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USGS Suggests Connection Between Seismic Activity and Fracking
First time accepted submitter samazon writes "According to a recently proposed abstract by the United States Geological Survey, hydraulic fracturing, or more specifically the disposal of fracking wastewater, may be directly correlated to the increase in seismic activity in the midwest. Results of the paper will be presented on April 18th, but the language of the abstract seems to imply that there is a connection. After years of controversy regarding hydrofracking including ground water contamination and disclosure of chemical solutions, the results of the study, if conclusive, could influence the cost of natural gas due to increased regulations on wastewater disposal." The actual language of the abstract leaves a fair amount of wiggle room: "While the seismicity rate changes described here are almost certainly manmade, it remains to be determined how they are related to either changes in extraction methodologies or the rate of oil and gas production."
Another reason for some people to reinforce their belief that science is anti-business and that scientists should be dismissed, if not stopped.
Increase our budget so that we may study this more.
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... but can't yet prove causation. Still, the correlation is significant enough to justify significant caution in the continued use of fracking, and to merit further study on causation. As others have noted, this has the potential to be useful geoengineering, but like many discoveries, it has the potential to be very dangerous. A healthy dose of caution is warranted.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
IIRC, two thirds of those quakes were within a half mile of drilling sites. Seems significant to me, anyway.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
How exactly is a relatively small amount of water being pumped into the ground supposed to destabilize TECTONIC PLATES...
Except no one has ever claimed that it will destabilize plates, since earthquakes can occur for thousands of other reasons that don't directly involve plates. There are still earth quakes in the central continent caused by the lack of glacial pressure, there are earth quakes caused by hot spots, there are earth quakes caused by compression pressures, there are... you get the point. There are areas of the continent completely peppered with faults, far from the nearest plate boundary, this includes vast swaths of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, this is due to compression and expansion, this causes the "basin and range" effect that defines their geography. There are huge amounts of faults in the middle of the old continental core caused by glaciation, and the easing of pressure. Areas are dying lakes generally have tons of faults, for the same reasons. If you Googled a fault map of the US, you'd noticed that we're pretty much completely covered in them, everywhere.
Fracking in increasing the local pressure, which can jar, or lubricate existent faults. This can lead to localized disturbances.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Don't be silly. Fracture the crust? Are you insane? We can't drill that deep. The Crust is 50 MILES thick. We've NEVER directly sampled the mantle because it's not possible to drill that deep with current technology. We can't even drill 1/4 of the crust thickness. Maximum drilling depth is on the order of 5 miles or 1/10 the approximate crust thickness.
These are minor quakes, they are settlement and movement of sediment layers, not fault shifts. They happen anytime you drill at depth and push or pull material from the drill hole. They aren't anything to worry about, they've been happening for as long as we've been drilling (more than 100 years). I swear you east coasters feel a little shake and freak out.
Actually, scientists have been able to drill down to the mantle or at least magma chambers where the crust is thinnest.
http://www.livescience.com/6959-hole-drilled-bottom-earth-crust-breakthrough-mantle-looms.html
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Egg-zackly
Hydraulic fracturing has an environmental impact, guess what, all energy extraction has an environmental impact.
My 95% efficent gas furnace doesn't run on fairy sweat, and neither does anyone else's.
It's not very smart, nor fair, from an economic, environmental, or geo-political perspective, to use energy but demand it come from somewhere else.
The vast overwhelming majority of horizontal fracture operation have been completely uneventful. Now yes, problems have occurred, but a problem with a on shore horizontal fracking operation is orders of magnitude easier to deal with than a fuck up in water 2 miles deep.
Now, before I get accused of being some kind of shill, the industry needs to be regulated heavily, because people tend to be slimy. The real sticking point is what to do with the waste water. The technology exists to process this properly, but oil industry slimeballs being who they are have tried to push for having the water treated in existing municipal treatment facilities that are ill equipped for this task.
We need to do this, along with a concerted effort to build more nuclear power plants, and more alternate energy plants where they make sense.
The nat gas can be used for peaking plants, and to displace liquid petroleum in transportation fuel, powering our trucks and even our trains (as well as for heat of course).
We'd all be better off, economically, and environmentally if we did this.