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Oil Recovery May Have Triggered Texas Tremors
ananyo writes "First came reports of earthquakes caused by hydraulic fracturing and the reinjection of water during oil and gas operations. Now U.S. scientists are reporting tremors may have been caused by the injection of carbon dioxide during oil production. The evidence centers on a sudden burst of seismic activity around an old oil field in the Permian Basin in northwest Texas. From 2006 to 2011, after more than two decades without any earthquakes, seismometers in the region registered 38 tremors, including 18 larger quakes ranging from magnitude 3 to 4.4, scientists report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The tremors began just two years after injections of significant volumes of CO2 began at the site, in an effort to boost oil production. 'Although you can never prove that correlation is equal to causation, certainly the most plausible explanation is that [the tremors] are related to the gas injection,' says Cliff Frohlich, a seismologist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics in Austin, who co-authored the study."
Had profit.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Until you figure out why CO2 injection causes problems at one oilfield, and not its neighbors, even though all of them have had similar amounts of CO2 injected, it seems rather more likely than not that the CO2 injection had nothing to do with the tremors.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Although you can never prove that correlation is equal to causation... we're going to run with it because it works for us.
Got it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
One thing I wonder as people talk about this. Now, I am no geologist but, my understanding of fault lines is that there are areas where tectonic plates cross, with one moving over the top of the other, pushing one down and one up. So far so good right?
So the model I have understood is, the fault compresses over time as the plates move, and then an earth quake happens when the stress is suddenly released, allowing the plates to slip some amount, relieving the stress and starting the process over again from its new position.
So now if this is an accurate enough description of the process, it seems to me like more frequent, smaller quakes are likely preferable to less frequent larger ones. So could this triggering of earth quakes actually be a....good thing? Is that question even being asked?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
megacorps never listen.everything from cigarettes to global warming and fracking have all seemed to have this pattern:
1. new technology or idea proposed with limited research. it gets pushed hard by megacorps who want cash.
2. problems arise such as seismic disturbance, gas in the water supply, etc.
3. industry reacts immediately and violently to the concerns of regular citizens. everything classified as an 'isolated event' and media is threatened with advertising boycott if they report too much about it.
4. mounting evidence suggests new technology is dangerous and has negative consequences.
5. industry responds insisting everything is OK.
6. more evidence mounts, legislation gets proposed to curtail the technology and enact regulation
7. industry pushes back with FUD and insists the effects are 'controversial' and 'unknown' with relation to the technology but that regulation is not the answer because jobs..
8. deaths, major accidents, and environmental impacts are being seen.
9. Industry starts gladhanding senators and congressmen to ensure interests are seen to. senators, as usual, are familiar with ignoring constituents with less than a million dollars.
10. industry no longer formally responds to complaints. evidence consists solely of legislation they crafted and enacted to support their industry.
11. industry pulls out after investment potential is exhausted or litigation expenses become annoying. pack up, move out, and assign a 'vacant trust' to the property to ensure superfund only kicks taxpayers in the beanbag.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Given that fracking is a permanent change to the environment that can't be undone, EVER, I'd want to see some pretty compelling evidence that it absolutely can't cause harm, EVER, before being used widely across a bunch of different geologies.
I wasn't even concerned with the specific assertions in question. I just saw the "never" and my scientific absolutist alarms went off. Correlation is one of the most useful tools in the data collection toolbox, and to assert it has not intrinsic empirical value was bothersome to me.
It does need to be used responsibly, with controls and awareness of uncontrolled variables. It doesn't lack value for "proving" things. Certainly the summary and abstract didn't give sufficient detail about what might have been considered in this particular case.
Zero damage. This time.
But go back a few years.. The tsunami that hit india might have been caused by deep well injection a thousand miles away.
Lots n lots of damage that time.
And the bit about fracking is true. Safety is irrevelant. They ARE exempt from the EPA clean air and clean water acts. Pretty much nothing else in the world can claim that.
Given that fracking is a permanent change to the environment that can't be undone, EVER, I'd want to see some pretty compelling evidence that it absolutely can't cause harm, EVER, before being used widely across a bunch of different geologies.
Wasn't pumping any oil out in the first place a "permanent change that can't be undone ever"?
Or were you planning on recovering all the oil that had ever been pumped, and putting it back somehow?
Correlation may very well not prove causation, but when you don't have a control and all or a non-trivial number of the empirical data points are saying the same thing, you turn to Occam's razor.
... and that it's just pure coincidence that the times and locations are exactly aligned with the advent of the fracking boom?
What is more likely...
That earthquakes are just suddenly occurring where they previously never have and are occurring more frequently and violently where they normally have
Or...
That earthquakes, which we know are caused by instability in the Earth's crust, just might be result of recently punching massive holes and billions of fissures in the Earth's crust?