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The state of Ohio, until 2011 a place where the term earthquake was just a word in the dictionary, has experienced over 100 earthquakes in less than a year. And according to a recent study published in Geophysical Research-Solid Earth, those tremors are likely to be the result of fracking.
The paper’s author, Won-Young Kim, claims that since a fracking-related facility began operating in December 2010 in the neighbouring state of Pennsylvania, Ohio seismometers recorded 109 earthquakes in a period of 12 months.
He also found that drops in earthquake activity correlated with periods when the injection at the well was temporarily stopped.
Producing oil and gas from shale formations, such as those found in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arkansas, requires the use of vast amount of water for hydraulic fracturing. This, in turn, generates millions of toxic wastewater, which must be disposed. Sometimes part of the leftover fluid is reused, but more often than not, it is injected back underground.
Last month, EPA officials said that while there shouldn’t be a need to halt fracking operations, there is variety of options to deal with discarded water to consider, as outlined in a draft report obtained by EnergyWire. That includes scaling back how much well owners can inject, requiring more data collection or public education about “the complexities of injection-induced seismicity.”
The 341-page document represents the central response EPA has given so far to concerns that drilling-related activities are causing earthquakes. It was provided as a result of a Freedom of Information Act appeal after agency officials declined to release it, as reported by EnergyWire in May (subscription required).
Image by Bill Baker via Flickr
4 Comments
Kevin King
Keep the water in the hydrology cycle and naturally evaporate instead of causing earthquakes!
Our process keeps the water vapor in our environment where it is purified by nature and returned to earth for use.
http://www.astoncompanies.com
RBF
What sort of magnitude are these events? Have more seismic monitoring devices been installed since fracing began in the area?
Of course fracing causes seismic events. All there is to a seismic event is rock shaking, typically caused by rock fracturing. Every time a miner hears the rib pop, that is a seismic event. When you frac – or hydraulically fracture the rock, of course there will be increased seismicity. In fact, the oil and gas industry uses microseismic monitoring equipment (geophones and accelerometers) to monitor their fracing activities. It is not creating “eathquakes” as this article and paper suggest. We already knew that seismic waves are created when rock is fractured, and that fracing is fracturing the rock.
If these were tectonic events, or events of large magnitude (enough to be felt, for example) then there might be a point to even bringing this up.
mafiti
but in fracking they drill 67cm boreholes if deep level mining in south africa does not cause earthquakes, whats the possibility that boreholes will make a tremor like that
RBF
Mine induced seismicity is seen in almost every mine out there. Every time a miner hears the rock popping, snapping, or “talking”, that is a microseismic event, not unlike these so called (and mislabeled) “earthquakes”. The seismic activity being recorded is simply rock fracturing.