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Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Ohio Bans Fracking To Investigate Recent Flurry Of Earthquakes Seemingly Unrelated To Waste Water Disposal But In Area Of Fracking

The Los Angeles Times is reporting:
A fracking operation at the eastern border of Ohio remained closed Wednesday, two days after a string of earthquakes stirred some people from their sleep and prompted state regulators to investigate whether the shale-drilling may have been a cause.
Areas in the central and southern U.S. have seen a 20-fold increase in small earthquakes during the past few years, and federal scientists have said the boom in drilling for oil and natural gas has been a contributing factor.
Primarily, part of the dramatic rise has been attributed by the scientists to injection wells, where waste water from fracking is gushed back deep into the earth for storage. The fracking process of firing a mix of water and chemicals at underground rocks -- in hopes of freeing oil and gas stored inside them -- has not been a major cause for earthquakes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
But none of the seven wells near the Ohio temblors are for waste disposal, leading local officials and environmentalists to question whether fracking that began last month on one of the wells might have been enough to trigger the human-felt earthquakes.
Could small tremblors relieve stress along faults, preventing the BIG one from hitting California? So much to study; so little time.

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 Peacock, Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens

4 comments:

  1. it's almost implausible that anything other than the fracking operation caused those quakes in Mahoning County, an area which hadnt seen any seismologic activity before fracking related activities started there... the quakes were at a depth of 2 km to 2.5 km (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ld60034308#summary) exactly the same depth as the utica shale in eastern ohio (http://geosurvey.ohiodnr.gov/portals/geosurvey/Energy/Utica/UticaShale_WellPrototype_diagram.pdf); that depth is not normal for earthquakes - if you check current earthquakes at USGS at any time, you'll see the record shows most (except oklahoma) are at a depth of 10 to 100 km, with some deeper ( http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ )
    these facts were known to the ODNR when they halted fracking operations within 12 hours after the 2nd quake...it'll be interesting to see how they untangle themselves and the industry they represent from this dilemma..

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    1. It will be interesting to watch. My hunch is that engineers will sort this out also, perhaps something as simple as limiting the frequency of fracking; limiting the number of wells that can be fracked at any one time; and/or limiting the number of stages. In addition, if there is no property damage or personal injury, like so many things in life, it's moot.

      I remember when I first studied psychiatry. It dawned on me that an individual is only "crazy" if he's been diagnosed as such. If a "crazy" individual is able to function in society, has good family support, and causes no harm to himself/herself or to society, and never sees a psychiatrist, the "crazy" person is not diagnosed.

      Likewise, 3.0 tremblors that cause no property damage or personal harm, are moot. In fact, as noted, above, small earthquakes along fault lines in California might relieve stress and prevent the "big one."

      I think it is all quite fascinating.

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  2. USGS has connected the 5.7 quake in Oklahoma to fracking related injection wells:
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/11/energy-earthquake-oklahoma-idUSL2N0M80SP20140311

    i was here when a 5.0 struck near the county line and shut down the Perry nuclear plant, & also cracked my chimney, costing me over $2000 in repairs...

    here's the abstracts of two papers from the journal Geology connecting that quake to nearby injection wells
    http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/content/16/8/739.abstract
    http://bssa.geoscienceworld.org/content/78/1/188.abstract

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    1. Yes, those in Oklahoma (and one in North Dakota) were due to injection wells, not fracking. It would be no different than if commercial car washing stations disposed of their waste water into deep injection wells. The practice of stopping deep injection wells is easy to do (North Dakota has already done that, and I assume Oklahoma will sort this out also).

      The issue in Ohio may be completely different. But injection wells have nothing to do with fracking per se. They used injection wells when they were drilling conventional wells also.

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