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."

Comments

Frack the Big One!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

why is it

[WindBourne]

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).

Don't understand why this is a problem

[Frequency Domain]

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.

Fracking Probably Had Nothing to Do With It

[Nova Express]

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.

Re:Fracking Probably Had Nothing to Do With It

[Overzeetop]

I'm not sure about the effect of fracking on seismic activity, but I think correlation is all we will have to infer causation as we cannot directly monitor the changes in strain which lead to seismic conditions. I would expect that the USGS would have the data for the areas where wells have been drilled, and that a study could be done to determine the probabalistic model variation, but I have not heard of such a study.

As for contamination, are the fracking fluids spiked with dye trace to be able to determine if suspected contamination occurs (and there always is some suspicion, even if there is no actual)? I don't know anything about the regulations on fracking, so I don't know if such a tracer is required. They are used quite frequently in groundwater migration applications.

Re:Anti-fracking goal

[Sarten-X]

Having an opinion doesn't make one a shill or a troll, especially when there's as much evidence supporting his opinion as your own. The problem is there's absurdly little research from both the pro- and anti-fracking camps. On the one hand, Ohio's seismic activity has increased lately. On the other hand, it has been very inactive since the 1930's, and still remains relatively stable today. Then, of course, there's the possibility (mentioned many times already in this discussion) that releasing pressure could reduce the risk of a larger earthquake.

Comparing Ohio's seismic activity to California is ridiculous. In Ohio, the last big earthquake in 1937 toppled a few weak chimneys. In California, an equivalent earthquake (magnitude 5.4) happened in July of 2010. The faults in Ohio, even when active, pale in comparison to California's eternal fear of the next "big one".

There's no consensus among relevant experts about fracking's effects, but there's plenty of people willing to protest vehemently one way or the other. GP is right to call this out as fear-mongering.

Re:This seems...

[Sarten-X]

Ohio is on many small faults, the largest of which is the New Madrid fault. There are a few dozen significant earthquakes each year, the vast majority of which cannot be felt.

Despite what you "would think", data is easy to find.