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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."
It was global warming.
It was all Starbuck's sweary mouth fault!
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-07/europe/30368594_1_shale-gas-fracking-process-tremors
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!
If you get 181 mosquito bites in the same 1-square inch of skin, what do you think will happen?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
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.
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.
Just one - it's just that Starbuck fracks so hard, she'll literally rock your world.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
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...
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.
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
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
Actually, a real Battlestar Galactica fan knows Starbuck was a cocky male, not a hot female. You must be speaking of the remake.
"But this one goes to 11!"
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.
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
It took two years to form a committee to figure out who to blame.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
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.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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.
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.
"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
I aim to misbehave.
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
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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? :)
.
Are you saying it's Dresden all the way down?
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
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?
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.