Turkey top envoy goes to Niger in bid to secure uranium supplies
The trip comes after Niger’s military government withdrew mining rights from Canadian and French companies to develop uranium deposits.
Between 1975 and 2008, Central Oklahoma experienced about one to three manginute 3.0 earthquakes per year. Since 2009, that figure has jumped to around 40 per year.
In an effort to explain these tremors, the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the Oklahoma Geological Survey have been researching the changes and trying to figure out whether they may be linked to wasterwater disposal from oil and gas producers in the region.
According to a recent news release by the USGS, the changes don’t seem to be the result of “typical, random fluctuation in natural seismicity rates.” In fact, results suggest that a contributing factor may be injection-induced seismicity caused by waste-water disposal methods of oil and gas companies.
While hydraulic fracturing routinely produces harmless micro-earthquakes – those with magnitudes below 2.0 – wastewater disposal by injection into deep wells “poses a higher risk” because it can result in larger quakes, according to an article in Science.
The USGS refers to a “swarm” of earthquakes over the past two years, which includes the largest earthquake ever recorded in Oklahoma – a magnitude 5.6 quake from 2011 that destroyed 14 homes and injured two.
3 Comments
DrRaeMD
So, fossil fues lead to a warmer planet, poisoned water (eg Kalamazoo), mutant fish (eg Alberta),destroyed towns (eg Lac Magentic), and now earthquakes?
Drill, Baby, Drill!
No, wait, this is bad…maybe we whould try something different to fuel our greed…
frankinca
I’ve heard that underground water in areas of plate stress and the resulting energy released when the stress is relieved is the birth of an earthquake. The water acting as a lubricant to the plate slippage and the relief of the stress. Makes sense, now to determine where the stress is and not inject the waste water there. Or better yet, force the recycling of the water to prohibit the looming world shortage of potable water. There is a price to pay for fracking. But small in my estimation.
Mike Failla
Water in the ground indeed is a lubricant. fracking is designed to hold the ground apart and not let it slip. bet you didn’t hear that on the nightly news now did you?