Did Fracking Cause Recent Oklahoma Earthquakes?

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Oklahoma is typically seismically stable, with about 50 small quakes a year — but in 2009, that number jumped up to more than 1,000 and on November 5 a 5.6-magnitude tremor rattled Oklahoma — one of the strongest to ever hit the state — leading scientists to wonder if the increasingly common use of fracking, the controversial practice of blasting underground rock formations with high-pressure water, sand, and chemicals to extract natural gas, may have put stress on fault lines. Human intervention has caused earthquakes before with one 'textbook case' occurring in 1967 in India, says Peter Fairley at IEEE Spectrum, when the reservoir behind the hydroelectric Koyna Dam was filled up. The added water 'unleashed a magnitude 6.3 quake' by placing stress 'on a previously unknown fault, killing 180 people and leaving thousands homeless.' Last week's earthquakes and aftershocks are centered in rural Lincoln County, in an area about 30 miles east of Oklahoma City and there are 181 injection wells In Lincoln County. But a recent study by Austin Holland, a seismologist with the Oklahoma Geological Survey, says that it's possible that hydraulic fracking caused a series of small earthquakes, peaking at 2.8, in an area south of Oklahoma City but doesn't believe fracking caused the big Nov. 5, 6 and 8 earthquakes comparing a man-made earthquake to a mosquito bite. 'It's really quite inconsequential,' says Holland."

Comments

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was global warming.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

We just need to start living in bouncy castles instead of inflexible, tends-to-break-apart-into-heavy-and-sharp-things houses.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome! The ride only gets better as the global warming makes the winds worse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gw7pfAc6XU

Re:No.

[gmanterry]

It was Bush's fault.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure??? Were there any ManBearPig sightings in the area?

Re:No.

[thunderclap]

Sounds like the perfect thing that El presidente can mandate for California.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, was it?

Re:No.

[c0lo]

What do you think shifting some water from poles towards equator will do?

Re:No.

[rednip]

Say what you will, but numerous mine fires tell any reasonable person that there is a cost to excavation. Even if you're only creating bigger holes a mile or more (you think) under the earth, there will be a cost to pay for it. Seems to be small quakes for now, maybe it will stay that way.

Re:No.

[RockDoctor]

Even if you're only creating bigger holes a mile or more (you think) under the earth

That's not how hydraulic fracturing works, nor any other type of hydrocarbon extraction.

Re:No.

[rtb61]

The problem is new earthquakes, create new fault lines. Those fault often reach the surface. So toxic chemicals at pressure can now readily escape to surface and of course pollute ground water tables on the way.

Pretty much expect a fair portion of water wells to become polluted over the next decade and remain that way for centuries to come. Hope that methane burnt today made up for poisoning generations to come and just let me guess who gets today's profits and who gets tomorrow's costs.

So the chuckle heads paid of by fossil fuellers can laugh it off because they are paid too but it's the redneck's children and grandchildren who will be paying the real price, meh, evolution in action and those idiots can pray for cure from drinking polluted waters.

2009?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was 2011? OMG

Re:2009?

[Abstrackt]

It took two years to form a committee to figure out who to blame.

Re:2009?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's times like this we need a "+1 Funny but sad because it's true" option. Posting AC because currently using mod points.

Re:2009?

[Plombo]

2009 was when the number of quakes in Oklahoma jumped to more than 1000. November 5, 2011 is when the magnitude 5.6 earthquake happened.

Oh frak,

[asdf7890]

It was all Starbuck's sweary mouth fault!

Re:Oh frak,

[blair1q]

Wait until you find out what felgercarbing does to your home's value.

Re:Oh frak,

[bughunter]

Provided you keep the curtains drawn, it's reversible by shampooing the carpets and cleaning the upholstery.

Re:Oh frak,

[Ann O'Nymous-Coward]

Not a good idea. It'd produce too much felgercarbon emissions.

Probably.

[amalek]

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-07/europe/30368594_1_shale-gas-fracking-process-tremors

Re:Probably.

[imamac]

Most of the news around here (Oklahoma) is saying probably not. The seismologists that have been on are saying that, while the earthquakes were shallow, they were still far too deep to be caused by fracking.

Re:Probably.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I'm not sure how anyone is ruling out the possibility of a cumulative effect from the minor (2.8 and under) earthquakes, which we are being told can be caused by fracking, putting stress on the fault line. Is that really not possible?

Re:Probably.

[imamac]

I really have no clue. I'm trusting the scientists on our news at this point.

Re:Probably.

[hawguy]

Most of the news around here (Oklahoma) is saying probably not. The seismologists that have been on are saying that, while the earthquakes were shallow, they were still far too deep to be caused by fracking.

Hmm...the big Oklahoma quake was 3.1 miles deep (the smaller quakes leading up to it were around 2.5 - 3.5 miles deep). Fracking wells are typically 1 to 4 miles deep.

The Woodford shale formation under Oklahoma ranges from 5000 - 12000 feet. (around 1 to 2.25 miles)

Sounds like it's in the same ballpark, I'm not saying that the fracking and earthquakes are definitely related, but I wouldn't call the quake "far too deep" to have resulted from fracking.

Re:Probably.

[nomel]

This post is a much clearer representation of what I was going to say:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2525024&cid=38051654

Re:Probably.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. Wouldn't repeated small quakes *RELIEVE* stress on the fault?

You know, instead of it being released all at once in a major quake.

Admittedly, the tiny quakes are far far far too small to relieve the energy of a large quake, being like 100,000 times too small, but still, it should have a tiny energy reducing effect.

Re:Probably.

[GodInHell]

Think of the deep strata as a series of huge boulders and sets of rock formation lying atop one another -- like a big dry masonry wall. At first the surface pressure only creates small releases, a rock high up the formation shifts slightly or cracks releasing pressure. Some of that pressure is immediately released in the form of a tremor, the rest remains as potential energy. Now the weight of that stone which had been held up (in part) by an arch or lintel farther up the structure is putting pressure directly down onto the lower surfaces. Not only that, but the shift has changed the entire structural dynamic of the earth -- suddenly hundreds of small stress points and load-bearing surfaces bear down onto a smaller and smaller area -- or rest on a long wide surface -- when that fault shifts or cracks the combined potential energy trapped in all the mass weighing on the fault is released.

So, it depends -- if the small quakes were all caused by a single fault shifting, then yes breaking that motion up into a series of smaller movements means there is less potential energy in the position of the strata around the fault -- if, however, the smaller quakes are movement on other faults or the impact of rock settling into the gaps and pockets once occupied by natural gas under pressure -- then you might just be loading up the weight on that big fault creating a higher potential for a big movement.

-GiH

Re:Probably.

[GodInHell]

Also -- it could be a random act of randomness. Those happen a lot as well.

Re:Probably.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in either case, if the "loading up" is relative to the size of the quake, then it is tiny to inconsequential.

You'd need a million magnitude 2 quakes to create a magnitude 6.

So, really, seems rather irrelevant whether it is "loading" or "relieving".

Seems more about people seeking to assign blame.

I mean, if you want to pick random causes, why not blame it on, oh, shocks from the east coast quake or something?

Re:Probably.

[Matheus]

It seems a lot of people aren't RTF(ull)A...

The only scientist to say what the summary indicates has said that Frakking wasn't the cause of the *Big earthquake they had. He even admits it was possibly at fault for the many small earthquakes that have plagued the area in the past couple years. Also: most of the scientists who are investigating the big earthquake (as well as the small ones) are pointing more to the high pressure injection well process that is used to dispose of the waste fluids from frakking than the frakking itself. They have seen this process be responsible for large tremors in the past and so are investigating the possibility here. Note: They have not claimed fault yet. They are in the middle of what could be a very long (years) investigation as to the true cause of the tremors. They have only mentioned that the severe increase in small tremors and this extremely rare large tremor may be the result of the recent increase/presence of frakking and injection well activity near the faults.

There is also scientific evidence that the fracking itself causes earthquakes, but nothing of the size of what happened in Oklahoma last weekend. A recent study by seismologist Austin Holland, a seismologist with the Oklahoma Geological Survey, said that it’s possible that hydraulic fracking caused a series of small earthquakes, peaking at 2.8, in an area south of Oklahoma City earlier this year. When lots of liquid is injected into the ground it changes the stress and pressure in a place that probably already was a fault, Holland said. It’s similar to injecting water between two adjacent bricks, it allows them to slide more easily and "the water under pressure is helping push the bricks apart ever so slightly," Holland said.
But Holland doesn’t believe fracking caused the big Nov. 5, 6 and 8 earthquakes. He compared a man-made earthquake to a mosquito bite.

Bad Summary on both the /. side and the original article. The real information is so much more interesting.

Re:Probably.

[KhazadDum]

That's assuming a simplistic model of a fault as storing energy. And that also assumes that the energy, in this assumed model, is significant to decrease the overall fault. I'm not sure of the former and extremely skeptical of the latter, particularly because I was under the impression that each scale up is many times more powerful than the former. So a small earthquake might really do jack shit for a large one, except perhaps to loosen or tighten the segments for an enormous quake...

Re:Probably.

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd need a million magnitude 2 quakes to create a magnitude 6.

Yeah, except you're probably not adding to zero to begin with. It'll keep right on storing up potential energy in that fault line until the stored energy is equivalent to a magnitude 6 quake, and then it'll move abruptly and release all of that energy very quickly. That's how static friction works. There's absolutely no reason to assume it doesn't already have 99% of that energy, or that a few magnitude 2 quakes wouldn't push it over its limit.

Re:Probably.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes WRT scaling up.

The very largest one they reported that they thought might be fracking related was 2.8

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/calculator.php
USGS seems to report that even if all the others had been about 2.8 it would have required 16,000 of them to be equivalent to a 5.6. And it changes fast. If they were only 2.5, that's apparently 45,000

As for what effect such a tiny release of energy would have for the larger quakes, no idea, but that seems pretty inconsequential.

Re:Probably.

[LifesABeach]

Gravity is not random. And what allows things to shift is that what was underneath, was weaker than what was above. I can't help but wonder if folks have started to "No Smoking" signs next to water facets north of Oklahoma city?

Re:Probably.

[DragonWriter]

I guess I'm not sure how anyone is ruling out the possibility of a cumulative effect from the minor (2.8 and under) earthquakes, which we are being told can be caused by fracking, putting stress on the fault line. Is that really not possible?

If I recall correctly, that's pretty much the opposite of what is understood to happen; the mechanism by which fracking causes minor earthquakes is understood to be lubricating existing stressed faults and causing them to release stress with less built up than they normally would.

Its pretty hard to rule out what you suggest conclusively, but it doesn't seem like there is any reason to believe that it is true.

Re:Probably.

[Jeremy Erwin]

What is "Fracking"? Well, it's the tunneling down in to the ground to extract natural gas.

Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Re:Probably.

[CrimsonAvenger]

What is "Fracking"? Well, it's the tunneling down in to the ground to extract natural gas. Tunneling leaves a hole, so if Fracking did not cause the earth quake, then the tunnels should be still there?

1) That's not what fracking is.

2) Even it it were, "if the earthquake were not caused by fracking, all natural gas wells would still be in place undamaged" does not logically follow. Nor does the converse, by the by.

Re:Probably.

[Surt]

I'm not sure if you're just trolling, but you're way off about what fracking involves, and your claim does not logically follow.

Re:Probably.

[Grizzley9]

What is "Fracking"? Well, it's the tunneling down in to the ground to extract natural gas. Tunneling leaves a hole, so if Fracking did not cause the earth quake, then the tunnels should be still there? All 181 of them. And the folks of the "Show Me State", believe this verification has been preformed? But lets consider that it "can't be done"; ya, right. Well, then, there's something called deep penetrating radar, that can be done.

You not only define Fracking incorrectly you also get the wrong state. Show Me State is Missouri.

Re:Probably.

[wcrowe]

And the folks of the "Show Me State", believe this verification has been preformed?

What does Missouri have to do with this?

Re:Probably.

[wisnoskij]

No its not.
And I think that it would be overly simplifying the situation to say that anything that causes a earthquake must be destroyed in said earthquake or it did not cause it.

Re:Probably.

[tacokill]

First of all, the "show me state" is Missouri you goofball. Don't you know that Oklahoma is just OK? It's where the wind comes sweeping down the plains....

Since Oklahoma has been an oil/gas player for a long time, I'd argue that it has had more 3D seismic graphing than any other state, sans Texas. I am quite sure the radar images you are asking for are "out there", although I highly doubt you will be given access to them (because they are privately owned).

Oh, and fracking isn't drilling holes to get the natty gas. Fracking is shorthand for Hydraulic Fracturing. I will assume you know how to google from here....

Re:Probably.

[Bozzio]

+1 for exposing shitty logic.

Re:Probably.

[GodInHell]

Thought experiment -- imagine a church wall supported above an arch. Take a big sledge hammer and apply 600 lbs of force to the keystone (assume this is enough to either knock out the keystone or fracture it). Your hammer is the little quake. What happens next is the release of all the potential energy the keystone was keeping in place.

It's not like the little quakes add force equal to their energy to the fault -- the weight that shifts down onto the larger fault is the source of energy. It takes much less energy to shift some of that force around than the total potential energy stored in the positioning of those structures.

As to why you would blame fraking: (a) it is actively happening in and around Oklahoma, (b) it has been tied to a number of smaller quakes, including the recent quake in England, and is suspected to be the source of the smaller local quakes, (c) who said anything about blame?

-GiH

Re:Probably.

[GodInHell]

Sure -- gravity is nearly constant -- but correlation is never evidence of causation without something to tie the two together. (note: correlation does suggest a causal link, but that's not *evidence* of causation.)

Re:Probably.

[thunderclap]

Considering Fracking as an interjection ("Frack!"), inquisitive idiom ("What the frack?"), verb ("You're not still frackking Dualla, are you?"), adjective ("Get your motherfrackking hands off me!"), adverb ("You frackking crazy idiot!"), a noun ("You miserable frack"), ("A good frack"), (to Starbuck "I guess a pity frack is out of the question") or in compound words ("What a clusterfrack."), ("Motherfrackker!"), or as almost every word in a sentence ("frack the frackking frakkers.") it stands a replacement for a more vulgar word, I doubt it. As for using sound to dissolve rock, I doubt that too.

Re:Probably.

[s73v3r]

I don't think any actual evidence has backed this idea up.

Re:Probably.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Gravity is more random than "pure" randomness even. You cannot predict the effect of gravity once more than 2 bodies are involved - unless you're God (which is to be understood as a mathematical statement). Gravity is a chaotic phenomenon - which is a bit like a public-key encrypted file. Even with a file, the encryption method *and* the password used to encrypt it, it would still be near-impossible to decode it. Chaotic phenomena are the same, except without the "near".

(What you need to know about Chaotic phenomena in order to gain the ability to "decode" them is the future. You can understand perfectly well what happened, but only after it happens. Prediction is an impossible problem without this information. In most cases what you're trying to do is, of course, predicting the future, so you're up a creek without a paddle)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem

And in case you're wondering "but what about gravity in the small, on a planet" ... well, we have no better theory than Newton's, which may not be random, but we also do know that is because it's wrong. Rather significantly wrong even ... How do you factor that one in ?

Re:Probably.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

True - but the same argument would apply to a toddler jumping up and down in his (or her) crib, if said crib was sufficiently disastrously placed.

So really, what's the point of beating this dead horse ? Maybe fracking was responsible for the final little crack. Maybe a horse walking in the street. Maybe a car collision. Maybe a toddler jumping in his crib.

You can be pretty fucking sure that eventually there would have been an earthquake.

Re:Probably.

[hairyfeet]

Well all I can give is my little anecdote, but I have a friend that develops models and presentations for the NG wildcatters in Northwest AR and the map he showed me made me think Frakking? not such a good idea. He laid out a map on the screen of every place the bunch he had been working for was frakking then he laid over it a map from the local college's seismographic monitoring stations and what they had picked up and every single site they frakked had 2.8 or better earthquakes within 6 months of the start of frakking. And the area they were frakking is solid bedrock and shale, it just doesn't get earthquakes. he showed me the recorded data of that area going back to 1947 (when the college first started monitoring and collecting data) and they averaged maybe one a decade, now it is closer to one a month!

Frankly if the wildcatters elsewhere are like the ones here We, the People will get stuck cleaning up their messes anyway as they have a nice scam going. they have a shell corp set up which they lease ALL the assets from, from mineral rights to drilling equipment, right down to the office furniture. They hit a couple of dry wells or make a mess and the bills start piling up? They just burn the original corp by filing bankruptcy and make a new corp to lease the equipment from. I've already seen a couple pull that scam locally and skip town owing quite a large sum of money.

So as usual in the Corporate States of Amerika whether it turns out to be frakking or not it doesn't matter, as i'm sure by the time they get done we'll have several nice ecological messes that we the taxpayer gets to pick up the tab for while they cash out and move on to the next scam.

Re:Probably.

[steppedleader]

Earthquakes, especially those above M4.5, are surely very energetic events. Unless fracking is an extremely high energy process and is done in such a way as to deposit that energy into the fault line, it is next to impossible that the any of the quakes due to fracking would move the fault line significant away from its equilibrium position. Natural earthquakes should move the originating fault toward its equilibrium, and it would take a heck of lot of energy to drive that process backwards.

I suppose it is possible that small earthquakes could lead to larger ones, however, through this mechanism: I doubt we know how far from its equilibrium point the fault line is. Its configuration may be such that as it naturally settles towards that equilibrium, it will at some times have strong earthquakes and at times have weak earthquakes. Essentially, a fault's natural d[fault position]/dt function may not be constant. Sometimes it will move faster than others. It thus seems possible that fracking may push a fault out of a weak, rare earthquake regime into a strong, common quake regime. If that is the case I hope no one messes around with a big fault like the San Andreas.

Re:Probably.

[steppedleader]

Hmm. Based on the observations is the abstract I'm linking to, that hypothesis would need us to assume all the variability in the fault's displacement rate is cyclic and has a frequency less than 1 million years: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v390/n6656/abs/390157a0.html

I don't know enough about seismology to know whether fault lines having cyclical, unstable displacement rates on shorter time intervals than 1 million years is realistic or not. It seems reasonable that there would be some variability somewhere on the temporal spectrum. Even assuming there are oscillations in the displacement rate when you sample with a high enough frequency, though, the oscillations would have to be larger than a certain magnitude to be important on the scale of noticeable earthquakes.

Re:Probably.

[RockDoctor]

That was my first thought too (speaking as someone who has been persuading my Boss to try to get us involved in more hydraulic fracturing work). The "big" quake had an epicentre at 5km, according to the USGS page, and while I don't know the typical depth of a shale gas well in Oklahoma, it's unlikely to be as deep as that because the whole point of doing fracturing is to be cheaper than conventional drilling. And a large part of the way of achieving that is going to be by keeping the drilling shallow - one or maybe two km.

Three vertical km is a long way for stresses to propagate, particularly in low-permeability formations.

Re:Probably.

[RockDoctor]

I guess I'm not sure how anyone is ruling out the possibility of a cumulative effect from the minor (2.8 and under) earthquakes, which we are being told can be caused by fracking, putting stress on the fault line. Is that really not possible?

Is it impossible? As a geologist I'd not say that it's impossible, but I don't think it is very likely.

The magnitude scale used for reporting earthquake intensity is a logarithmic scale. For a pair of quakes of Mw=5.6 (the "big" quake of a couple of weeks ago) and Mw=2.7 (an estimate for your "average" quake, given your 2.8 cut-off, and an unrealistically strong bias towards strong earthquakes in your sample), the relative strength is 10^[(3/2)*(5.6-2.7)] = 10^(3*2.9/2) = 10^4.35 = 22,387.

So ... if you had on the order of 20,000 magnitude 2.7 earthquakes occur in an area, which all transmitted all their energy to the same particular point on a particular fault (incidentally leaving no spare energy to get to the surface to allow the 2.7 quake to be detected) ... then it's not impossible. But I don't think it's particularly probable.

I know that I'm leaving aside the fact that the energy transmission would have to cover several kilometres vertically (see my comment somewhat up-thread), through formations of varying acoustic impedence (which results in reflection of some percentage of the acoustic energy towards the surface at each interface ; this is how seismic surveying works) ; that the low magnitude earthquakes would be scattered across an area (again, more distance for the energy to be transmitted, with more likely losses en route). I'm pretty sure there are lesser effects that I've not considered.

That's not "impossible" ; but I don't think it's likely to have happened.

(BTW, I am a geologist. And I do take my environmental responsibilities at work very seriously. That I don't think hydraulic fracturing is inherently an evil, baby-eating technology is because I do know what I'm talking about and I don't work in the media. And while I anticipate work in the shale gas industry, I haven't received any yet.)

Re:Probably.

[RockDoctor]

Thought experiment -- imagine a church wall supported above an arch.

That's a poor analogy.

Firstly, the natural gas is not in "big holes in the ground" (which I assume you're modelling with your arch). It's in the interstices between rock grains, which themselves are supporting the main part of the weight of the overlying rocks (what we geologists call "matrix stress"). So, by removing the gas from a part of your wall (not that that's what is happening), a better analogy would be of a wall with one part having a strength of (say) 60MPa (your gas-filled rock) and 70MPa (for the bulk of the wall.

Now your model is better, but still badly wrong. In fracturing (whether it be hydraulic, explosive, or whatever) the fracture propagation will be in a direction perpendicular to your minimum compressive stress (because there is least work to do against the external forces, and so most work available for breaking crystal bonds and propagating the fracture). In your model, the minimum compressive stress is actually the plane of the wall. There is nothing holding the elements of the wall from moving out of the plane of the wall. (This is, incidentally, why walls are built with buttresses and corners in them - they greatly stiffen the wall.) So, to correct this deficiency in your model, you need to fill in the spaces on either side of the wall to an arbitrary thickness with rock of comparable stiffness to that in the wall.

Now ... you're applying your force to your selected piece of stone to model your small earthquake. And there is going to be a restraining force from the rock you're trying to displace with your moved "keystone". So ...

What happens now?

"Thought experiments" are great. But they do need to relate to the system under study. Just because us geologists draw pictures of what is happening underground that we can pin onto a wall does not mean that a wall is the model we're thinking of.

"it has been tied to a number of smaller quakes, including the recent quake in England"

Two of the recent earthquakes in Britain. We've had 16 quakes recorded in the last 50 days, the strongest having a 3.5 magnitude and being a long, long away from the Lytham St Annes borehole. Britain is seismically quiet but not seismically silent. Unless you're specifically looking for these quakes, they don't stand out from the natural level of earth movements.

Re:Probably.

[RockDoctor]

Hmm...the big Oklahoma quake was 3.1 miles deep (the smaller quakes leading up to it were around 2.5 - 3.5 miles deep). Fracking wells are typically 1 to 4 miles deep.

The Woodford shale formation under Oklahoma ranges from 5000 - 12000 feet. (around 1 to 2.25 miles)

You're getting confused between MD, TVD and TVDss (which is very common). That's Measured Depth (distance measured along the borehole, by measuring the lengths of pipe you're running into the hole) versus True Vertical Depth (the distance from the bottom of the hole perpendicularly to the altitude of the drilling rig's measurement point) versus True Vertical Depth sub-sea (which is TVD referenced to mean sea level, because ground level isn't level, and not all drilling rigs have their measurement point at the same height from the non-level ground ; for comparison between wells and across fields).

The hypocentre depth you give for the quake is 3.1 miles (converted from the 5km that the USGS cite? This is a science-tech website, not a historical-studies website.) either TVD or TVDss (probably TVDss).

The depth you give for the Woodford Shale is also most likely also a TVD or TVDss (what is the elevation of Oklahoma? That'll give you the difference between the two.), so you're saying that the target formation for the hydraulic fracturing operations is 1.36km (0.85 miles) above the hypocentre of the earthquake under discussion.

The 1.6 to 6.4km ("1-4 miles") you cite for a "typical" hydraulic fracturing well clearly implies, given your depths for the target formation, that the wells are "extended reach" or "horizontal" wells, where the main wellbore is at a considerable angle to the vertical, and you can have up to a 2000m of wellbore drilled parallel to the bedding ("horizontal", though if the target formation isn't horizontal, the terminology gets confusing!) at essentially the same TVD / TVDss. It is incredible that the well(s) would have penetrated significantly below the target formation, because that would increase costs for no commercial benefit. (There are engineering reasons to penetrate a small distance beyond the reservoir. For example, to allow long logging tools to pass the whole target.)

The popular press only understand one thing by "depth" ; in the real world (well, if you can call the oilfield that ; few insiders do!) there are several possible, reasonable, answers to "what depth is this hole?" To that extent, our in-house software contains a tool for converting between all 3 measures cited above, because the function is called on so often.

Re:Probably.

[GodInHell]

No, you completely misrepresent the purpose of the analogy. I gave a more realistic description in my post above the one you are replying to. The purpose of this thought experiment is to show how small movements, or in the case of a series of theoretical fraking quakes, can trigger a much larger movement.

Yes, if you turn my explanation of how one or several small movements can trigger a much larger reaction into a thought experiment on the process of fracking and the formation of the strata around a fracking well, then you can butcher the strawman. That DOES get harder to understand and makes it easier to hand wave away the potential impact of smaller movements. Good job "RockDoctor" I'm certain you were well paid for wasting your time here.

Now here's what you're papering over: Fraking doesn't apply force to a single point, it doesn't, in fact, direct that force at all -- beyond sealing the upward path to prevent the liquid from getting back to the water table. You push a tremendous amount of liquid down until it shatters the rock formations sufficiently to release all (or, at least many of) the tiny pockets of gas. Great, you pump in pressurized liquid to replace the gas, also great. But you've fundamentally changed the nature of the underlying strata over a wide area, eventually over a few miles of deep rock. So -- to take your analogy back up -- I'd have to apply my selected strike to the entire exposed ceiling of the rockface, only a much stronger site -- shattering all that stone, up through the first 20 feet of rock above your head over a quarter mile in either direction.

Let's get specific,

Until two years ago Oklahoma typically had about 50 earthquakes a year, but in 2010, 1,047 quakes shook the state.

Why?

In Lincoln County, where most of this past weekend's seismic incidents were centered, there are 181 injection wells, according to Matt Skinner, an official from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the agency which oversees oil and gas production in the state.

A theory only a crazy cook would embrace, right? Well, lets take another look at TFA and the U.S. Army's deep waste pumping operation -- where for years the U.S. army pumped liquid under preasure into the earth of Colorado

Why was the process halted? “The Army discontinued use of the well in February 1966 because of the possibility that the fluid injection was “triggering earthquakes in the area,” according to the RMA. In 1990, the “Earthquake Hazard Associated with Deep Well Injection--A Report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency” study of RMA events by Craig Nicholson, and R.I. Wesson stated simply, “Injection had been discontinued at the site in the previous year once the link between the fluid injection and the earlier series of earthquakes was established.”

bah, just a theory, oh wait,

Twenty-five years later, “possibility” and ‘established” changed in the Environmental Protection Agency’s July 2001 87 page study, “Technical Program Overview: Underground Injection Control Regulations EPA 816-r-02-025,” which reported, “In 1967, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) determined that a deep, hazardous waste disposal well at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal was causing significant seismic events in the vicinity of Denver, Colorado.”

Oliprice.com

And yes, I did pick that source just to tweak you.

The fact that fraking has caused earthquakes isn't actually at issue here. The issue in TFA above is whether some of the fraking quakes contributed to the larger earthquake. It looks like in this case the USGS doesn't believe so -- but the above thread sets out to explain how that could happe

Re:Probably.

[GodInHell]

If the toddler was shattering thousands of feet of foundation stone at a time -- sure.

Re:Probably.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure GP was an excellent troll.

Re:Probably.

[RockDoctor]

Your insinuation that I'm paid to write this sort of stuff is deeply insulting. And wrong.

Yes I do work in the oil industry. And I'm not at work (though I will be in the office tomorrow). I do actually have opinions of my own. And I also do know a lot more about the process than you do.

That hydraulic fracturing can trigger earthquakes isn't an issue. That has been well demonstrated by the late 1960s Colorado waste disposal well - it's been literally a text book example since at the latest the late 1970s. I'm glad to see that the USA EPA have caught up on thirty-year-old text books - though given the US Govt's predilection for having shit in it's science textbooks, the case study may have escaped a generation or two of American geologists.

That some major earthquakes have fore-shocks is an observational fact. Whether that is relevant to the Oklahoma quake in particular is a different question. The USGS don't seem to think so.

Could the release of strain through the small fracturing-related earthquakes trigger the release of a larger earthquake? Well only a fool would say it was impossible, but up-thread I gave some energetics reasons why I doubt it's likely in this case. The USGS seem to think it's not the case too, and they know the area and it's stress fields much better than I care to find out (I'm much more concerned with the stress field of the Rumfiji Basin).

Anyway, you can go shove your fucking head up your cum-soaked arse if you think that I wrote that because I was paid to - I wrote it because I'm actually interested in the reality of what is going on. But since you seem to think that disagreement with you makes me automatically a shill, well fuck you. Stupid fucking American wanker, you deserve the government and corporate abuse you get.

Oh, incidentally, it is clear from the following that you do not understand one fucking thing about hydraulic fracturing :

Great, you pump in pressurized liquid to replace the gas, also great

Well done, fuckwit, you've just given a basic description of waterflood injection. Which is a completely different process. So, dumbfuck, go find yourself someone who is willing to spend their time explaining the difference to you. (Actually, we have a course in that in the training brochure. I think you'd get a little change out of $5000.)

Re:Probably.

[LifesABeach]

A tunnel only has to be a big as is required. Unless someone has quietly ignored Newtons 2nd Law. But there's hope! It seems like it's the trash product that is the cause of the problem. What the drillers are doing is shoving the waste into cracks underground. I guess no one in the oil geology department connected cracks with faults. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Probably.

[LifesABeach]

-1 for foundation-less comprehension. How do you think the gas gets out? Unless there's a team of drillers eating green burritos in someones storm celler.

Re:Probably.

[LifesABeach]

Elementary research shows that the drillers are shoving their waste products into cracks underground. These experts never connected cracks in the ground with faults? Ya, right. Your thinking coal mines, I'm stating a hole in the ground that gas comes out. Class experiment boys and girls, eat a green burrito and a quart of water and you have "Fracking!"

Re:Probably.

[LifesABeach]

Fracking makes a hole, gas comes out; tunnel, google it. And your right. My apologies to Missouri, hopefully their psychological counseling will be short for this. Oklahoma is the "Sooner State", as can be seen from Timothy McVeigh's license plate from any high altitude satellite. You have to love the irony.

Re:Probably.

[LifesABeach]

This goofball finds it interesting that gas comes out of a hole that doesn't exist in your definition; google "hole tunnel". Unless Newtons 2nd Law is foundation-less. And word is "leaking" out that its the waste products pumped into local fault systems. Funny, if you add water and "chemicals" into a hole, things slide, like rocks. I don't think for a minute that new observations will stop coming out. And most second year geology students know that changing water pressure in a fault system causes earthquakes. It makes me think about certain other historical events where earthquakes have happened, and it was all a tragic mystery...

Re:Probably.

[LifesABeach]

Let me help you. the GP was not trolling. Fracking, and its waste products get the job done, but at price tag that ignores things like buildings, homes, and infrastructure. It does make a excellent weapon, for things like cities and regions. Useful, but not for energy needs. I'm surprised that wind farms haven't sprung up in the Sooner State.

Re:Probably.

[Jeremy Erwin]

No, I think you need to revisit your layman's understanding of what fracking is and is not. The whole point of the process is to inject pressurized liquid into the ground, so as to produce and expand cracks and fissures in the rock.

Re:Probably.

[GodInHell]

Yes I do work in the oil industry.

So -- Don't call me a shill -- of course I am a shill -- but FUCK YOU for saying it.

You just made my day sir. This is going on the wall of hate at my firm. The homophobia is a beautiful twist on the usual rage at being called out.

Have a day.

-GiH

Re:Probably.

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL @ homephobia
Also, I love the way you skipped his entire post to focus on irrelevancy.
So awesome :)

This thread is endless hilarity.

But watching you get spanked was particularly satisfying.

Re:Probably.

[GodInHell]

Sure RockDoctor . . . oh noes, an AC agrees with .. oh wait.. himself. Shill on baby.

Re:Probably.

[RockDoctor]

Not me, you stupid Septic. I was in the pub last night enjoying myself with a couple of other friends who also work in the oilfield (well, hell, this is a town with about 20% of the economy made up of oil service companies ; quelle surprise!), one of who comes from the Fylde and wanted to understand what the situation is. So I gave him my best opinion, because he asked politely and paid attention to what I was saying. And we arranged to maybe go hill-walking at the weekend too. Double-plus good.

Re:Probably.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

For all intents and purposes - this is based on chance. So as ridiculous as it sounds, it may very well happen.

Re:Probably.

[c6gunner]

That's nonsense. If the area is so unstable that a frack causes an earthquake, then it's just a matter of time until they start busting out on their own. If anything, these little 2-3 magnitude earthquakes (and I mean little - at worst they'll make ripples in your beer glass) would be beneficial in those situations since they'd be releasing the energy before it could develop into a much larger quake. If there was any truth in these allegations, we'd be using fracking in all high-risk areas to help prevent future problems.

As for this brilliant piece of propaganda:

So as usual in the Corporate States of Amerika whether it turns out to be frakking or not it doesn't matter, as i'm sure by the time they get done we'll have several nice ecological messes that we the taxpayer gets to pick up the tab for while they cash out and move on to the next scam.

"We the taxpayers" benefit from lower energy prices. It doesn't matter whether we pay less now and then pay for the cleanup after, or whether we pay more now and have the companies do the cleanup after. Your economic "analysis" might fly amongst the "99%" twits, but it's complete bollocks.

That, of course, is assuming there's anything to clean up in the first place - a major premise for which you've provided zero evidence.

More Data

[Sponge Bath]

I lived in Lawton, Oklahoma for a few months. I can't think of a better place to experiment with fracking and earthquakes. Let's go do some science!

Re:More Data

[SgtChaireBourne]

While we're at it, let's have more data about which chemicals are being injected. They will eventually turn up in the water table through Murphy's law.

Re:More Data

[uigrad_2000]

Well, the amount of movement of the plates (continental drift) is definitely outside of our control. If some fracking did cause the earthquake to happen prematurely, then it is probably set to go an even longer than normal stretch now before the next earthquake.

Re:More Data

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like saying,

"Right, because there's no way the earth will not distill those out by the time that water makes it back to the water table... :-/"

Cause, you know, there aren't any fissures underground where water freely flows and can be easily extracted.

Re:More Data

[AioKits]

Grew up there, I suggest fracking along Lee Blvd... Fracking Lee should generate desirable results...

Re:More Data

[AHuxley]

http://www.businessinsider.com/fracking-may-be-allowed-within-1000-feet-of-nyc-water-supply-2011-7
What could possibly go wrong?

Re:More Data

[treeves]

I dunno about Murphy's Law.
Darcy's Law or maybe Fick's Law. Now I'll go with you there.

Re:More Data

[Kymermosst]

Field artillery school, by chance?

Re:More Data

[GodfatherofSoul]

So, you must be one of those pinkos for regulating Business. Let the Free Market decide what we drink!

Re:More Data

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Inhofe country. They don't believe in evolution or even science. Everyone there knows that God decides when and where earthquakes happen, and besides, God wants America to ignite as many fossil fuels as possible. That's why He gave us fracking to begin with. I say we dont' worry about it and just frack Oklahoma.

Re:More Data

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry. Lawton is not a nice place, nor is Duncan.

A BSG fan may ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

...how many couples were fracking at the same time to convert the localized bed shaking into an all out earthquake?

Re:A BSG fan may ask...

[Totenglocke]

Just one - it's just that Starbuck fracks so hard, she'll literally rock your world.

Re:A BSG fan may ask...

[Mister Whirly]

Actually, a real Battlestar Galactica fan knows Starbuck was a cocky male, not a hot female. You must be speaking of the remake.

Re:A BSG fan may ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was me fracking your mothers mouth that caused it.

Re:A BSG fan may ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.chailife.com/2011/05/starbucks-drinking-starbucks-at-starbucks/

Re:A BSG fan may ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

Errrrr, she is anything but hot in the remake. Cocky yes, but shes fugly!

Re:A BSG fan may ask...

[LifesABeach]

Was the gender change because Starbuck felt uncomfortable?

Re:A BSG fan may ask...

[RivenAleem]

It also lends credence to the fact that the new series never happened, and didn't end with them all becoming farmers.

dumbass

[spidercoz]

If you get 181 mosquito bites in the same 1-square inch of skin, what do you think will happen?

Re:dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll get a nasty rash, possibly some nasty disease, and people will laugh at you for not getting insect repellent and being a mosquito magnet.

Re:dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

If you get 181 mosquito bites in the same 1-square inch of skin, what do you think will happen?

That rebuttal would make sense if he had said that each injection well equated to a mosquito bite. He didn't.

Re:dumbass

[GameboyRMH]

I can confirm this.

Re:dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not the way the Earth works, the relationship between small quakes and large ones is complex. In some situations the small quakes relieve the stresses and effectively prevent a large event. In other situations small quakes are precursors to a larger event, but this is highly dependent on the geometry and stresses involved, generally precursors or foreshocks are very unreliable.

Re:dumbass

[sorak]

If you get 181 mosquito bites in the same 1-square inch of skin, what do you think will happen?

jobs?

Re:dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

definitely not an earthquake!

Re:dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

If you get 181 mosquito bites in the same 1-square inch of skin, what do you think will happen?

People will know you are in Minnesota.

Re:dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

Earthquake, obviously.

Statistics Please!

[MozeeToby]

Instead of an endless stream of anecdotes can someone please do some statistics. Number of quakes within X miles of all fracking sites since fracking began versus number of quakes within X miles of all fracking sites in the years before fracking began. I'm sure it won't be pleasant to gather all the numbers, but there are dozens of places where fracking is being used, I can't imagine we don't have enough data by now to discover if there are some basic trends or not.

Re:Statistics Please!

[Overzeetop]

You would think there would be data, but until someone suggests a correlation it's unlikely that the research exists. It certainly isn't in the interest of the extraction companies to find a link, and when you send somebody looking for something you don't want them to find, any evidence (even unrelated) is damning.

There was talk about this when the Virginia earthquake hit earlier this summer, too. It's the largest since 1897, and not on a particularly well-known fault (like the Narrows fault where the 1897 EQ hit).

Don't know if there's any correlation, but since USGS tracks these things, the data should be available from the EQ side - just need to time correlate it to when/where extraction operations occurred.

Re:Statistics Please!

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Riiiiiight... I'm sure the oil and drilling companies will jump all over cooperating with that study.

Re:Statistics Please!

[93 Escort Wagon]

Instead of an endless stream of anecdotes can someone please do some statistics. Number of quakes within X miles of all fracking sites since fracking began versus number of quakes within X miles of all fracking sites in the years before fracking began. I'm sure it won't be pleasant to gather all the numbers, but there are dozens of places where fracking is being used, I can't imagine we don't have enough data by now to discover if there are some basic trends or not.

That's not really going to tell you much - what you really need is historical seismic data. Generally speaking, you'd expect a lot of small seismic activity temporally centered around a larger event. So what you really need to know is - does the pattern of seismic activity prior to this quake differ substantially from the activity observed prior to other historical quakes in the same area?

With fracking being such a recent practice, and given that eastern US earthquakes tend to effect a relatively large area thanks to the geology of the region... just looking at recent trends could very well be misleading.

Unfortunately the midwest is rather stable geologically, so there's likely not enough data points to allow one to draw a conclusion with any expectation of certainty.

Re:Statistics Please!

[MozeeToby]

What do you need their cooperation for? They have fill out paperwork with the EPA before they can begin fracking at a given location and they aren't in charge of maintaining seismology records last time I checked. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that all the information needed to do a baseline study is public domain, available from one public database or another if you knew where to look.

Re:Statistics Please!

[davidwr]

Number of quakes within X miles of all fracking sites since fracking began

That's a lot of bedrooms.

On the bright side, there should be billions of individual data points available for each year since fracking, er, I mean sexual reproduction began (this is a family show, right?).

Re:Statistics Please!

[Luckyo]

You need their cooperation to survive the massive anti-you lobby they will put out. Source: tobacco industry and decades it took for poor bastards trying to study tobacco's adverse effects on health to shake off "sharlatan"-image slapped on them by the said industry.

On the other hand it's actually pretty interesting that we as humans are getting skilled and powerful enough to affect planet in ways that causes earthquakes without having to blow stuff up underground. We've done it with geothermal and apparently this at the very least.

Re:Statistics Please!

[Mister Whirly]

The EPA has been all but dismantled by the last few administrations. Corporations are self regulating - they are the ones responsible for testing and complying with the law. I bet those numbers are never fudged, especially when there is no additional checking done by the EPA in 99% of the cases. If the corporations are responsible for testing and reporting the results to the EPA, why would they ever report something negative that could cost them millions of dollars to fix?

Re:Statistics Please!

[Artraze]

Every state has a Dept. of Environmental Protection (or similar), and I know a few states that have a moratorium on fracking. Presently my state does not, but my county does. Even lower than that, municipalities and property owners have a say in fracking. So regardless of whether of not the EPA is "all but dismantled", there is still quite a bit of oversight for fracking. Oversight (and, indeed, research funding) by the people most closely affected by it, not some massive federal bureaucracy.

Re:Statistics Please!

[Mister Whirly]

Right, and what about states/counties that do not have a lot of oversight on fracking on the books presently? If only there were an Agency with federal jurisdiction in Environmental Protection policy... Oh yeah, right. Do you really think every county has a fiscal responsibility to do research on it's own? Or do you really think you can trust the research that is done exclusively by the corporations who stand to greatly benefit financially if nothing negative is found?

Re:Statistics Please!

[tacokill]

The EPA has been all but dismantled by the last few administrations.
Are you serious? I about choked when I read your post. If anything, the EPA has only INCREASED it's power over the last 30 years. Here, look for yourself at the budget numbers. Note, this doesn't even consider the increased regulatory power they have by issuing new rules, edicts, etc.

Methinks you are a little too mired in the day to day of politics to notice but the EPA has been growing and getting more powerful over the last 3 decades. Like all of government.....

Re:Statistics Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

I Can't Handle All This Fracking Math!

Re:Statistics Please!

[TheEmpyrean]

They might not, but you can bet if there's money to be had by litigation, the Insurance companies WILL.

Re:Statistics Please!

[tacokill]

If your data is good and you did things right, there is no anti-you crowd to worry about. If your data is trying to back up a preset agenda instead of going where the evidence takes you.....well then you should expect strong resistance from others who disagree with your findings.

This isn't tobacco. Comparisons to the tobacco industry are not warranted. The ASME and API would both be more than happy to accept and publish your work if you find evidence that supports or challenges what they already know. Petroleum and Petro engineering have a solid 100 year history of advancements so I am going to warn you that the task ahead is not easy. However, if you are right and have evidence to back it up, you can pretty much write your own ticket to any career you desire. And the petro industry will be the first ones on your doorstep throwing large amounts of money at you so you can figure out more stuff.

The only people who worry about the "anti-you" crowd are those who don't know what they are talking about.

Re:Statistics Please!

[dschmelzer]

Fracking has been used for more than a half century. It is by no means "such a recent practice."

Re:Statistics Please!

[Thaedron]

Agreed. When talking about earthquakes in the relative middle of the continental US, you can't compare much based on the recent history of frakking... The geology timescale is much, much longer than our attention spans...

Re:Statistics Please!

[Artraze]

Well, I imagine that those states and counties without oversight will put it in place because allowing fracking. Do you think that they just allow it by default? It's a big industrial drilling operation and requires approval due to even basic laws. Why would the feds need to step in?

As far as funding research is concerned, please don't be intentionally ignorant. Did you not see the first words of my post? They pointed out how every state already has their own little "EPA" (usually called DEP). Why would you assume I'm suggesting counties fund it? And even if it came to that, the counties could form a commission to investigate and not repeat work.

And you might say, 'what, like the EPA?' to which I say emphatically no. The EPA has it's accountability spread across the US, much of which isn't subject to fracking. It's a lot easier to buy representatives of places not affected by your activities than those of places that are. Local research is a lot more likely to be thorough because the politicians _will_ be voted out if something bad happens. Cynical? Sure, but really no more so than assuming the corporations are lying to the EPA and all that.

Re:Statistics Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in the Environmental Health Sciences field, and what the OP said is dead on. The EPA may be growing in budget size, but their teeth are considerably smaller now than they were 30 years ago. They can issue guidelines and that is about it. If corporations choose not to follow them, there isn't much the EPA can do anymore. Issue a few fines that are a small percentage of what fixing the real issue would cost, so most companies just pay the fines and keep polluting. So while their size may have increased, their power has gone drastically down.

Re:Statistics Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Which states would those be and why are they denying oversight to the counties?

Re:Statistics Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

We midwesterners wouldn't call our geological stability unfortunate.

Re:Statistics Please!

[NeoMorphy]

The only people who worry about the "anti-you" crowd are those who don't know what they are talking about.

Like Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei or Charles Darwin?

Re:Statistics Please!

[tacokill]

So what is the budget going to? None of us deny that the EPA is getting more resources now than it was in say, 1988. So where are those resources going, if what you say is true?

Re:Statistics Please!

[Forbman]

'cept NASA, the SEC (Stock Exchange Commission) and related Wall St regulators, banking regulators, food inspection services, things like that...

Re:Statistics Please!

[s73v3r]

If your data is good and you did things right, there is no anti-you crowd to worry about.

Again, tell that to those who began the research on cigarette smoking and health. They will slander you all they want, and that's definitely something you have to deal with.

Re:Statistics Please!

[s73v3r]

Well, I imagine that those states and counties without oversight will put it in place because allowing fracking.

And I would imagine you are delusional, and incredibly naive.

Re:Statistics Please!

[riverat1]

Examination of Possibly Induced Seismicity from Hydraulic Fracturing in the Eola Field, Garvin County, Oklahoma by the aforementioned Austin Holland of the Oklahoma Geological Survey.

Re:Statistics Please!

[bware]

Really? The EPA budget jumped to 10B in 2010 (stimulus), and dropped back down to 8.6B in 2011. In 1988, it was $5B. In inflation-adjusted dollars, it's at best flat since 1988, and there were many more dip years than 2010 years.

Re:Statistics Please!

[ravenshrike]

Except you would have to exclude all places that didn't have natural resources that fracking can get to, you would also have to take into account number and size of surrounding faultlines, and the measured stresses in those faultlines.

Re:Statistics Please!

[ravenshrike]

I do so wish people would quit bringing the Double G up as a good example of a scientist. Hint, he wasn't. In fact, he was a rude obnoxious asshole who was wrong on a very great number of other things and the only reason he had gotten into so much trouble is because he first called the pope an idiot in public using a pamphlet, which was definitely a stupid thing to do in Italy during that time period. 2nd, because he had alienated(by being an asshole) every other astronomer of the time, some of which had theories that were correct which he considered wrong, and so none of them was willing to even entertain the thought he might be right at his trial. As it was, the pope himself kinda liked the guy which is why he only got house arrest.

Re:Statistics Please!

[evilviper]

If anything, the EPA has only INCREASED it's power over the last 30 years. Here, look for yourself at the budget numbers.

Lies... Damn lies... and Statistics.

Adjusted for inflation, the EPA in 1972 had a budget of $13.3billion. Today they have a budget of $8.7billion.

Re:Statistics Please!

[RockDoctor]

Don't know if there's any correlation, but since USGS tracks these things, the data should be available from the EQ side

The USGS certainly do make a lot of earthquake data available. I've been trying to get the corresponding data from the BGS, but their new historic data page has serious UI issues (under FireFox?).

just need to time correlate it to when/where extraction operations occurred.

Err, fracking is an INJECTION operation, not an extraction operation. Hydraulic fracturing prepares a well for gas (or oil) extraction. Then, the fracturing is finished, the well is flowed (to clean up and to check that the fracturing has achieved the production improvements desired), then suspended while the rig dismantled while a production flowline is installed.

Re:Statistics Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Jobs in a former life, then?

Re:Statistics Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee I can't imagine why studies done on second hand smoke by the Cancer Society could have a bias or agenda in their findings. I suppose you believe MADD only wants to cut back on drinking and driving, and not get rid of drinking entirely as well.

It depends ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Fracking Cause Recent Oklahoma Earthquakes?

How large were the couple?

Re:It depends ...

[Anonymous Coward]

One of them was yo mamma.

Earthquakes are the least of the problem

[sl4shd0rk]

Someone made a nice song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=timfvNgr_Q4

Re:Earthquakes are the least of the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent!
  Maybe this is the kind of dumbing down we need for the Joe Public to understand this problem.

Smaller earthquakes are better

[Kohath]

What if it did? Earthquakes can't be avoided. The longer that seismic pressure builds, the bigger the quake. Relieving this pressure early by causing minor quakes should help avoid massive, deadly earthquakes in the future.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[pclminion]

That makes about as much sense as snorting a bunch of coke to determine whether you might have latent heart problems.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[Kohath]

Actually, it does. Snorting coke didn't cause the heart condition. If I have a latent heart problem, it's in my interest to find out when I'm young and healthy so I can survive the first event. Then I can manage the condition to live a long life rather than dropping dead at 46 years old.

I think "exercise" is more analogous than "snorting coke", but whatever...

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, not really. The analogy would be correct (according to the theory of the OP) if snorting coke could trigger latent heart problems but over time should make these less likely to be fatal, eventually disappear.

And there should be plenty of current information on the scientifically examined question of whether earthquakes always release pressure or can contribute to or be incidental to pressure.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[blueg3]

That's only true if the fracking is triggering an earthquake that is powered by already-built-up stress. This is actually asking whether fracking is causing additional stress that eventually leads to earthquakes. Adding stress does not, in fact, make earthquakes less serious.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[pclminion]

You're assuming you'll survive the first event. Maybe you'd die at 46, but dying at 26 is worse.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[jeffmeden]

Your argument (and that of many other commenters in this thread) would make sense if all earthquakes were caused by slip-fault activity and are therefore unavoidable/inevitable so long as there is tension between plates. That is simply not the case. It is perfectly possible (but no one really knows) that the process used in hydraulic fracturing (a lot easier of a term to use with a straight face than 'Fracking') is altering the crust in a way nothing else would, and hence is generating earthquakes that otherwise would never have existed in the first place.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[spidr_mnky]

So, unless Oklahoma is in unrecoverable ruins, that's Kohath: 1, pclminion: 0.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[Lifyre]

This except that there is another possibility as well. These small quakes may not be ultimately relieving or adding stress but transferring it to a different location ultimately leading to a build up of stress along a particular fault without any net input or release of stress until the large quake that would result from the concentrated stress.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[Anonymous Coward]

True. The good thing is that with the crazy amount of geological research over the globe there should be plenty of possibility for a very well-reasoned conjecture on exactly how much fracking adds to or reduces or is incidental to any future or current earthquake problems.

The bad thing is that it may not be available and/or believable and/or believed.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[Kohath]

That was hard to follow.

You're saying that relieving stress in one spot could cause the next spot down the line to have more. So while an earthquake is inevitable, but it could happen in a different location where it wouldn't otherwise happen. Correct?

I guess that's a problem if the earthquake gets moved closer to populated areas. And it's a good thing if the earthquake gets moved away from populated areas.

It would be good to be able to manage this phenomenon.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[peragrin]

It is Oklahoma where the wind routinely rips down the homes people put up. There isn't much there to make unrecoverable ruins to begin with.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[PlatyPaul]

How could you tell?

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[jpmorgan]

Except, that's a pretty standard diagnostic test. Well, they use dobutamine instead of coke, but it has the same effect on your heart.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[Anonymous Coward]

If I have a latent heart problem, it's in my interest to find out when I'm young and healthy so I can survive the first event.

There are safer ways to do that than "Let's try doubling my heart rate and see what happens."

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[s73v3r]

Got anything to actually back that theory up?

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that snorting coke might cause the heart condition (or stroke) even if you have a normal heart. Cocaine has powerful vasoconstriction properties (all that alpha-1 agonism) which can cause arterial spasm. It'll also cause accelerated vascular disease. It's bad shit. If you also have a latent heart condition, then you're also likely to be stuffed.

Fortunately for most coke users, it happens occasionally rather than predictably. So it might happen the first time you use, or after many previous uses.

Haven't seen very much of it though (I am an ER doc, but have worked in UK and Australia where coke's not used a great deal. Much more in US)

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[RockDoctor]

This is actually asking whether fracking is causing additional stress that eventually leads to earthquakes. Adding stress does not, in fact, make earthquakes less serious.

That's easily worked out. How many cubic metres of fluid were injected into the tubing at what pressure? That will give you the amount of work done. (Pressures will fluctuate somewhat, so you'd need to integrate the data not use one number for volume and a second for pressure. But that's trivial.) Compare the work done - the energy put into the system - by the high pressure fluid to the work done by the earthquake(s).

Do you care to bet which factor is many factors of ten larger? I know where I'd put my money (if I were a gambler).

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[RockDoctor]

It is perfectly possible (...) that the process used in hydraulic fracturing (...) is altering the crust in a way nothing else would, and hence is generating earthquakes that otherwise would never have existed in the first place.

What is your proposed mechanism, and how does it differ from the mechanisms that lead to the frequently-observed natural mineral-filled fractures in many rock formations? (You may not observe them ; I'm a geologist, and I observe more rock, more closely, than the large majority of people ; I see them very frequently.) What predictions do you make of observations that would differentiate your hypothesised mechanism from the existing model of natural fracturing by dewatering of sediment under diagenesis?

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[Born2bwire]

You check to see whether or not it looks more habitable than New Jersey.

Re:Smaller earthquakes are better

[Lifyre]

Mostly yes.

It was more smaller quakes can relieve smaller faults but lead to a build up of the stress in bigger faults as the stress from the smaller faults is moved to the bigger ones. It may be possible to manage these quakes if it is possible to drive them with fracking.

did phony hugh pickens style talknicians sink /,?

[Anonymous Coward]

or does it just look that way? occupy independent thinking. state sponsored corepirate nazi hypenosys is never accurate. always contrived using fake math, science, history, religion, /. posters etc...

Have to keep watching

[chipperdog]

If North Dakota starts seeing earthquakes (they are in the center of the North American plate), then we know that fracking has something to do with it....Of course the petrochemical, and petrochemical funded industries will do studies to find no connection...

Re:Have to keep watching

[Wyatt Earp]

North Dakota already has had earthquakes.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/north_dakota/history.php

https://www.dmr.nd.gov/ndgs/ndnotes/ndn4_h.htm

Re:Have to keep watching

[Mister Whirly]

I don't think anyone is claiming that fracking is causing fault lines to appear where there were not any previously.

Re:Have to keep watching

[MasaMuneCyrus]

There is an area in the North Dakota / Montana area that has relatively high seismic activity. There are no local networks in that area, though, because nobody lives there, so we don't see all of the small ones that happen. I'm not all that familiar with the area, but that's what I've heard. Source: from my professors--I'm a seismology grad student.

To see how a local network can affect the amount of earthquakes you're seeing, compare the USGS's earthquake map of the New Madrid Seismic Zone to CERI's map.

Re:Have to keep watching

[darrylo]

Speaking of New Madrid, I'd be a whole lot more worried about that going off again, than a modest 5.6 earthquake, as it has the potential for ruining much of the Midwest.

Butterfly Effect

[blair1q]

The Butterfly Effect is described in terms of weather systems, where it's total bullshit.

But here, not so much. The ground under us is full of cracks that have stopped moving because they're caught on something. Break that something, and you unleash a quake. If the reason the crack can't produce enough force is because there's another, smaller thing they're caught on, too, then all you have to do is break that smaller thing to allow the bigger thing to feel enough stress to be broken.

And so on.

As I said, this is bullshit in the atmosphere, where violence is the result of concentration of energy from the movement of thousands or millions of cubic kilometers of atmosphere into a vortex in their midst, something a butterfly can have no bearing on. But underground these chains of critical stability are all over the place. Just look at the NEIC's map and see them letting go daily. And each time one lets go, it changes the criticality of another, or of another part of itself.

Fracking certainly could be the causative factor in the initiation of a chain of releases that result in a larger release. The fact that there are smaller quakes means that of course they could be releasing the crack to bear on a major sticking point with more force than before, and certainly could lead to a larger quake.

Any seismologist who discounts this possibility is suspect.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to back this up with a degree of some type? Maybe even a couple of cites will do. It sounds to me that you're not better off in understanding the process and problem than anyone else.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're using the wrong analogy. The butterfly effect describes how one portion of a chaotic system can affect another part in a nonintuitive (non-deterministic?) way. You're looking for something like a "snowball effect", where a small snowball rolling downhill can accumulate into a devastating snow boulder (i.e., a progressively-increasing effect, not a chaotic one).

Re:Butterfly Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the same thing that occurred first in my mind. We have probably been fracking up the crust for a while now.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[khallow]

The Butterfly Effect is described in terms of weather systems, where it's total bullshit.

The "Butterfly Effect" is simply that even minute changes in a chaotic system, such as the weather, can result in large changes far enough down the road. Saying it can't matter is incorrect.

As one of the AC's mentioned, you're speaking of some sort of "snowball effect".

Any seismologist who discounts this possibility is suspect.

I imagine we'll have to measure geological properties such as stress and strain on a newly developed fracking field to see how things change. It might be a bit costly to do, but capital layout is probably not that significant.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you basing this on anything more than gut feeling?

Fracking might lead to a large earthquake; the sun might not rise tomorrow. The question you have to answer is how likely these things are.

Until you have the stats, critics are going to assume the gas companies are environment-hating bastards, and supporters are going to assume critics are NIMBYS using environmental hysteria as a convenient shield.

But once you stop relying on gut feeling and start using hard numbers, you can start making decisions that everyone can agree with.

Unless people go all global-warming again and dismiss empirical evidence. If that happens, I'll take it is final proof that the west is fucked and move to a cabin in the Northwest Territories.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[kannibal_klown]

I amd not a meteoroligist and don't know how much I buy into the butterfly effect, but I hear it described in 1-of-2 ways.

1) The minute air displacement from a flap might shift the overall wind current .0000001% and thus make a change down the line.

2) The domino effect
a) Butterfly flaps its wings, incredibly small breeze
b) Incredibly small breeze moves some pollen / dust / etc
c) Floating pollen / dust makes a predator sneeze (like a cheetah)
d) The sneeze scares the heard of animals that it was hunting, causing them to run en-masse
e) Their running causes an actual breeze
f) Now you have a stronger breeze that can actually carry, and might continue along with just larger dominos.
e)...
N) Eventually you get a strong enough wind that might affect something in the weather pattern.

Again, I'm not saying either would feasibly alter the weather. But at least #2 could continue onto something like shifting a storm .001% off course affecting which town gets hit.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[blair1q]

Er, no, the Butterfly Effect is a particular form of infinite response to finite input, described as a butterfly causing an unstable weather system to develop into a hurricane instead of a cool breeze.

It's a cute illustration, but utter bollocks, so it's inept.

There are other ways you can use a butterfly as a minor event with a knock-on amplification, like, a butterfly flies into the mouth of a drunk driver, causing a 40-car pileup that kills the Pakistani ambassador to the USA, who's carrying information that will prevent a nuclear war with India. But that doesn't make the public's eyes glaze over with "ooh, pretty sciiii-ence" the way the original butterfly effect story does.

And you don't really need chaos theory to justify a description of instability. Classical mechanics and the concept of BIBO stability does just fine.

I don't have a problem understanding or believing in the concept that small things can large, unintended consequences; I mean, that's what fracking-causes-earthquake is. But I do have a big problem with the particular example of the Butterfly Effect, which is why I called it out for being wrong, even though I needed to use it to introduce the concept.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[blair1q]

You do know how the sun works, right?

And that your relativism between fracking-causes-earthquake and nothing-specified-causes-entire-planet-to-stop-rotating-or-entire-star-to-stop-shining is somewhat more irrational than whatever relativistic failing you're attempting to accuse me of.

You might also read my post. I didn't say fracking definitely caused this earthquake. I said that a seismologist who said fracking couldn't cause an earthquake is suspect.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[blair1q]

Except that the atmosphere doesn't work that way. It ignores small disturbances, dissipating them rather than concentrating them. In order for a tornado to form that causes damage to a 5-10 square mile footprint along its path, the atmosphere has to coalesce the rotational energy from a mesocyclone tens or hundreds of miles across, and to form that required days worth of planning by the sun and the jet stream. There's no supercritical point where the atmosphere can be kicked between tornado and not-tornado by any input that's much smaller than the tornado itself. Getting a hurricane to happen is an even bigger proposition. The difference caused by a 1-degree change in the surface temperature of the Atlantic Ocean (and how much energy is that?) is only enough to maybe change the hurricane from one category to another. A butterfly at full gallop is certainly not going to be the difference between a hurricane and a breezy day.

The linking of butterflies to even hypothetical weather changes is fanciful ignorance.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[khallow]

Er, no, the Butterfly Effect is a particular form of infinite response to finite input, described as a butterfly causing an unstable weather system to develop into a hurricane instead of a cool breeze.

It's a cute illustration, but utter bollocks, so it's inept.

As I note, it's not "utter bollocks", but a property of chaotic systems. And the response isn't "infinite" since the chaotic system is bounded.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[The Askylist]

You obviously misunderstand what the butterfly metaphor is supposed to show.

.

It's not about causing a tipping point - it is simply an inherent property of the equations that govern all sorts of things from hurricane formation to audio feedback that tiny variations in initial conditions can cause great variations in outcome further down the line. So there is no implication that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane, but there is a statement of fact that given two sets of initial conditions, one with butterfly and one without, the evolution of the system can diverge very rapidly given positive feedback in the system.

The metaphor obviously isn't very helpful, since it has led you to misunderstand its meaning.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is, you have no idea what the Butterfly Effect is? Gotcha.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

It is settled science! ;)

Re:Butterfly Effect

[Raenex]

In a chaotic system, any minor change can result in a big change after a period of time. The butterfly effect is not "utter bollocks". That you described it as such in a weather system is particularly egregious, since that is where the term originated and is accepted mainstream science.

You can read the Wikipedia page and cite a counter-source if you disagree.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

I think my point was rather that because our knowledge is never perfect, you can never rule anything out, so saying that something is possible is basically meaningless.

Saying how possible something is is meaningful, but you can only do that once you have hard data to work from.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you please shut the fuck up? You don't know what you're talking about, you're embarrassing yourself and you're a total fucking twat.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, no, the Butterfly Effect is a particular form of infinite response to finite input, described as a butterfly causing an unstable weather system to develop into a hurricane instead of a cool breeze.

It's a cute illustration, but utter bollocks, so it's inept.

After a bunch of people have already told you, in not so many words, stop being a retard. Learn some basic properties of chaotic systems.

The Butterfly Effect is an *illustration* (aka, an example) of a chaotic system and why it is impossible to predict the weather. If you can't wrap your head around this, then frankly, it is your problem and your ignorance.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[blair1q]

From the Wikipedia article you failed to Google:

"The effect derives its name from the theoretical example of a hurricane's formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before."

Which is precisely what I knew the Butterfly Effect to mean when I wrote that post.

Feel free to eat it.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[blair1q]

Correct. It's an inherent property of the math, but not of the example, which is why the name is bollocks.

Re:Butterfly Effect

[blair1q]

How does it feel to be pwned without anyone trying?

Maybe stop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they could put a moratorium on fracking and see if they number of earthquakes goes back down? I realize that wouldn't be definitive, but it's better than continuing to wonder while we keep doing it.

Doctor, it hurts when I ...

Re:Maybe stop?

[Anonymous Coward]

What nonsense. Better than continuing to pump money out of the ground? Who cares if a few slaves die in their crumbling house when an earthquake happens?

Wtf

[Haedrian]

What the Frack?

Top 5 Ways to Cause a Man-Made Earthquake

[G3ckoG33k]

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/top-5-ways-that/

As close i got get on short notice. I posted this two years ago IIRC

Stupid Media.

[jellomizer]

Conservative Media: Fracking is perfectly safe, everyone should allow this in their back yard, if you don't have it in your back yard then you are letting the terrorist win.
Liberal Media: Fracking is horrible, it pollutes all your drinking water, causes earthquakes, and eats puppies.

Like all forms of energy extraction there are economic trade-offs that must happen. Fracking a newer technology is much cleaner then other methods but it isn't 100% clean or safe. Yes it could cause issues with underground wells, but it doesn't always. It is one of those things you need to monitor while you are doing it. And make sure if it does pollute your drinking water the Fracking company has insurances that will provide the residence with clean water for as long as their water tables are polluted.

Heck when I was growing up. They built a housing development with a huge water tower. And what happened after they started drilling our own water became much heavier and contained more surfer. Yes there is an impact. But compared to the alternatives it is better the other ones are.

Re:Stupid Media.

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Surfers, in your water? Did you live in a houseboat on the pacific? :P

Re:Stupid Media.

[blair1q]

Like all forms of energy extraction there are economic trade-offs that must happen.

And the general form of this is: "ignore the problem until after we're filthy rich from selling energy to the consumers, then walk away and let the government (i.e., the consumers) pay to clean it up."

If the people causing the problems had to pay to fix them, most energy extraction wouldn't be done.

Which would be the correct choice, unless you're the greedhead who stands to become a rich greedhead in the process.

Re:Stupid Media.

[Oswald McWeany]

Absolutely- and I wish people would realise this.

It appears mostly cleaner than other forms of energy retrieval- certainly much cleaner than coal and less environmental damage than moving mountain tops around.

It is something that needs to be monitored- and from what I understand the use of toxic chemicals is not required- there are non-toxic equivalents that may cost a little more... USE THEM.

Regulate the industry- don't just kill it outright.

I'm also curious specifically on the drinking water pollution- something we should watch. Some people have detected elevated levels of methane in their water around fracking sites. I'm curious how much of this is really from fracking and how much is due to the fact that they only frack in places where there is methane in the ground anyway.

Sure you're going to find more methane in areas around fracking sites than elsewhere... that's why they are fracking there in the first place.

Please proceed with fracking- but have independent review and make sure shotcuts arn't taken. Make sure we watch all the time and take every precaution not to make a "deepwater" mistake. This is potentially a great way to get "relatively" clean power.

Re:Stupid Media.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your never going to get elected with that attitude.

Re:Stupid Media.

[pburghdoom]

It appears mostly cleaner than other forms of energy retrieval- certainly much cleaner than coal and less environmental damage than moving mountain tops around.

Certainly better than moving mountain tops and possibly better than coal, but as I understand it most of the chemicals used are considered proprietary and protected as a trade secret and therefore are not very well know (at least to the general public or regulators) if at all. The unknown chemicals could very well be some seriously nasty stuff. It is one of the general concerns with fracking.

Re:Stupid Media.

[sjames]

People might be less nervous about it if they actually believed the fracking company and the insurance company would actually provide adequate compensation for as long as is necessary rather than fracking them in the ass.

Re:Stupid Media.

[Rayonic]

I'm also curious specifically on the drinking water pollution- something we should watch. Some people have detected elevated levels of methane in their water around fracking sites. I'm curious how much of this is really from fracking and how much is due to the fact that they only frack in places where there is methane in the ground anyway.

Methane is non-toxic, so it's a bit of a moot point.

Re:Stupid Media.

[riverat1]

When you can light the water coming out of your tap on fire because of the methane in it that's not a good thing. If that concentration of methane in the water only occurred after they started fracking in the area who are you going to blame?

Re:Stupid Media.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we need to deal with the trade-offs? Why put ourselves in this situation? Here's a trade-off, use a different energy source and deal with the subsequent market prices based upon that trade-off. It's like tax implications. Red fucking herring. Natgas is ~$3 per and soon to be $2 because there's no major infrastructure to deploy it. Cart, horse.

Re:Stupid Media.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fracking a newer technology is much cleaner then other methods but it isn't 100% clean or safe"

What part of dumping 258 chemicals into the ground, 206 of which were exempted from the Clean Water Act by Dick Cheney himself, is "cleaner"?

Fracking is a terrible way to get oil. It's not safe, it's not clean, and coincidentally every single location where they've done fracking, they've had unusual seismic activity.

Re:Stupid Media.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah because the energy industry does such a bang up job of policing itself *eye roll*

Re:Stupid Media.

[Anonymous Coward]

And what happened after they started drilling our own water became much heavier and contained more surfer. Yes there is an impact. But compared to the alternatives it is better the other ones are.

I don't know, dude... an inundation of surfers in the water supply sounds pretty serious...

Petro Engineer's POV

[Anonymous Coward]

I am or was a petroleum engineer, and I can tell you that yes it's entirely possible for subsurface oil and gas operations to affect fault lines and cause seismic events like those described.

With that being said, I think there is also a lot of FUD surrounding the practice of fracing. Fracing is not particularly new to the Oil and Gas industry, and there are a lot of Oil and Gas operations that cause environmental and seismic problems, not just fracing.

I feel like people have sort of jumped on to this Fracing thing, because of the "Gasland" documentary. And now they have some "evil" practice to blame the Oil and Gas companies for, but in reality I think it is a little more complicated than that. We have found trillions of cubic feet of natural gas reserves that can be released through fracing, and this has a major implications for domestic energy production and the US economy.

Re:Petro Engineer's POV

[blair1q]

The process is becoming more necessary to get at less-accessible sources of fuel, since we've bled the easy ones dry. And there are just plain more people so it's happening near an inhabited space more often.

Neither of those processes will be reversing itself, so the decision is to let the people die from flames shooting out of their showerheads, or stop trying to get at this fuel because it's just not worth it.

Re:Petro Engineer's POV

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Or advance the science and engineering so that we can safely retrieve the stored petrochemicals and handle the resulting combustion products. You know, there's always that option.

Re:Petro Engineer's POV

[blair1q]

I'm pretty sure that the ChemE's who figure this stuff out already know that their only other solution is to drill a bazillion wells, and that such a system is simply more energy than they can retrieve.

Whereas fracking is quick, dirty, cheap, and profitable, and the law and human nature are such that they can get away with it well enough to pay it off, even if a bunch of rednecks blow 'emselves up real good just watering the lawn.

It may never be reasonable to retrieve some energy trapped in the Earth's crust without killing folks.

So the reasonable thing to do, at least from my perspective, is to leave it there. Others of course will think otherwise, but their reasoning somehow decides that human life isn't worth as much as cheap BBQ.

Re:Petro Engineer's POV

[Anonymous Coward]

And now they have some "evil" practice to blame the Oil and Gas companies for, but in reality I think it is a little more complicated than that.

What's more complicated than forcing exemptions from the Clean Air/Water Acts, CERCLA, Superfund, etc., in addition to pumping "proprietary" chemicals into the ground, only a fraction of which they reclaim? I think the beef people have with it is that no one is liable for anything they do.

Collateral Damage Much?

[walkerp1]

I require more data. Could we try this in San Francisco?

Re:Collateral Damage Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

I vote for Texas after Oklahoma.

Re:Collateral Damage Much?

[arkane1234]

Two words... D. C.

What Chemicals??

[Anonymous Coward]

"Chemicals" do not describe WHAT they actually use. Includes Sodium Hydroxide or Caustic Soda.
Drain cleaner like Draino or Lye as it was formerly called. They are dissolving matter to create more passages.
This is besides the fracking debate. Asked why, the industry used "chemicals" and not the true names of the agents,
they said to hide their 'formula' contents.

Re:What Chemicals??

[LoyalOpposition]

"Chemicals" do not describe WHAT they actually use. Includes Sodium Hydroxide or Caustic Soda.
Drain cleaner like Draino or Lye as it was formerly called. They are dissolving matter to create more passages.
This is besides the fracking debate. Asked why, the industry used "chemicals" and not the true names of the agents,
they said to hide their 'formula' contents.

The most abundant chemical used in fracing is water. This is the same water that your waiter serves you with your meal. It's not unusual for frac fluid to be 89% water by mass. I have been on a job that didn't use water. It used oil. When oil is used it's commonly lease oil. That means that oil was produced from the well, mixed into a fracturing fluid, and then pumped back into the well. However, the use of oil as a frac fluid is quite rare. The vast majority of frac jobs use water.

The second most abundant chemical used in fracing is sand. This is the same sand that you lie on while enjoying a day at the beach. I have personally mixed a frac fluid that was 73% sand. However, it's much too difficult to mix and pump at that concentration, so all frac jobs will be performed at a lower concentration of sand. There are substitutes that are sometimes used in place of sand. One such substitute has been tungsten carbide. However, the use of tungsten carbide in frac fluids is rare. Sand is much less expensive, so it's used in the vast majority of fracturing jobs. It's not uncommon to use a resin-coated sand in the last portion of the fracturing job. Coating the sand in resin helps keep it in the fracture so that it isn't produced with the oil.

The third most abundant chemical used in fracing is guar. This is the same chemical that your waiter serves in your salad dressing. It turns water into a thin gel. Gelled water is used in fracturing fluid because sand doesn't tend to settle out in gel as quickly as it settles out in water.

Those three chemicals are all that's necessary for many fracturing jobs. There are other chemicals that may be used. For example, sometimes a crosslinker is used to make the gel really thick. Crosslinkers can be toxic. However, any other chemical used will be used in low concentrations. If for no other reason, then to reduce costs. You can imagine how inexpensive water can be. Similarly, you can imagine how inexpensive sand can be. Guar can be expensive, but fortunately for the fracturing companies, very little is needed.

If sodium hydroxide is used, it's used to raise the pH. It's not used to create passages. If passages are desired, then they are created using hydrochloric acid. This is the same acid that occurs naturally in your stomach. Jobs that create passages in this manner are called acidizing jobs. It would not be usual to have a fracturing job and an acidizing job at the same time. The passages created by acid don't tend to collapse back down upon themselves. The passage created by hydraulic pressure does tend to collapse back down upon itself, so sand is pumped into the passage to keep the passage open for when the hydraulic pressure is removed.

The reason the industry uses the term "chemicals" IS to hide the formula. There is intense competition between the companies that provide fracturing services. The actual chemicals used is considered to be a trade secret. Therefore, as long as the fracturing companies continue to hide the true name then they are protected by law. If they were to reveal that name, then anyone would be able to provide the same service and that would drive the price they could charge downward. Of course, it's an open secret that water and sand are used. It's also an open secret that guar is used, but even so it's still used under trademarked names. Why? What reason do you think they have for concealing the true name of their agents?

~Loyal

Re:What Chemicals??

[arkane1234]

hydrochloric acid appears in your stomach in a very low percentage of dilution. (around 0.5%) Most of what is in your stomach is potassium chloride and sodium chloride.
I've used hydrochloric acid, it's far from ho-hum.

Re:What Chemicals??

[John Newman]

The most abundant chemical used in fracing is water. This is the same water that your waiter serves you with your meal. It's not unusual for frac fluid to be 89% water by mass. ...
If passages are desired, then they are created using hydrochloric acid. This is the same acid that occurs naturally in your stomach.

I triple-dog dare you to drink a glass of 11% (w/w) hydrochloric acid.

It's 89% water and contains only a chemical found in your stomach naturally! That can't possibly hurt you!

Obfuscated science makes kittens cry.

Re:What Chemicals??

[LoyalOpposition]

I've used hydrochloric acid, it's far from ho-hum.

I agree completely. Of course, had I been responding to a post of yours I wouldn't have identified it. Mr. Coward went to some effort to detail all of the names of sodium hydroxide and how it was used. As a favor to him I mentioned the most likely way he may have come into contact with hydrochloric acid. For completeness I should have also mentioned muriatic acid and it's use in the construction industry.

Hydrochloric acid is not ho-hum stuff. It eats holes in rocks. Big ones. On the other hand, it's not used in fracturing jobs. As I mentioned in my post, hydrochloric acid is used in acidizing jobs. To my recollection, it's not used in fracturing jobs.

~Loyal

Re:What Chemicals??

[LoyalOpposition]

It's 89% water and contains only a chemical found in your stomach naturally! That can't possibly hurt you!

You misread what I wrote. If you re-read my post you'll see that a common fracturing fluid might contain 89% water, 11% sand, and a trace amount of guar. The water is usually pumped out of a pond somewhere and, thus, is non-potable. Similarly, the guar is not prepared with human consumption in mind, so the precautions taken in the food industry in the United States are not observed. Also, I'm not in the habit of drinking sand slurries. However, if you combine potable water with a trace amount of food-stuffs guar I would be happy to drink it, providing you buy me a beer chaser. Heck! For enough money I would be willing to drink a glass with the sand.

~Loyal
 

Fracking and making the earth move

[Anonymous Coward]

Fracking and feeling the earth move have been going on hand in hand, er, body part in body part, since the first humans fracked.

Re:Fracking and making the earth move

[arkane1234]

Alright, that jokes old now, please stop.

Maybe, but it didn't cause the Virginia quake

[Anonymous Coward]

The general consensus is that fracking didn't cause the 5.8 Virignia quake, since the nearest fracking is in the next state, probably several geological zones away.

There have also been quakes of comparable magnitude in OK. You have a "before and after", both with quakes.

Of course when you consider the scale of geological time, we also have really small samples. There could be an 8.0 in Paris tomorrow. That might be a normal occurence very 50,000 years.

It is no big deal. Simple solution exists.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

What is the big deal about these earthquakes? What's the maximum damage it can do? Kill a few thousand people? Easily fixed, corporations are people, we will just create a few thousand corporations to make up the difference. Property damage? Why, the value of all the undamaged properties will rise, and may be even bring some underwater mortgages above water. So it is no big deal.

If at all you want to do something, give voting rights to corporations, they should not be discriminated in the access to the ballot boxes. And more tax cuts. Always more tax cuts.

Re:It is no big deal. Simple solution exists.

[Oswald McWeany]

The earthquakes that fracking causes (according to independent scientists) are a max of 3 on the richter scale... in otherwise barely feelable.

The vast majority of "fracking" quakes you need expensive sensitive equipment to even detect and are the kind of quakes that happen all around the globe many times over every day.

Now- if they determine that fracking can and does cause more powerfull quakes it would be of concern... so far there is no link.

I wouldn't "frack" near a nuclear power plant or house toxic chemical plants near fracking rigs JUST IN CASE... but... most likely fracking quakes are absolutely nothing to worry about.

Re:It is no big deal. Simple solution exists.

[AHuxley]

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/U.S.-Government-Confirms-Link-Between-Earthquakes-and-Hydraulic-Fracturing.html
Seems like the US army knew something was not good back in 1966.
By 1990 they seemed to understand a bit more “Injection had been discontinued at the site in the previous year once the link between the fluid injection and the earlier series of earthquakes was established.”
By 2011 more data seems to have made the post Gasland (movie about fracking) US oil industry re think the way they view the US public.
Question the wisdom of fracking, welcome to the world of "insurgency" and enjoy some psy ops from oil industry staff with a military background.
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-09/news/30376767_1_download-cnbc-oil-industry-conference

I'd believe it...

[iMouse]

Call it a coincidence, but the Youngstown, Ohio area has never had regular earthquakes. We'd be lucky to have a noticeable earthquake once every 2-3 years. Since fracking began in this area, we've had 7 earthquakes since March 2011! Three of those earthquakes were felt by a large number of the locals with the other 4 only going somewhat noticed.

These earthquakes are in the 2.x magnitude, causing very little to no damage, but how can these experts ignore anomalies like this?

http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/geosurvey/html/eq_archv/tabid/8304/Default.aspx

Lake Erie has a lot of underground salt mining operations in place, hence why you'll see a whole lot of reports of earthquakes in the Erie area.

1960's Denver is the textbook case

[michaelmalak]

Rocky Mountain Arsenal, bordering the city limits of Denver, tried disposing of liquid waste by injecting it 12,000 feet below the ground. The result was a series of damaging earthquakes in Denver, up to 5.0 - 5.5 magnitude. USGS wrote a report in 1990.

The Victorian warehouse at 1000 Bannock still shows steel L-braces affixed to the exterior to hold the brick building together from the 1967 earthquake damage -- notice also the long crack running clear through from the back wall diagonally up to the roof.

Re:1960's Denver is the textbook case

[REJ Messser]

Thanks for mentioning this bit of history. I lived in Denver, 1978 - 1989. I believe this overlapped the moratorium period that the city/state obtained from the federal government to curtail the practice. The pumping stopped and the quakes stopped. Those who had poo pooed the possibility had a Homer moment (D'oh!) I am not saying that's proof of the origins of Oklahoma quake, just that it needs to be investigated. That's what engineering is, investigate, understand, do better.

Re:1960's Denver is the textbook case

[tacokill]

Exactly the same.....but different.

Or did you miss the part about deep well injection of water not being the same thing as hydraulic fracturing (aka: fracking)? NOT. EVEN. CLOSE.

Not a textbook case, except to those easily confused by big words that look like they might be related. That and their shared hatred of hydrocarbons.

Re:1960's Denver is the textbook case

[smellsofbikes]

Rocky Mountain Arsenal, bordering the city limits of Denver, tried disposing of liquid waste by injecting it 12,000 feet below the ground. The result was a series of damaging earthquakes in Denver, up to 5.0 - 5.5 magnitude. USGS wrote a report in 1990.

The Victorian warehouse at 1000 Bannock still shows steel L-braces affixed to the exterior to hold the brick building together from the 1967 earthquake damage -- notice also the long crack running clear through from the back wall diagonally up to the roof.

It wasn't just Denver. I was living in Leadville, CO at the time and some friends had a hobby mine that went into an old fault line. Gold concentrates where there are breaks in the rock because that's where the water moves. When those earthquakes started, the latter third of their mine collapsed (because it was into looser rock adjacent to the fault line). The first time they were like what? and dug it back out and started shoring it, and then the second one hit, and then the third... and they were completely freaked out because the earthquakes were happening on a very regular basis, since the deep well injection dumps were being done on like the third friday of the month, and the earthquakes were happening like half a day later, so they were having earthquakes on the third saturday of each month. Pretty weird. That ended up with them abandoning that mine, although once the Rocky Mountain News started writing articles about the connection between the Arsenal and the earthquakes, they stopped pumping crap down through the water table into the underlying rock.

Re:1960's Denver is the textbook case

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that deep well injection of water is how some frackers dispose of waste, and it's that wastewater injection that the more neutral crowd is looking at closely. Wastewater injection is not a necessary component of fracking, though, so there may well be ways of handling the extraction of petrochemicals via fracking without the danger of earthquakes: basically, someone needs to figure out a better way of handling waste from the process.

Re:1960's Denver is the textbook case

[tacokill]

Ahhh, good point. Different point from the OP but still a good point. We agree that industry needs to dispose of the waste properly and that does not include deep injection back into the earth.

Re:1960's Denver is the textbook case

[RockDoctor]

Actually, the Denver injection is a textbook case - and has been for at least 30 years. But the point should also be made that that case was the bulk disposal of hundreds of thousands of gallons of fluid over periods of years, which is orders of magnitude greater than a hydraulic fracturing job, which rarely lasts more than a few days of actual operations. (Rigging up and tearing down equipment may take much longer, as may drilling the well itself.)

Re:1960's Denver is the textbook case

[bstender]

"liquid waste" aka, decommissioned chemical weapon stockpiles. I grew up in Denver and remember those big single jolts, every few months for a while.

Make sense.

[xmorg]

In battestar galactica, to "frack" is to make sweet love to your soulmate.
That was some serious fracking.

Re:Make sense.

[Pope]

I only frack in Oklahoma; I don't love it.

San Antonio earthquakes "near" fracking as well

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been a few 4.x and 3.x events here in central Texas; the last were southeast of San Antonio and near some fracking wells.

Re:did phony hugh pickens style talknicians sink /

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not the daring iconoclast you so desperately want people to think you are. And you know it.

Live in Oklahoma, work around the industry....

[tacokill]

Not only do I live in Oklahoma but my work bumps up against the energy/hydrocarbon industry. This is a subject that I know quite a bit about, in fact....

The answer is: No, No, and No.

For forever, Oklahoma has had small earthquakes like this. It is not uncommon as we sit on the Arkoma plate (little known fact: The Arbuckle mountains were the largest in the world....about 130 million yrs ago). I remember quakes as far back as I can remember and I can even remember the dumb local news outlets mistaking a B52 landing at night for yet another earthquake (circa 1991 or so). This is not a news story, rather, it is an opportunity for the anti-fracking crowd to push its agenda when the opportunity is ripe. Whether it has any basis in reality is quite a different question...

The quakes were centered almost in the middle of the state. Unfortunately for the anti-fracking crowd, all of the fracking in the state is going on in the Woodford Shale, which is South / Southwest of where the quakes occured (by a lot). While earthquakes being caused by fracking cater to our common senses, there just isn't ANY evidence that the two are linked. And I mean in that statistical "causation" way. *NO* regulatory agency, body, or otherwise has indicated otherwise.

Additionally, the Woodford shale deposit has been in active development for many many years. Fracking didn't just start there a few years ago. Try a decade or more.

While I never say never, I will only say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And it's an extraordinary claim to suggest our fracking is starting earthquakes here in Oklahoma.

Re:Live in Oklahoma, work around the industry....

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Northwestern Oklahoma, and currently work for a Oil and Natural Gas company who not only supplies but regularly uses fracking equipment. At present there are over 300 wells in northwestern Oklahoma that have been fracked in the past 2 years, and yet northwest Oklahoma has seen absolutely no change in seismic activity. And yes fracking is the standard in the US for natural gas well production, and has been for at least 6 years. Thank you for being sensible and knowledgeable on the subject, so few are on here.

Re:Live in Oklahoma, work around the industry....

[ricky-road-flats]

While earthquakes being caused by fracking cater to our common senses, there just isn't ANY evidence that the two are linked. And I mean in that statistical "causation" way. *NO* regulatory agency, body, or otherwise has indicated otherwise.

Except HERE...

Re:Live in Oklahoma, work around the industry....

[dwillden]

I thought I'd note that according to the USGS earthquake maps, the quakes in question, while not in the "Sweet Spot" areas on the map found on the site you linked to, are within the given boundaries of the Woodford Shale (again based on the map found on your link). So further investigation as to how much fraking is being done just north of Shawnee is essential to back up your claims.

I tend to agree with you but, your case isn't as strong as you claim. The real question is what does the historical record say about the frequency of earthquakes in the region.

Re:Live in Oklahoma, work around the industry....

[tacokill]

-1 for reading comprehension.

Go back and reread the article and consider where the information in the article came from. Hint: not a regulatory agency, not a scientific/academic body, not a governmental report, etc.

You should also re-read my post as my point still stands: *NO* regulatory agency, body, or otherwise has indicated fracking causes or correlates to earthquakes. Your BBC article doesn't dispute that.

Re:Live in Oklahoma, work around the industry....

[decula03]

I see your Arbuckles, and raise you the Wichitas!

Re:Live in Oklahoma, work around the industry....

[babywhiz]

I live in Northwest Arkansas and I can tell you that was the first time ever we felt Oklahoma earthquakes. Whatever you are doing out there, cut it out. Heck, we haven't even felt the ones they had just north of us......but that big one almost knocked the toaster oven off my computer desk.

Re:Live in Oklahoma, work around the industry....

[Anonymous Coward]

whats the Arkoma plate. According to Google, your post is the only existing reference for it on the entire Internet:
google for arkoma plate

Additionally, Wikipedia says that the Arbuckle mountains were made by an aulacogen during the Ouachita orogeny, not by a plate. I thought Oklahoma was pretty far into North America lol.

Not saying that you're wrong. Just asking for more geology lectures plz ^_^

Re:Live in Oklahoma, work around the industry....

[wjcofkc]

"Oklahoma has had small earthquakes like this."
You are correct, however, prior to around 2009 OK experienced on average about 50 small earthquakes a year. After 2009 that number went up to about 1,000 quakes a year.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why now? Because its political

[kick6]

I lived in Oklahoma and worked in the natural gas industry circa 2005. At that point we were already frac'ing every single natural gas well we drilled, and probably had been for a decade prior. Why NOW is it suddenly a problem? Oh that's right...because its a politcal issue. If there was any real science to support this frac=quake BS siesmologists would have been screaming about it a decade ago.

Turn the cannons around

[Quila]

The town would make a great addition to the range at Fort Sill.

Re:Turn the cannons around

[sconeu]

Field Artillery -- King of Battle!!!!

Semi-trucks

[cdrguru]

Does anyone have the slightest idea of how many semi-trucks are traveling the roads today? If you are out on any of the Interstate roads in the evening you will pretty much seen an unending line of trucks as far as you can see. That is thousands of trucks moving across the roads at any given moment in time. Over the course of 24 hours it is likely to be over 500,000 trucks having been driven that day.

So what? Well, considering the trucks together are going to average out at around 40,000 pounds each - 20 tons - even a conservative figure of 1000 trucks is 20,000 tons in motion. A million trucks would be twenty million tons of mass moving across the surface of the Earth. Easily within a single day we have ten million tons in motion.

What do you think this is doing to the Earth's rotation? How does it affect the balance of teutonic plates having say 50,000 trucks moving from California to Arizona from 10PM to 4AM?

There are more things than you think that are affecting the geologic stability of the world.

Re:Semi-trucks

[Pope]

A million trucks would be twenty million tons of mass moving across the surface of the Earth. Easily within a single day we have ten million tons in motion.

What do you think this is doing to the Earth's rotation?

Absolutely nothing. Go back to Newtonian mechanics and do some reading, you don't have to report back. Here's a hint: the Earth's mass is over 6.6 sextillion tons.

Re:Semi-trucks

[jayspec462]

How does it affect the balance of teutonic plates having say 50,000 trucks moving from California to Arizona from 10PM to 4AM?

If you like your German plate collection so much, perhaps you shouldn't balance them precariously along the side of an Interstate highway?

Re:Semi-trucks

[The Askylist]

Teutonic plates?

.

Are you saying it's Dresden all the way down?

Re:Semi-trucks

[arkane1234]

I'm more worried about the environment with that then the tectonic plate activities. You'd have to concentrate all of those trucks into one particular area at one moment to have any effect at all.. if any... Because of the matter requiring it's own space, we're safe. No worries.

Re:Semi-trucks

[RockDoctor]

Several people have replied somewhat sarcastically. I'm not being sarcastic.

Look at the X million tonnes of material you see on the highway ahead of you, heading east. And you think that may have an effect on the Earth's rotation?
What about the almost-exactly-X million tonnes moving west on the other side of the highway? That is going to have almost exactly the same effect but in the opposite direction.
The effects very largely cancel out.

Rebuttal style two : the wheels push against the road to push the vehicle forward. The vehicle needs to be pushed forward against friction from the air. The air doesn't all just pick up and follow the vehicle because of friction of the against the ground. That friction against the ground, when averaged out through eddies etc, acts in the same direction and to the same amount as the push of the wheels, but in the opposite sense. There is no net effect.

I remember in my physics homework being given thought experiments about inertia :

• a man stands in a canoe in a lake with a bucket in his hand. He walks from one end of the canoe to the other. Does the canoe move? Explain your reasoning.
• a man stands in a canoe in a lake with a bucket in his hand. He walks to one end of the canoe, fills his bucket at the end of the boat, then walks to the other end of the canoe and empties the bucket over that end. Does the canoe move? Explain your reasoning.

You can guess from the form of the problem that the two answers are different. The marks come from explaining your reasoning.

it doesn't create the pressure

[phrostie]

It doesn't create the pressure.
forcing fluid in between the pressure faces of a fault basically lubricates it.
it's releasing pressure that was already there.

decades ago there was a case in Colorado where a government disposal well did this as also.

it's not new.
it's not necessarily bad, they just need to be more careful where and how they do it.

No

[frozentier]

There's no way fracking could have caused an earthquake. Captain Crunch fracked long distance lines for years and never caused an earthquake.

Re:North Dakota Fracking

[tacokill]

Agreed. Bakken Shale is very exciting and that area of the world is a perfect "test bed" for this hypothesis. The "interference" is negligible so a good set of data could be generated fairly easily -- and it would have meaning.

Sidenote: North Dakota is printing more millionaires (by count) than anywhere else in the world right now. Yes, including China.

Why doesn't underground nuke testing cause them?

[swb]

And big ones, too? They certainly release a lot more energy than any one drilling operation does with an injection.

Chaos in Mathematics

[mx b]

The butterfly effect is a statement of chaos, which from a mathematical perspective is mostly described as "extreme sensitivity to conditions". In other words, using the same mathematical model and equation to predict weather a week from now, but with two different but very similar starting conditions (say, the temperature is 74 F vs 75 F one day, but all other conditions the same), after a sufficient amount of time, the two solutions (for each initial condition) to the equation, or predictions if you want to call them that, appear so wildly different that you probably wouldn't even realize they were solutions of the same equation if no one told you. "A butterfly flapping its wings" is a bit hyperbolic, but the idea is the same -- the small changes in pressure (due to the butterfly flapping, presumably) in the initial conditions of your model evolve to become a radical difference in predictions long-run. How long-run is long-run is another story, but eventually your solutions will diverge wildly. You can make these statements precise in a mathematical sense if you know some analysis.

But, this is a confirmed mathematical phenomena that exists in many useful equations. It's not well-understood in general terms (i.e., there's no general theory on predicting the behavior of equations for arbitrary conditions), but it definitely exists. The protoypical example is the Lorenz equations if you would like to read more.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:did phony hugh pickens style talknicians sink /

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I seem to remember 'corepirate nazis' from about... 10 years ago? Maybe even 15.

Most likely not fracking....

[desertengineer]

There's a lot of buzz here in Oklahoma about that. Tiring of all the media drama and emotions, and wanting a better explanation, I talked to a retired geologist friend - and she had some good data... First, the epicenters of the quakes (We've probably had a hundred total in the past few weeks) are on the Western edge of a geologic area known as the Seminole Structure. That's on the edge of a much larger discontinuity known as the Nemaha. The faults have been here for a long time, and therefore hold a good measure of energy. Second, the depths have been measured to be around 18,000 ft down. There are no wells in this area close to that depth, so the chance of fracking fluid causing it is diminished. Third, the waveforms suggest a thrust movement rather than side-slip. Fracking isn't much of a candidate there. I posed the question to her that if the chances are small injection wells caused the bigger one, would it be plausible that a smaller quake from the wells could have triggered a chain of stress relief that led to the larger one? Not likely, because if it was so easily triggered ("on edge" of being triggered), then natural processes are more probable than man-made ones to "trigger" the chain. Within hours of the first correlated events, geology researchers (and students?) from OU and OSU were on scene (West of Prague) with sensors and acoustic equipment. This is pretty much the first Oklahoma quake cluster to have that level of detailed instrumentation. Maybe they will get some good grants out of this? :)

Re:North Dakota Fracking

[Anonymous Coward]

And South Texas... Eagle Pass Shale. Same thing here. Same reports of recent earthquakes. I have no idea about the correlation at this point, but we should have tons of data in a few years.

Depends on who was Fracking

[Culture20]

Was it Zeus and Hera? I hear the Greeks blamed them for a lot of earthquakes.

Heh heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly at fault! Anonymous Coward Pun Identification League saves the day again! No need to thank me, it's just my job ma'am

Can you say...

[careysb]

Can you say "West Nile virus"?

Mosquitos _can_ be big problems.

Re:Why now? Because its political

[Anonymous Coward]

because you are in oklahoma. it has become a bigger deal in pennsylvania,west virginia, etc. because it is closer to the east coast (nyc, washinton dc, philly, etc). people there are not accustomed to the federal laws regarding drilling and mineral rights. it just isn't in their experience.
in the west where oil & gas drilling is common, not too much of a big deal if someone wants to drill on your land. the terms are generally known and agreed to w.r.t. leasing the right of way access to the well from you. the "60 pct" rule just doesn't apply. got a 4000 acre ranch? chances are the activity isn't going to be outside your back door, either. 4000 acre ranch in PA or WV or NY probably doesn't exist. but you got your 20 acres (enough so you can't see your neighbors...), that isn't going to hide the wells being dug on your neighbors' lands. add the grief that mountain top mining is causing...
given that it is a boom, probably have more than a few FBN drillers who don't give a shit if their casing has leaks in it before they start frakking...

Look over the pond for a moment.

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK has had it's fair share of this recently.
Fracking got blamed for minor 'tremors', the company (Shale) even admitted it was them that caused it.
Though they stated it was slim chance that it would happen again (probably due to it happening once already) and if it did it wouldn't be a quake bigger than 3.0, but what about it happening in other places?
Though I'm still more concerned about what chemicals are being used then these quakes.

So how many coincidences needs to happen till it's not considered coincidence any more?

Re:Look over the pond for a moment.

[arkane1234]

Pretty much until either anarchy reigns and people systematically rip apart anything relating to a fracking device, or regulations are put into place.

Re:Why now? Because its political

[Anonymous Coward]

Why NOW is it suddenly a problem? Oh that's right...because its a politcal issue.

And because there was just a larger than usual earthquake. And also because these problems are likely to be the result of cumulative effects, meaning that just because there was no problem in 2005 does not mean that there can't be a problem in 2011.

Re:North Dakota Fracking

[arkane1234]

You know, oddly enough it seems that's the way people want it... because we keep heading towards that with just about everything business related...

Repurpose for prevention

[jago25_98]

Really need to sort those chemical out!

But if it can be done, why not use Fracking to make earthquakes happen, collect the energy sent off, have a predictable event, have a smaller event through high frequency.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

2004 - limited to Alaska. Now extending south.

Horse Squeeze!

[p51d007]

These are the same so called scientist that spout global warming and other crap. The entire planet crust sits on plates. Over millions of years, things move around. These so called scientist and anti anything at any cost groups are just going to use this to keep the USA from extracting its own resources, to get us off the stupid mideast oil. Your stupid windmills & solar panels will never replace good ole oil, coal or nuclear power. Freeze to death in the dark you environmentalist b*stards.

Re:Horse Squeeze!

[rusl]

No, you'll get off the oil when you stop wasting so much of it. There's plenty already being extracted. But per person it is a ridiculous amount.

Hint: stop trying to greenwash cars and instead stop using them. We have feet for a reason.

Not Just Oklahoma, Arkansas, too

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/17/guy-earthquake-swarm-arkansas_n_824497.html

A very focused sampling of USGS data in the area.
http://neic.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/epic/epic.cgi?SEARCHMETHOD=2&FILEFORMAT=4&SEARCHRANGE=HH&SLAT2=36&SLAT1=34&SLON1=-93.5&SLON2=-91.5&SYEAR=2008&SMONTH=1&SDAY=1&EYEAR=2011&EMONTH=12&EDAY=12&LMAG=&UMAG=&NDEP1=&NDEP2=&IO1=&IO2=&CLAT=0.0&CLON=0.0&CRAD=0.0&SUBMIT=Submit+Search

259 earth quakes in a 2x2 degree area in the last 4 years. If you look before 2008, you'll see about 30 in as many years.

Slashdot won't let me post the actual coordinates for you to plot yourself, but here's a map.
http://batchgeo.com/map/e5dde7a6f9906a750e9dc656bfb25e1e

the real issue

[bmidgley]

poison groundwater. Why should it matter if an earthquake happens sooner or later than it might have? There's a lot of science to be done to determine that, but it's easy to see that the land and water are being ruined.

Re:North Dakota Fracking

[evilviper]

That's interesting, but really no different than any boom town.

You've got to expect that that kind of money is a short-term thing... a fluke which will be corrected in short order. The housing shortage might actuaally be the CAUSE of those great wages, and as soon as homes can be built for the flood of people heading up there, prices will level out and decline. So in the mean time, suffer through it for the money. Be a millionaire living in a trailer while the money is good, and cash out when things settle down.

Besides, it only seems crazy for North Dakota... Out here in the Southern California Megaopolis, you can't make the rent if you aren't earning a 6-figure salary, and while $150k will get you into an apartment, you'd still need a 30yr mortage for the most modest of homes. And this is today, long after the housing market crash. So take a crazy mortage, or commute back and forth an hour every day to your 10 homes out in the trashier areas.

Seems Plausible

[steppedleader]

I'm no geologist or seismologist, but the idea of fracking leading (indirectly) to larger (M3.0+) quakes doesn't seem entirely implausible. It may be that all the small quakes caused directly by the fracking might cause larger quakes to occur sooner than they otherwise would.

The quote below is from the abstract to this article: http://www.mred.tuc.gr/home/vasiliki/publications/Mouslopoulou_etal_2009_EPSL.pdf

"Displacement rates depart from million-year average rates by up to three orders of magnitude with the size of these departures inversely related to the duration of the sample period and to fault length. Short-term (20 kyr) displacement rates generally span a greater range on small faults than large, a feature which suggests more variable growth on smaller faults."

Fault line displacement rates varying would, I think, mean more, larger earthquakes occur at some times than other times. Earthquakes are a consequence of faults moving toward their equilibrium point, and fracking may be able to act as a catalyst, accelerating the fault line on its journey. In doing so it could move the fault line from one of the inactive, low displacement-rate regimes into a active, high displacement rate regime. Further, the quoted part of the abstract makes it sound like this would more likely occur on small, Oklahoma style fault lines. Basically, the larger earthquakes would have been coming eventually anyway, but maybe the fracking made them get here sooner rather than later.

This may be difficult to verify, though, since we don't exactly have a way to tell if any specific quake's occurence at a certain time was purely a part of the fault's natural evolution or not. The same goes for a change to a high activity regime where quakes are more common: How would we know the regime change wasn't naturally occuring? Seems like this would make for a good topic to study with some sort of fault line model -- we could have a simulated fault line and see how its evolution varies under natural conditions versus natural conditions plus the addition of something representing the effects of fracking. Do we have deterministic fault line displacement rate models?

Anyone with more knowledge of geology want to correct me or add anything?

Doing it wrong?

[muirnin]

I presume we're not talking about 'Fracking' in the Battlestar Galactica sense... If we are, then someone may be doing it wrong.

Energy analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

An earthquake is an amazingly large power event. Frac methods only slightly increase oil and gas extraction which is already in progress and largely powered by underground pressures themselves. To the extent oil and gas operations contribute to earthquakes by generating voids underground, the overall energy transfer is mostly (99%) the removal of the oil itself and under 1% caused by frac or other methods to charge wells.

Another human impact large enough to move the needle is groundwater removal. That has been done on a far larger scale for far longer than even oil and gas and has resulted in a reduction of the water table in most areas of the western United states of over 100 feet!

Our country should immediately divert all flood and runoff waters nationwide to recharging the water table in the west before we lose the rest of our tilllable land to dust storms ala Phoenix or to loss of agriculture as evidenced by the drying of the previously green Mojave Desert grasslands.

Re:Why now? Because its political

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not political, it's about protecting groundwater. On June 30, 2011, France became the first country to ban fracking.

Fracking

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, regardless of the Fracking effects proposed, I for one am sick of all these Fracking stories casting doubt on the Fracking process. All of this Fracking drilling is not causinrg a Fracking problem. But all of the Fracking critics are starting to irritate me. If you have a Fracking issue, you can read the Fracking article, talk to a Fracking expert or do some Fracking research. All of this Fracking ignorance is sad and pathetic.

What do you mean it's an extraction process?

Fracking?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly I've watched the newer Battlestar Galactica, and never did I ever see fracking cause an earthquake. It would take some serious thrusting pumping for that to happen ....

2006 earthquake in Basel, Switzerland

[przemekklosowski]

In 2006 there was an earthquake in Basel, Switzerland, caused by geothermal engineering. They drilled a 5km deep bore and injected water under pressure, which is very similar to what's done for fracking. Strangely enough, Switzerland has tectonic zones---Basel was wiped out by a major earthquake in 1356:

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/Man-made_tremor_shakes_Basel.html?cid=46232