Salt Water Disposal Wells And Earthquakes -- December 18, 2015

This seems to be a fair and balanced look at salt water disposal wells and earthquakes, over at Rigzone. The article is all very good so it does not work to provide small snippets. The article has been archived.

Just this small bit:

Studies released this year have highlighted the likely link between oil and gas wastewater injection and earthquakes. In April 2015, Southern Methodist University released a study reporting that a string of earthquakes near Azle, Texas were likely caused by high volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater extraction from natural gas wells. And a study published in the June 2015 issue of Science Magazine found that high-rate injection wells in the U.S. Midcontinent, or wells injected with more than 300,000 barrels of wastewater a month, are much more likely to be associated with earthquakes than lower-rate wells.

Although only a very small fraction of injection and extraction activities at hundreds of thousands of energy development sites in the United States have induced seismicity at levels that are noticeable to the public, seismic events caused by or likely related to energy development have been measured and felt in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, according to a 2013 National Academies Press (NAM) report.