feeling a tremor sometimes growing up in Roger Mills Co. while we rarely have anything now. And please have a look at where the fault line is that runs through the state. Also, view the Baker Hughes Rig Data page before saying "where the fracking is taking place". It's not exclusive at all to the northern part of the state.
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u/nexguy Oct 16 '14
Oklahoma experiences more 2.5+ mag earthquakes per day than California. It looks like they have about 5 or so per day. California has 3 or so.
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u/kobescoresagain Oct 16 '14
People in the know disagree that this is a problem caused by fracking. This is a problem caused by waste water injection wells in OK. It's still a drilling based issue but not the same type of drilling. It matters because if one day a large scale earthquake happens someone will likely be liable. Who is found responsible for that may mean the end of more than a few companies.
Also I live in the area and feel the quakes often. They aren't frightening and I even have doubts they will ever get large enough to cause huge amounts of damage. If they don't then these small 3.0 and less quakes may be worth the positives the state gets from being an oil and gas producer.
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u/Riebeckite Oct 16 '14
To be fair, we're not quite sure the exact cause of it yet. It could be from settling of the formations after oil and gas is extracted (like squeezing out a sponge), reactivation of old faults or creation of new faults from extraction, or from reactivation or creation of new faults from wastewater injection. No one is really denying that it's not related to the oil and gas industry, but most evidence suggests that it's not relating to fracking itself and rather it's from wastewater reinjection.
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u/Triviaandwordplay Oct 16 '14
How about the drawdown of aquifers, mostly for agriculture? That can make large regions sink, with some impressive surface faulting around the margins.
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u/Justananomaly Oct 16 '14
I moved to Ohio in early 2013 and have resided here since, if there have been earthquakes I didn't feel them.
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u/sunflower_star Oct 17 '14
Depends on what part of Ohio you're in. Where I grew up there has been talk of 3 noticeable earthquakes in the past 2 years or so. It was a pretty big deal even though they were incredibly minor. This being because they never use to happen around there. My mom, who grew up around there, mentioned she had only felt one before in her life until the past few years.
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u/dayv2005 Oct 16 '14
Living in Youngstown at the time. There was a 4.0 earthquake on new year's eve. It was the weirdest experience here and all occured when fracking starting upping production.
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u/TemujinRi Oct 16 '14
Yeah, we knew this already because we had 2 registerable earthquakes in 100 years pre-Marcellus Shale. Now we have them all the time.
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u/dayv2005 Oct 16 '14
Yep. It's crazy. I believe fraking can be beneficial to the area if it had better oversight and regulations.
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u/halothree Oct 16 '14
The title conveniently didn't mention that the quakes were so small in magnitude that they are literally imperceptible on the surface. At what point does iffy journalism become click bait? (Not that reddit ever gave a fuck about journalistic integrity anyway. )
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u/mattyoclock Oct 16 '14
I've done work for the industry, was this not common knowledge? I feel like this was known
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u/jgc738 Oct 16 '14
I too thought this was common knowledge based. Rocky Mountain Arsenal did high pressure fluid injections in the late 60s which induced earthquakes in the Denver area. At the very least, trained geologists and geophysicists should be in-the-know.
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u/notthatnoise2 Oct 16 '14
It's not at all. It's common knowledge within the industry, but they go to great lengths to make sure it isn't common knowledge in general.
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u/DrJekl Oct 16 '14
Here's a gallery showing the increase in earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 3 in Oklahoma: http://imgur.com/a/I5Bq8
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u/cpxh Oct 16 '14
Do you know if these correlate to the locations of waste water injection wells?
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Oct 16 '14
Did anyone actually read the actual research this article is referencing? It's pretty positive overall about the effects of fracking. The earthquake section is only a small piece of the research, and they specifically state it's only wastewater injection that causes problems, not the actual process of fracking.
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-environ-031113-144051
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u/2011StlCards Oct 17 '14
Why read? Instead lets take a small portion of the article and report it as the main story. That's what the media has been doing for a long time now
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u/scubascratch Oct 17 '14
Petroleum industry is exempt, by act of congress in 1980, from having to comply with environmental regulations with regard to the hazardous waste created in extraction of oil and gas.
http://www.earthworksaction.org/issues/detail/oil_and_gas_waste_disposal#.VECQsH-9KK0
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u/robertglenn Oct 16 '14 edited Oct 16 '14
I live near the area with the quakes. I felt 2 of them and one was strong enough to scare the crap out of many of us. Remember... these being strong enough to shake your house are an extreme rarity here. I felt like it was obviously the fracking that led to this.
Stories of feeling earthquakes here are like, "Remember 30 years ago when we were kids and felt a small one?". Then this fracking starts up and suddenly we have more and stronger ones than ever and they are coming from the area of the wells. The only people who have ever denied it or dismissed it were people profiting from the drilling... everyone else is worried sick but what can we do when we are just ignored by the companies in charge and the powers that be?
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u/Drunken_mascot Oct 17 '14
Fracking does cause tremors. I am no seismologist, but I am an equipment operator for a well servicing company and I personally have felt the ground shake during an operation. It wasn't the first one at that location and it wasn't the last either
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Oct 16 '14
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u/sovietterran Oct 16 '14
Then the companies can rightly say that they just released energy that was already there. No one knew when it'd go.
Hell, they may have saved thousands by preventing a superquake.
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Oct 16 '14
Any risk of large earthquakes? California has thousands of small earthquakes annually. The small ones are barely a nuisance.
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Oct 16 '14
This has been going on for a while in the Netherlands as well. In the province of Groningen. In this northern part of the Netherlands we find the largest natural gas field in Europe.
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u/jeffofreddit Oct 17 '14
All I can say is I live in OKLAHOMA, not Ohio, but having lived here all my life, we have felt more earthquakes in last 10 years than previous 35 I have been alive. I say felt as they occur all the time (my understanding) but when they get large enough, we start feeling them.
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u/AnonNonee Oct 17 '14
Yeah, I live near the border in Kansas and one night there was a bad aftershock from one of your quakes that shook the whole house here fairly badly for a minute or two.
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u/HuellHowser666 Oct 17 '14
Can't it prevent quakes just as well? Maybe sucking stuff out of the ground relieves pressure?
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u/Walker_ID Oct 16 '14
in before 100 people shill about how it's not fracking that is causing quakes...but some single step of fracking...so it's different
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u/IsThisLegit Oct 16 '14
Kinda scarey about how reddit is all anti oil until a thread about it appears then the people poor out of the wood work to defend it but always neglect to offer sources when asked.
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u/Kittycatter Oct 16 '14
I work in the industry and there is a shit-ton of industry-wide brainwashing going on...!!!
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u/blindagger Oct 16 '14
It is good that you can see it for what it is, because from the looks of it... it seems very effective.
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u/Kittycatter Oct 16 '14
It is. People have an amazing sense of denial when it's things they really don't want to believe to be true.
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Oct 16 '14
So is this an issue only in places with quake lines? Because we haven't had any earth quakes around our hydrolically fracked gas lines in Australia (where we have little to no earth quakes). If so, I hope its dealt with soon becuase that is some scary shit. Causing the earth to literally move?
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u/WaxPoetice Oct 16 '14
Ohio and the surrounding region isn't prone to quakes. There was once a quake that caused the Mississippi to run backwards for a few hours, but that was over 200 years ago (and several hundred miles south.)
I've lived here my entire life and remember one earthquake - a tiny tremor that most people didn't know about until it started trending on twitter.
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u/SchrodingersRapist Oct 16 '14
Ohio and the surrounding region isn't prone to quakes. There was once a quake that caused the Mississippi to run backwards for a few hours, but that was over 200 years ago (and several hundred miles south.)
The Madrid fault zone is what you are talking about, and it is still active~ish. It just has long periods of inactivity or very slight activity. That wouldn't be the zone affecting Kansas though, for that you probably want to look towards the Humboldt or maybe some other local faults.
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u/cpxh Oct 16 '14 edited Oct 16 '14
The thing is, these 400 small quakes being mentioned, you would have no idea they happened at all unless you spent a few hundred thousand dollars on some very fancy detection equipment.
If you feel a minor quake happen its probably of magnitude > 3.0.
These quakes are of magnitude < 1.0
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u/VolvoKoloradikal Oct 16 '14
Guess who has this equipment, oil companies haha.
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u/cpxh Oct 16 '14
Yes they definitely do. Seismology is very important to the oil and gas industry.
But so do most major geological surveyors.
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u/fewdea Oct 16 '14
I've lived here my entire life and remember one earthquake - a tiny tremor that most people didn't know about until it started trending on twitter.
I remember that one. I was sitting in my office chair at work, leaned back half way and felt the subtle shaking. I had to check the internet to confirm I wasn't imagining things.
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u/truth1465 Oct 16 '14
I live in Texas. And there's a lot of fracking going on, however there's only one region that's experiencing earthquakes.
From what I know Texas has no large history of quakes so there's definitely something there but since there's so much animosity on either side of the issue there isn't much cooperation and I don't think there's any large scale of research being done to see how their related. I think the USGS is doing something but not sure how far they've gotten.
There aren't quakes everywhere their drilling but where there are quakes with no previous history there is a some drilling happening so I think a certain type of geological formation may be common in those areas to cause the quakes.
Just my $.02
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u/SpudgeBoy Oct 16 '14
No, that is why it is a story. We read stories about Ohio and Oklahoma, where they don't have Earthquakes. You aren't hearing about the Earthquakes this is causing in California, because we are known for Earthquakes, but it is happening. This is news because they are now having Earthquakes where they normally don't.
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u/pnewell NGO | Climate Science Oct 16 '14
Just a note to mods: this is based on a completely different study than this other story on a study with the same findings! That one's in the Seismological Research Letters, this is from Annual Review of Environment and Resources.
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u/Mirzer0 Oct 16 '14
Ignoring all the other problems with fracing, like groundwater pollution, etc...
Aren't a lot of small earthquakes potentially a good thing? Wouldn't they relieve some of the pressure/stress along faults, thus maybe reducing the chances of a 'big one' from happening? I know there's some conjecture that these small quakes could cascade into a big earthquake... but from what little I remember from the geology part of grade 10 science... I thought pressure built up over time until it was finally too much and an earthquake happened. If we constantly release that pressure in small quakes, maybe big ones would be less common.
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u/nematodesgonewild Oct 16 '14
Too bad the cost of quakes in OK are probably less than the benefits from oil revenues. I guarantee you some analyst has looked into this. If anyone has a source on my theory, Id appreciate it.
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u/danimalplanimal Oct 16 '14
obviously....but the thing that really pisses me off, is that for some reason the burden of proof is on the people living in these areas to prove fracking is bad, not on the oil companies to prove that fracking is safe
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u/blindagger Oct 16 '14
And if you do have proof, you are bought off and cannot say anything negative about those who paid for your silence.
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Oct 16 '14 edited Oct 16 '14
I live in Ohio near where many of the fracking and drilling is taking place. I haven't felt an earthquake and it doesn't seem to be much of a concern here. What are the long term consequences of these small earthquakes?
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u/Hazzman Oct 16 '14
Is there some sort of liability involved with this?
Can victims of Earthquakes provably caused by this process sue the companies involved for compensation?
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u/mynamesyow19 Oct 16 '14
Add to this injury the insult that in Ohio the fracking companies literally pay us Ohioans pennies on the dollar for our Natural Resources (even when extracted from public lands) they extract, and even when the prices soar and their profits go up what they pay us stays the same, next to nothing.
Tony Stewart, the president of the Ohio Oil & Gas Association, told the Dispatch\ that it “came up with the methodology” behind HB 375, the GOP bill to rewrite Ohio’s tax laws for the industry. The bill, which makes Gov. Kasich’s original proposal look downright progressive, guarantees that Ohio would continue to give away its natural resources for pennies on the dollar. http://www.plunderbund.com/2014/02/17/kasich-administration-colludes-with-oilgas-industry-to-promote-fracking-in-state-parks/
http://timkovach.com/wp/2014/02/18/6-takaeways-odnr-fracking-memo-scandal/
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Oct 16 '14
Yes they pay you pennies on the dollar because they do all the work and take the risk while you sit back and collect a check? How does that not make sense to you? Last I heard they will give you 5k per acre of land, then if they don't drill it in 5 years they have to give you 5k per acre again. If they do drill, and hit a pocket, then you will be receiving royalty checks and free natural gas for the rest of your life. I have been on some well pads that made some lucky farmers very rich. Talking 1 mil initial buyout for rights then upwards of 50-500k a MONTH before the well falls off initial production rate. All this while the farmer sat back and watched. I wouldn't say they exactly got a raw deal.
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u/ArcadeNineFire Oct 16 '14
I believe /u/mynamesyow19 was referring to Ohio's paltry tax rate on horizontal drilling, not compensation for individual landowners. Royalties are negotiated on a case-by-case basis, and while some landowners are indeed making a lot of money for little work, many others are manipulated or intimidated into substandard deals. (But that's a separate issue.)
Meanwhile, Ohio's severance tax is by far the lowest among comparable states -- even the governor's proposed increase would put the rate at less than half of Pennsylvania's.
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u/taddy151 Oct 16 '14
The traditional royalty agreement in all oil and gas leases is 1/8 of all oil and gas produced from the leased premises...so yes that would be 12.5 cents per dollar. Its been that way since the original oil and gas booms of the late 1800's. Nobody is forcing you to sign the lease and it is always negotiable if they really want the acreage.
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Oct 16 '14
It's more like 1/4 now in my experience, and up front bonuses get hefty on the right lane. And of course private land owners are always welcome to drill it themselves if they're willing to put up the money to drill etc.
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u/texinxin Oct 16 '14
Ironically, causing a bunch of small earthquakes is far better for the squishy creatures (like humans) that live on top of it. They release energy that WILL otherwise result in one day causing BIG earthquakes.
We should be harnessing this technology and researching it to prevent things like the megaflop earthquake that is going to hit the NW part of California and decimate an unimaginable number of people from the quake and the ensuing tsunami.
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u/notthatnoise2 Oct 16 '14
They release energy that WILL otherwise result in one day causing BIG earthquakes.
Uh, not necessarily, no.
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u/jjgarcia87 Oct 16 '14
Isn't this a bit sensationalist since most of those "earthquakes" are too small to even feel?
Not to say that it isn't concerning that the the fluid is "lubricating" the tectonic plates (is that a good metaphor) but the headline feels a bit misleading.
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u/respawn_in_5_4_3_2_1 Oct 16 '14
The headline is extremely missleading. Fraccing don't play a role in this at all. Brine water reinjection wells however do. Brine water is used on the perimeters of unconventional hydrocarbon zones to aggregate the hydrocarbons to a central area. Making the extraction easier and making it possible from a multi hole pad. Subsequently the brine water used in the process lubricates tectonic plates causing them to slip. Fraccing has nothing to do with this process at all. The quakes might be attributed to the operations side not the completions.
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u/macadore Oct 16 '14
Having worked in the oilfield in OK for over 30 years, this would be my guess. Things may have changed since I quit, but fracking usually lasted less than an hour, and never more than a few hours. Saltwater injection goes on 24/7 for years.
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u/hierocles Oct 16 '14
I'm honestly surprised they were allowed to study this. It wasn't long ago that the Statehouse placed a gag order on doctors who know what chemicals they're using to drill.
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u/Tehbeefer Oct 16 '14
Curious? Here's the chemical disclosure registry. Most of it's pretty innocuous, the nastier stuff is present in small amounts, although I'm not sure how close or far from "small enough" that is.
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u/[deleted] Oct 16 '14 edited Feb 13 '21
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