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Earthquakes That May Be Related To Fracking Close Ohio Oil Well
Frosty P writes "State leaders have ordered that four fluid-injection wells ('fracking') in eastern Ohio will be indefinitely prohibited from opening in the aftermath of heightened seismic activity in the area, an official said. A 4.0-magnitude quake struck Saturday afternoon near several wells that use 'fracking' to release oil deposits. It was the 11th in a series of minor earthquakes in the area."
.... fragile and precarious victory of common sense over big money. Fragile and precarious, yet a victory.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
And now the goals, for anti-fracking advocates, are:
(1) to identify features in this area's geology that appear contributive to the earthquakes. To wit:
"Dr. Won-Young Kim, one of the Columbia University experts asked by the state to examine possible connections between fracking and seismic activity, said that a problem could arise if fluid moves through the ground and affects 'a weak fault, waiting to be triggered.'"
(2) start fear-mongering re "weak fault[s], waiting to be triggered" a la doomsday flicks, since obviously carcinogens leeching to the water supply aren't sufficiently frightening; maybe sudden catastrophe is more convincing than a slow wasting.
Won't be long now till someone discovers that fracking might help turning the Big One pending into several minor quakes, and starts selling this idea.
The media keeps mixing and confusing fracking with saltwater disposal wells. (remember how much they confuse hackers and crackers)
Fracking is a one time process for increasing porosity of a formation immediately around the well at the time of completion.
A saltwater disposal well is normally a well(oil or gas) that has played out and is used to return unwanted saltwater back where it came from.
Fracking only affects an area within a few hundred feet of the well.
that when dems stopped the drilling in the gulf due to a massive oil spill, that the dems were blamed for impeding progress and destroying America, but now that a republicans gets a few tremors in his state, he wants to stop it quickly? Likewise, here in Colorado, the cities that have republicans in control have put temp stops to fracking in THEIR areas, calling it prudent, yet want us to continue fracking all over, importing oils from places like Nigeria, Iran, Venezeula, etc. and absolutely are opposed to spending money on electric cars?
And ppl do not understand why I WANT us to continue drilling all over USA. I figure that once Americans start to get earthquakes, polluted waters esp. in our aquifiers, and see the repercussions of this 'clean' source of jobs, then MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, we will finally figure out that we need to change our policy. And I can not think of anything that would be better then to get the west off imported energy (other than to add that we quit importing bad goods and food from china).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Common sense" in your case, apparently means "hysteria over things I don't understand, but still don't like."
I can understand not wanting carcinogens pumped into the water table, but the earthquake aspect seems like a non-issue to me as long as they're small. If small earthquakes are triggered, it means stresses in the fault lines were already present and are being relieved. Having a number of small earthquakes seems preferable to letting the stress build up until it triggers a large quake.
The article itself notes that earthquakes have occurred in that part of Ohio for nearly two centuries, and its size was well beyond the quite small theoretical maximum that could be induced by fracking. Extensive studies of fracking have shown no evidence of the contamination scare stories environmentalists have been pushing.
The people opposing fracking are the same people opposed to all uses of oil and as power sources.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Alas.
FTFA:
Then on Saturday, a magnitude 4.0 earthquake struck that released at least 40 times more energy than any of the previous 10 or more tremors that had rattled the region in 2011.
So all we need to do is to learn how to turn earthquake energy into electric power. Pumping fracking juice into the earth to purposely cause earthquakes could solve all our energy problems.
We've been doing it wrong all along: we've been pumping stuff out for energy, instead of pumping it in.
It might kinda suck for folks who live along fault lines, but with energy, you always have a "not in my backyard" crowd to deal with.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'm sorry, I know there's loads of serious comments that are worthier than this, but my inner Battlestar Galactica makes an entirely different subject out of that title. That's a fracking close Ohio oil well!
Consider this post the steam vent for everyone else who needs to get it out of their system.
To those saying that earthquakes here are common, I live in Youngstown, and we have never had a locally originated seismic event. But as of March, we've had 11 quakes with epicenters near the well that has been shut down.
I've got caviar stuck in my braces!
I really don't understand why someone like yourself - a person who lives in splendor undreamt of by most humans who ever lived - is unwilling to contribute to your community's well-being when that community is clearly in need.
Now, if you said "I don't think I should pay more taxes than people with ten times my wealth" I'd totally agree with you. But that's not what you said.
If you said "I don't want to pay for invading other countries and subsidizing rich bankster's lifestyles" I could understand that too. But you didn't say that either.
As I see it, you're wealthy enough to own stock, but you don't want to pay for the system that makes your wealth possible. Somebody's got to pay for it, but you want it to be someone else. You have enormous wealth and enjoy many privileges, yet you honestly think you're being oppressed. You personify our economic problem; you're barely one step above a welfare queen.