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Energy Production Causes Big US Earthquakes
ananyo writes "Natural-gas extraction, geothermal-energy production and other activities that inject fluid underground have caused numerous earthquakes in the United States, scientists have reported in a trio of papers in Science (abstracts here, here and here). Most of these quakes have been small, but some have exceeded magnitude 5.0. They include a magnitude-5.6 event that hit Oklahoma on 6 November 2011, damaging 14 homes and injuring two people."
Time and time again on Slashdot, we've had extraction engineers that work on this say it's completely safe and anyone who says otherwise is fear mongering!
;-)
Clearly these ivory tower scientists are just confused old men because the natural gas companies have absolutely no motive to try to silence this kind of stuff
Sink holes all over Illinois due to aquifer tapping leads me to say: You're surprised?
the plate stresses aren't caused by the fluid injection. The fluid is probably just lubricating the joint and encouraging slippage. However, this might be a good thing. We might be releasing stresses that would otherwise build until released in one big quake. I'd rather have a succession of small(er) ones.
Except deny the claims of actual science.
Earthquakes and global warming around us but who cares, we're getting rich, right?
It's that what matters? /s (-- For the Sarcasm impaired)
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
But isn't the advantage... that by lubricating faults what's happening is that built up tension is being released sooner, rather than later when it's built up even more?
Honestly, this ought to be seen as an advantage. More frequent smaller earthquakes are most likely very prefereable to infrequent but much larger earthquakes.
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the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
2 injured. That's like, a fraction of any other natural disaster.
This is a great opportunity for any one with a PhD in seismology wanting to make some money. All you have to do is to say, "these earthquakes did not come from fracking" or "these small earthquakes release the stress energy being built up in these faults. Relieving the strain in numerous small quakes actually ease the faults and make the possibility of large quakes less not more". That is it, a whole sister industry to climate-change-denial industgry will spring up around such people. The miniquake deniers will hang on to the public pronouncement in front of TV cameras by a few people in labcoats as gospel and shrug off peer reviewed research by every one else.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
While it may be true that such earthquakes are better than the eventual earthquake if such tectonic tension isn't released while it's at lower levels, I suspect that is speculation on various posters' parts - it doesn't take into account that those "sub-plates" weren't moving into a more stable configuration (such as the ancient ones in New York).
That aside, it's a matter of economics and no due diligence on the part of the "energy creators" - such events as these are probably an "economic loss" that is negligible compared to the income such activities cause. And even that (an economic impact) would be dependent on a suit against them being successfully won - and that's something unlikely to happen.
Either way, I doubt they care about any impact or damages unless they are in excess of their profit margins. After all, some of these energy conglomerates/companies had once proposed to drill into the Yellowstone Caldera to create geothermal energy (that one seems like a brilliant plan).
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Reports show scientific findings are often skewed by political and economic pressure. More on this shocking development as it unfolds.
The University of Oklahoma (home of one of the top Petroleum Engineering departments in the country, and recipient of much oil money), geology department has released statements disagreeing. Why aren't you reporting the "controversy" rather than the science? How incredibly biased!
In fact, just a few months ago, one their Geological researchers released a peer reviewed study that showed ... let's see here ... uh... that fracking is causing earthquakes.
Damn. Wait! I know there's a controversy to report here somewhere. Lemme look....ah, here it is:
Oklahoma’s official seismologist — the Geological Survey’s Austin Holland — is skeptical of the link between injection wells an earthquakes, a view shared by the Corporation Commission and the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association, a trade group that lobbies for the interests of oil and gas producers. More data is needed, Holland says.
See, this is actually a controversy! You just have to go to sources that aren't as familiar with the actual data, and/or are in the pockets of the folks doing the fracking. Why isn't this controversy being fairly reported?
Making an engine that turns over with a jerk turn over smoothly and more often is not necessarily a good thing. What are the implications of dramatically faster, smoother tectonic movement?
More volcanic activity at a minimum as there will be more 'lubrication' or less pressure on fault lines-which may lead to new earthquakes as the movement of magma sometimes does. On its surface (ha) it may seem that having smaller, weaker earthquakes may lead to just having more earthquakes in general, plus a side dish of possible new volcanoes and eruptions!
Now, scientists have known that geothermal power plants cycling water from underground can cause small quakes. But Brodsky's research actually matches the amount of water moved to the frequency of the quakes.
However, they're still not sure what causes the larger quakes. The hypothesis is that the really big ones might be triggered by other unrelated tremors.
So what van der Elst wanted to know was: "What prompts that slip?" Sometimes it's just all that water building up. However, he discovered that in three cases in the past decade — in Oklahoma, in Colorado and in Texas — the trigger was yet another earthquake, a really big one, thousands of miles away. In each case, the large earthquakes set up large seismic waves that traveled around the surface of the earth "kind of like ripples," van der Elst says. "You can even see them on seismometers, going around the world multiple times."
Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/07/11/200515289/wastewater-wells-geothermal-power-triggering-earthquakes
Sorry, not going to pay for the original nature submissions. The article quotes one year as being "almost 10 fold" increase... .so what was the range of prior observations? Are there observations prior to 1965? Are there any other periods of increased activity?
The second study mentioned says there is some correspondance between wells and quake locations. Again, show us the seismological history at those locations for at least the past 100 years. If these are geologically active zones then why should it be at all surprising that some earthquakes occur near drilling work?
This seems like an obvious statistical problem: has the frequency of small earthquakes changed ?
There is a baseline level at which small earthquakes occur. During the age of fracking, is the frequency more (or less).
It would probably be an easy exercise to get data from 40 or 50 years ago (before any fracking existed) and compare the distribution of earthquake data.
The biggest problem might be the lack of sufficient sample size for the current era.
From "Energy Production Causes Big US Earthquakes" to "Most of these quakes have been small, but some have exceeded magnitude 5.0."
From the USGS website, there are an estimated 1,444,469 earthquakes per year (based on records since 1990). There are 1,319 earthquakes per year which measure form 5.0 to 5.9 on the Richter scale. The article cites one instance of an earthquake which the scientists guess is because of fracking. Nature, you are not exactly knocking my socks off here.
sudo make me a sandwich
"Without any facts we are stuck with vague generalities" Sounds like another typical environmentalist bullshit article to me.you go ahead and study that for the next 30 years and get back with us.
I have predicted decades ago that Second hand smoke was dangerous, then big surprise, it was finally proven. I also predicted the Fracking was the cause of the earthquakes, and some other issues such a sinkholes, and just now we are starting to see proof of that.
Even if they are not putting energy into these things, The Fracking is a catalyst. opening up fissures in the rock will enable water to drain off into lower depths, and that water is the MOST valuable resource we have. That drain off vacates waters from underground cavaties and results in sinkholes, some of which have caused deaths. I'm sure some dumb ass judge will just give those energy companies a slap on the wrist.
Most of this is common sense, and just because some money bags energy company says it's safe, does not excuse them, when it's proven not to be, and if any court does not properly hold them accountable, will feel the wrath of the public, probably by a hangmans noose hanging from a tree.
I wouldn't say it causes “Big Earthquakes" but I wouldn’t dispute it could cause an Earthquake. The oil in the earth is like oil in an engine. Take it out and watch the parts break down. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Don't blame oil companies for the trouble. Blame Humans for invading earth :) Civilization is the biggest fault line. Yup I'm a human too, blame me.
I'm seeing a whole lot of trend lines in the abstracts. Where are the geological maps showing the exact location of the earthquakes in relation to areas that now contain injected waste water? Where are the core samples showing shifting layers of earth towards or away from fracking wells or showing fracking well collapses.
You know, where are the real observations of the geological structure in and around these wells and the linked earthquakes?
Just say it. You know you want to. Frakking earthquakes.
A big class of fat people doing aerobics causes small earth quakes too. What is the articles point?
Natural-gas extraction, geothermal-energy production and other activities that inject fluid underground
no those first two are really the only two. finding a study which suddenly lumps a very controversial method of extracting natural gas next to a method of energy production we've used for 40 years is actually rather suspicious.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Just get a few of your friends to create a news story, a few websites, and have themselves declare, "by the power of Grayskull, we are scientists" and
fiction becomes fact.
Just wondering how all you slashdot morons feel knowing you are irrelevant and useless?
While you all stand around, whacking off in a giant circle jerk the rest of the nation is ignoring your sorry asses and going on with life.
frak the fracking?!
the natural gas companies have absolutely no motive to try to silence this kind of stuff
Sure they have motive.
Now what about the motive of all of the oil rich regions we do not buy from because we have a larger supply of natural gas? How is it THEY have no motive?
It is a bald-faced lie to claim there is more profit in extracting natural gas locally than there is in paying to drill oil from another country and ship it here.
So who do YOU work for, eh?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Thereby avoiding that scary petroleum.
Sorted, eh?
They did work, you want their work for free.
That's the same problem that theives udergo, isn't it? We don't like that because the thief wants what someone else did for themselves, yes?
So are we talking Fracking is the cause or are we talking injection wells as being the cause? Big difference I would think.
The attention is selective here, just like the weekly M = 7 quakes that occur every week or so around the world that nobody mentions because they happen in unpopulated places. Most quakes happen on plate margins, and although I am not denying any of the findings of the article, the fact is nothing new. Human activities do cause events that are recorded in the Richter range of M = 1 to M = 5, but the number and range of events caused by geologic processes is much more significant.
Still, it is true that pumping fluids into and out of porous rocks can cause events on significantly correlated time scales. Explosions of all types including those for mining can also cause events, Seimographs are a significant tool for monitoring nuclear tests, especially of they are illegal and secret. North Korea's tests were detected very quickly by USGS as would any Iran might conduct.
If you actually understand the technologies involved, you'd know that they're talking about fracking, not the extraction of natural gas by conventional processes. But don't let that disturb your hysterical screaming, Slashdotters, it's just reality. I know that few of you have any real connection to reality.
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