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Earthquakes Correlated With Texan Fracking Sites

Posted by Soulskill on from the all-your-fault dept.

eldavojohn writes "A recent peer reviewed paper and survey by Cliff Frohlich of the University of Texas' Institute for Geophysics reveals a correlation between an increase in earthquakes and the emergence of fracking sites in the Barnett Shale, Texas. To clarify, it is not the actual act of hydrofracking that induces earthquakes, but more likely the final process of injecting wastewater into the site, according to Oliver Boyd, a USGS seismologist. Boyd said, 'Most, if not all, geophysicists expect induced earthquakes to be more likely from wastewater injection rather than hydrofracking. This is because the wastewater injection tends to occur at greater depth, where earthquakes are more likely to nucleate. I also agree [with Frohlich] that induced earthquakes are likely to persist for some time (months to years) after wastewater injection has ceased.' Frohlich added, 'Faults are everywhere. A lot of them are stuck, but if you pump water in there, it reduces friction and the fault slips a little. I can't prove that that's what happened, but it's a plausible explanation.' In the U.S. alone this correlation has been noted several times."

7 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. While... by msauve · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not defending fracking, per se, isn't it better to have a bunch of small earthquakes than one big one?

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    1. Re:While... by avandesande · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes, small earthquakes relieve stress in fault lines. They may actually be doing these communities a favor.

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    2. Re:While... by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Way to ignore what I said.

      Imagine you have a fault line 100 miles long, now with fracking 90 miles of it slip. The last 10miles are now bearing the loads that were on all 100 miles. Think that might cause a problem?

      I am no more a geologist than you, but calling it irrelevant to beneficial when no one knows is highly irresponsible.

    3. Re:While... by Chuckstar · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You are only sort of right. Micro-quakes can allow a fault to shift in a way that triggers a big quake that might not have otherwise happened. These are non-linear dynamic systems. It is possible to both release a small amount of energy from the system while concentrating existing energy in the system into a narrow area.

      In addition, energy is injected into regional fault systems in a manner that is itself probably not constant and probably relates to the configuration of the regional system at any time.

      Put all together, we do not yet have enough information to tell how fracking may affect large earthquakes, whether positively or negatively.

    4. Re:While... by Chuckstar · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Conservation of energy still applies.

      While true, this is immaterial in a non-linear system where energy can be transferred around quite easily. Quakes do not just release energy, they also shift the stresses around, allowing energy to shift between fault lines.

      Micro-quakes could simultaneously release energy, and spread the remaining stresses around such that energy cannot be built up into a single large quake. Alternatively, micro-quakes could simultaneously release energy and concentrate the remaining stresses such that even more energy is concentrated into a large quake than would have happened otherwise. Considering how small the energy releases are in small quakes, these second order effects should be much more important than the amount of energy released by the micro-quakes.

      Most likely outcome is that such micro-quakes do absolutely nothing of importance to the system. A few hundred or thousand micro-quakes simply would not make a huge difference compared to the amount of energy being concentrated then released in a major quake.

  2. Re:Oh - FRACKING by sjames · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it often points at it while waggling it's eyebrows meaningfully.

    Coupled with other things we know it sure suggests that we should be taking a careful look for causation.

  3. Re:Oh - FRACKING by DeadCatX2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's likely true that good fracking sites would be located in earthquake prone areas. However, what if you can show that the average number of earthquakes has gone up after fracking as compared to before?

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