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Oklahoma's Earthquakes Linked To Fracking
An anonymous reader writes Oklahoma has already experienced about 240 minor earthquakes this year, roughly double the rate at which California has had them. A recent study (abstract) has now tied those earthquakes to fracking. From the article: "Fracking itself doesn't seem to be causing many earthquakes at all. However, after the well is fracked, all that wastewater needs to be pumped back out and disposed of somewhere. Since it's often laced with chemicals and difficult to treat, companies will often pump the wastewater back underground into separate disposal wells. Wastewater injection comes with a catch, however: The process both pushes the crust in the region downward and increases pressure in cracks along the faults. That makes the faults more prone to slippages and earthquakes. ... More specifically, the researchers concluded that 89 wells were likely responsible for most of the seismic activity. And just four wells located southeast of Oklahoma City were likely responsible for about one-fifth of seismic activity in the state between 2008 and 2013."
Perhaps companies that do fracking should be regulated to treat wastewater like nuclear waste and prevent them from dumping it back in. It would stop the earthquakes and save them from the impending lawsuits that would follow. a Win Win aside from the cost of storage which should be less than a class action. Also who's to say it wouldn't be easier to treat the water a couple of decades from now to the point where it could then be poured out.
Apparently, estimates of the distance that the wastewater travels from the SWD were off by nearly an order of magnitude.
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The weakest part of the whole fracking operation is really sloppy treatment of the wastewater. There have been large spills in some places, and the disposal is often questionable (as seen here). The fracking process itself gets the most scientific scrutiny, because it's what's technically new about fracking, but good ol' wastewater handling is a mess, just as it was in the mining days.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Companies have been pumping water (usually wastewater or seawater) down wells since the start of the latter half of the 20th century, to restore pressure in oil reservoirs. So how is this anything new and anything connected with fracking?
Also, I don't unerstand why people make such a big deal out of these minor earthquakes which are general to small too feel even if you're paying attention for them. The amount of energy they're dealing with is only in the ballpark of these tiny quakes; compared to a large earthquake, it'd be like a mouse trying to push a boulder off a cliff. Either the boulder is ready to go or it's not, the mouse makes essentially no difference.
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
How long would it take to regulate fracking? Hopefully it won't take forever to do that.
It's really interesting to see the lengths that fracking companies put between themselves and wastewater, basically outsourcing the wastewater manage process to entirely separate companies explicitly for the purpose of no longer being responsible for the wastewater. They've done this pretty much from the start, too.
At the beginning it was most likely to give themselves a buffer when the environmental problems or health problems arose due to all those unclassified chemicals of dubious safety used in fracking that remain in the wastewater. Now it may provide them another buffer when it comes time to blame a party for the cause of these earthquakes.
Much like the GMO argument, it is the strange and suspicious actions of the companies that raises concerns rather than what they are doing. I'm sure more ethical businesses could frack and dispose of wastewater safely; none do. Just as I'm sure Monsanto could make GMO products without such bizarre legal actions that leverage their product to punish farmers.
People wouldn't bat an eye if the fracking or GMO industry had transparency, honesty, and responsibility rather than endless misdirection and threats.
I don't think they make their point very well or it got taken out of context by the naysayers or something. But the point should be that fracking is helping to prevent the large, devastating quakes that would eventually happen by relieving some of the pressure in small, mostly unnoticeable quakes.
...
You know what 'fracking' refers to, right? Hydraulic fracturing?
The rocks are being purposely stressed by high pressure liquids and crack under the pressure, releasing oil/gas that was previously trapped and irretrievable.
So what this has to do with fracking is that they thought that just pumping fluid back in would hold things up, but clearly that's not true. The integrity of the final rock/fluid combination is inferior to the original. Old wells were like sticking a straw in a drink and sucking it up. It's not really the same (though old oil wells have been known to sink and collapse as well, so it's not like that was risk free either).
Is it a real problem? Well, I don't live there, so I don't know. I don't think it's wise to tinker with geology that we clearly don't understand well yet, however.
That makes the faults more prone to slippages and earthquakes.
If my meager understanding of earthquakes is correct, these small slippages release in small bits the tectonic stress that could otherwise build up until a bigger quake happens. So, frack away?
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A majority of them are too small to be felt, but we have had 5.9's and 4.0's before. Even a 3.5 can easily be felt if the epicenter is close enough (of which, my house is only about 3-4 miles away from the epicenter of quite a few of them). The big deal is that it's starting to damage buildings. My house is developing a few cracks here and there, and some people are even getting serious enough as to having some foundational issues. When did it all start? When they started fracking. When did it stop? When they paused fracking for a while. When did it start up again? When they started fracking again. I know correlation does not equal causation but damn if that doesn't provide at least some necessitation to investigate.
"fracking" refers to the whole process. and that process as it is right now seems to cause earthquakes. if that is because the company owner have godlike powers or because they pump water back in causing issues is irrelvant.
But it would be impossible to hold the owners of these four wells accountable for anything. There are "experts" available for hire whose specialization is to muddy the waters and raise enough reasonable doubt among the jury and the public. There is so much of money to be made by fracking and it has so much of political support it would be difficult to do anything. By the time their power wanes and something could be done the real culprits would have cashed their shares and moved on to the next venture.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
*nod* one of the issues is that buildings on the east coast are not built with earthquakes in mind like west coast ones, so it takes much smaller quakes to do economic damage. And once you start to see damage (and the economic impact of repairs) you get into the classic sore point of 3rd parties paying a price for industry profits, which pisses people off.
It's the ground water pollution, for one.
For the other, this is completely different than the old days of shooting sea water or many times they used steam; so comparing fracking to old ways of getting oil is irrelevant.
Thridly, there are quite a few issues that are coming to light but the industry - like all induestries - is stone walling and as far as I am concerned, lieing until proven otherwise because ALL businesses will lie through their teeth to protect profits.
Money rules. Human wellbeing drools - in our society.
Profits turn people evil.
They're nice enough to put their numbers and charts online. Which is great. https://cornell.app.box.com/okquakes/1/2137038978/18684174734/1
Unfortunately, their own charts show a bit of a problem. Specifically Figure S1.
The increase in earthquakes over time is definite. And it's NOT generally where the actual injection wells are. Sure, there's a few quakes recorded in the middle of the injection well area, but they're not consistent, and they don't map with time.
The earthquakes do map well with one thing, though: they seem to swarm around active seismic stations that aren't near fracking disposal wells. Which seems to either show that seismometers create earthquakes, or that they have some instrumentation issues.
I dont get it. The average depth of oil/gas wells here in Oklahoma is approx 5,000 ft. The typical depth of earthquakes here in Oklahoma is approx 16,000 ft. I'm not seeing a connection between the two. But there is a geographical correlation and here's why.
When I worked for a large oil exploration company here in Oklahoma, I wrote software to search for "fault zones" because areas where the formations are broken up due to tectonic activity is also an attractive place to explore for and produce oil, in other words, oil companies drill in tectonically active areas because the deep formations are "pre-fracked" ! And so now people are finding a statistical correlation drilling and earthquakes. tooo funny.
One of these days, Fracking is going to cause an earthquake so large that it is going to cause Oklahoma to separate from the continental united states and drift off to sea.
That's weird, I found unknown shoes in my closet this morning and now everything tastes blue.
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Companies have been pumping water (usually wastewater or seawater) down wells since the start of the latter half of the 20th century, to restore pressure in oil reservoirs. So how is this anything new and anything connected with fracking?
Also, I don't unerstand why people make such a big deal out of these minor earthquakes which are general to small too feel even if you're paying attention for them. The amount of energy they're dealing with is only in the ballpark of these tiny quakes; compared to a large earthquake, it'd be like a mouse trying to push a boulder off a cliff. Either the boulder is ready to go or it's not, the mouse makes essentially no difference.
The difference is where the fluid is going. In a normal oil well, the introduce pressurize fluids to increase pressure and push the oil up the well. They're introducing fluid to a geological area that's had fluid in it for millions of years. There's no real change there, no reason for the earth to shift.
What this study shows is that after they are done fracking they need to dispose of their fluids so they're digging a NEW well and pumping the fluid down to an area that's been dry for millions of years. They are changing the deep geological structure of the rock, and therefor causing shifting and of course, earthquakes. They likely do this because the fluids they are using are highly toxic, they wont admit what's in them. It seems more and more likely that fracking itself isn't so bad, the feds just need to regulate the fluid they are using to do it. If they were just using brine, they could have just left it near the surface without fear of contamination.
So what this has to do with fracking is that they thought that just pumping fluid back in would hold things up, but clearly that's not true.
That's not at all how it works. The fluid exists to create hydraulic pressure. They put sand or tiny ceramic balls in the water to fill the voids created by the fractures to "hold things up."
This article relates to what they do with all the water after it returns to surface. They go find another well that doesn't produce anymore (or drill a new one into a non-producing zone) and pump the water in. HOWEVER, salt water disposal (SWD) is an operation that has been going on for decades. It's not new or unique to fracturing in the slightest making this article just more incorrect bullshit, and your post only adds to that. Please stop posting if you don't know what you're talking about as this only adds to the incorrect info that surrounds this issue.
buildings on the east coast are not built with earthquakes in mind like west coast ones
TIL: Oklahoma City is on the east coast.
Now we're talking. There's one thing that doesn't add up to me: does the energy delivered by the process approximate the energy released seismically?
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I'm not clear why it should. If you have geological structures under stress, there is already considerable energy in the system, and it may only take a small amount of additional energy to release the much larger amount being pent up.
If you have a bowling ball balanced at the top of a cliff, the energy released by it falling and hitting the ground far below is far greater than the energy required to push it over the cliff.
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The ignorance of the science of geology here is astounding. Many of you don't understand the difference between hydraulic fracturing and deep waste injection. You don't understand the mechanisms of earthquakes, You don't understand rheology (look it up). You probably think that Zorin's plan in a "View to a Kill" was feasible.
If extraction is causing property damage, then property owners should be compensated. If other forms of environmental damage are being caused by these practices, the practices should be evaluated.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It doesn't take much of a quake to cause a lot of harm to a home. What do you do when a foundation or a slab cracks? How about water pipes that start leaking at the joints or a lovely crack in a ceiling. This is a classic case of industry not being able to contain negative effects upon others and is probably actionable. Loss of peace of mind and loss of property value re enough to generate a huge law suit. Florida has already had one man swallowed alive in his bedroom by a sinkhole. Those sinkholes are caused by pumping water for an increasing population that leave voids below towns and suburbs. The city of Naples Florida is so undermined with caves, partially emptied by water pumping that any home in the area is at risk of suddenly sinking.
Reproducibility is a key element in scientific research. I've think you've demonstrated a pretty strong case for it right there.
Also: Occam's Razor. You didn't have earthquakes before and they started when the practice of crumbling the foundational geology beneath you. And this is happening in many places where they never previously experienced earthquakes. As if we even need a scientific study commissioned to determine this? The repeated, consistent anecdotal evidence is overwhelming proof enough on its own.
bigger than before, but the potential energy was still stored. so again it still boils down to a few smaller quakes, or a large deadly quake sometime in the future. Its not as if they are creating quakes where there never would be quakes.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
That analogy doesn't resemble fault dynamics at all. Perhaps a better one would be pushing a heavy object along a hard floor; as it moves, some points of contact stick, flexing the structure a tiny bit until the stress exceeds the static friction, and every little jolt is like a seismic event. That's how regular fault accommodation causes quakes, and the longer the points of friction are stuck a bigger jolt becomes more likely.
But never mind - there are other replies to my top-level comment that propose other sources of stress / energy.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
The analogy seems fine to me. In both cases you have a large amount of potential energy (in one case gravity, in the other frictional forces) and in both cases a catalyst of relatively small amounts of energy can upset the system and cause a much larger release of energy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes, the "small force triggering a big release" part is alright. The flaw lies in assuming theres a single bowling ball; to follow your analogy, imagine that balls keep coming in at a more or less constant rate until the shelf flexes and all come down (avalanches work like this too). Wouldn't you rather shake the shelf to make one ball fall at a time? (IIRC, avalanches are sometimes triggered on purpose).
Plate movement doesn't stop either, and the fault can accommodate and dissipate its stress in big or small jolts. But again, read the other post I told you about.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Your honor, I assure you those people would have died eventually anyway. I didn't kill them, I just got it over with a few decades early!
You don't understand how it works. After the high-pressure injection of fluids for the hydraultic fracturing, they introduce sand (propant) to hold the cracks open, and then they release the fluid pressures. So it doesn't stay pressurized. It's just the opposite, because the next stage is to pump out the hydrocarbons.
What the article describes is something else: waste-water disposal. And while hydraulic fracturing does produce a lot of waste water needing proper disposal, so do plenty of other industries. This sort of problem has been indentified in several places. I recall injection wells in parts of Ohio and Colorado that had similar issues decades ago that had nothing to do with hydraulic fracturing for petroleum exploration. On top of that, the simple solution to stop the earthquakes is to stop injecting the water (the earthquakes will wane over time), and the vast majority of injection wells have no issues (only certain areas are prone to earthquakes if fluid is injected). If you find one of those areas, as in this part of Oklahoma, then you stop doing it there.
Yeah right! I'm not a geologist, but anyone with 1/2 a brain knows that earthquakes are caused by the plates in the earth shifting. Fracking doesn't drill down anywhere close to the plates.
Standard denialist garbage. What amount of fact is enough to convince you? Think about that for a moment. What data would you have to see, to be convinced that fracking is causing earthquakes?
As to proof, how do you know anything is real? We might be living on a roughly spherical shaped object lit by a much larger nearby roughly spherical object, or we might not. We could be living in a giant simulator that is so good, supernaturally good, that we can't tell it apart from reality. God could have created the universe in 7 days. How can we tell? We can't! We understand that we can make good conclusions from observable reality, no matter whether it is real or not. To the best of our knowledge, what we observe is real, but we understand there could be a deeper reality. Whether there is or not does not affect our work.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
The politics of not having my property and quality of life destroyed by an asshat company's pursuit of profits. And by the way, trickle-down economics policies don't work.
So what this has to do with fracking is that they thought that just pumping fluid back in would hold things up, but clearly that's not true.
That's not at all how it works. The fluid exists to create hydraulic pressure. They put sand or tiny ceramic balls in the water to fill the voids created by the fractures to "hold things up."
And the interesting part is that there are quakes and there are QUAKES.
Not just energy but location. The serious risk of quakes involves some darn
deep structures. Deeper than any well and with vastly greater risk to
life and property.
Hydraulic fracturing and pumping waste to include CO2 into deep wells
can be expected to generate measurable seismic events. Some might
be felt without instruments.
Recall the coal fire and collapse in Utah generated a 3.9 on the Richter scale.
http://www.seis.utah.edu/Repor...
This is a far cry from the New Madrid quakes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1...
with magnitudes of 7.0 to 8.1.
The seismic risk of the central US is not well understood and is not well considered in
building and construction codes. Also no large quake is well considered in disaster
planning. Worse the impact of a large mid-west quake has much larger geographic
reach than a similar quake in Alaska or California.
Sadly the fracking fools will take this as a reason to stop fracking at any depth.
Most of the New Madrid seismicity is located between 3 and 15 miles (4.8 and 24.1 km) beneath the Earth's surface.
Most fracking in OK is shallow by comparison (1-2 miles).
Some believe that shallow releases of energy is a good thing and minimizes the
size and impact of deeper quakes. I am of the opinion that injecting fluids
does not increase the energy of natural quakes but might alter the
timing and energy dispersal profile. My opinion like most is not supported
by experimental facts and is just that opinion.
Hidden in the report is a disclosure of many seismic sensors and
plans to obtain funding for more. More science is good but the
social media and news outlet ignorance is being manipulated by
a plethora of interests one of which is network ratings where facts
are not an issue.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
A majority of them are too small to be felt, but we have had 5.9's and 4.0's before. ..... ......
The big deal is that it's starting to damage buildings.
Historic building codes in OK are not seismic risk aware.
Only recently have the codes in the hot spot around New Madrid
been partly addressed. In Calif there is a major industry
retrofitting buildings. It is costly and it is being driven by
an industry that profits from it. It is a good thing to reinforce
buildings, it is less good when the invoice arrives.
The cost of seismic retrofit in the Midwest could bankrupt
many states... and for the same reason tornado shelters
are not part of all schools, offices, shopping malls and homes
are not going to happen over night.
First building codes for new construction need to
be considered. Trailer houses like many single
story wood frame houses have less risk from quakes
than they do from tornadoes.... I hope regulators do
not bankrupt the Midwest....
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
1. Good to relieve pressure in these mostly tiny, barely noticeable quakes
2. We need fossil fuel, that's reality for now
3. It's just Oklahoma for fuck's sake, so who gives a shit?
How about peer-reviewed data with a peer-reviewed statistical correlation?
Is that really that unfair of a requirement?
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
Is peer-reviewed data with a peer-reviewed statistical correlation really that unfair of a requirement?
Maybe. If that's demanded for proof that the sky is blue, water flows downhill, the sun rises in the east, 2+2=4, or God exists, then it is an unfair requirement. Don't ask for proof for simple conclusions that anyone can reach with Occam's Razor. Don't demand proof for the unprovable. Raising those aren't expressing honest doubts, it's playing politics, using doubt to block further inquiry, delay remedial action that might impact someone negatively.
Rather, ask for proof of the counterintuitive. It makes sense that messing with the underground will cause changes in the underground that manifest as earthquakes, and also contamination of underground waters. Prove that fracking does not cause earthquakes. Peer review the proof. I suspect it can't be done, because fracking can and does cause earthquakes.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I dont get it. The average depth of oil/gas wells here in Oklahoma is approx 5,000 ft. The typical depth of earthquakes here in Oklahoma is approx 16,000 ft. I'm not seeing a connection between the two.
First: You're looking at the wrong wells. What's the depth of the injection wells?
Second: The depth of the well doesn't particularly matter, as long as it connects the water to a fault system. The water spreads out through the fault, turning it into a hydraulic jack the size of a small eastern state or so. The faults aren't purely horizontal and the pressure (except for an added component at greater depth from the weight of the water above it) is the same everywhere.
So of course the earthquakes take place at the usual depths where the "last straw" rock finally gives way.
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My house is developing a few cracks here and there, and some people are even getting serious enough as to having some foundational issues.
This also happens in central Texas, where there aren't baby earthquakes happening. It's caused by ground settling under a slab foundation due to drought, and then again from the reverse when the drought ends. It's also the reason you don't have basements in Oklahoma or most of Texas, because eventually the foundations would just get floated out of the ground. Just because baby earthquakes are happening at the same time as cracks in the walls doesn't imply cause.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
If it were a compressive load on my slab then yes, but this is shearing damage.
Not sure what you mean by that, but I've seen diagonal cracks in sheetrock before due to slab shifting.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Shearing load results in the slab foundation separating from the slab in a non-uniform matter (which is a very, very bad thing) while the dimensions of both the slab and house remaining constant. You can also get cracks inside the house that are the result of one portion of the house moving in a different direction, than the rest (i.e. more shear load).
Probably the most savage quake ever to occur in the US was in Missouri before many European types were in that state. Oklahoma is a bit close and I am wondering if we are about to see a super quake in that region again. The consequences would be awful. Native Americans who occupied tents or other lite weight shelters did not have bricks and concrete falling on them. modern buildings would have no chance in that severe a quake.
How about peer-reviewed data with a peer-reviewed statistical correlation? Is that really that unfair of a requirement?
There's tonnes of peer reviewed data out on this. In fact TFS has a link to one such paper. The fact that fracking causes seismic activity is not in doubt at all in geophysics circles. The correlations are dead easy as well. If you have the data, it is easy to produce graphs showing large increases in seismic activity when injection is taking place.
What's a more interesting question is whether the current data is capturing all the seismic activity being induced and whether some of the larger quakes that occured have been natural or induced.
Most.of.the quakes have been unnoticed except for.detection machines, meaning that if no one even feels it, its still not.a bad thing
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
A 3.0 is noticeable without a seismograph. While a single 3.0 is no big deal, 240 of them in a year can crack your foundation.
So if you prefer, "Your honor, I assure you, his house would have been condemned eventually, I just got it over with 40 years early.
You do realize that making patronizing statements with "standard denialist" in your litany is actually counterproductive to any sort of rational debate, don't you? Either facts stand on their own in the face of dissent or they don't. And the "facts" of today might not be the "facts" of tomorrow, assuming we are continually collecting data (defined as the result of scientific measures/experiments).
As for "masses of anecdotes resulting in data," I would point you to all the "we can light our tap water on fire because fracking" people, some of whom have neighbors with recorded family history of flammable tap water going back into the 19th century.
Because doesn't fracking fracture the strata and thus make the ground more unstable? Correct me if I'm wrong here. I don't know the magnitude, but it doesn't sound like a good thing to do overall. The whole thing is a bad idea period. How about just ending our addiction to oil? Nope. Can't do that while there is ground to rape and destroy so some cartel can stay in power for a few more years.
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The difference today is the pressure used. The term itself 'fracking' is hydraulic fracturing of the gaseous rock. It takes an enormous amount of pressure to fracture rock. Also the slurry used to frack is different then just using plain old seawater. It contains quite a few known cancer causing agents. The slurry is patented and produced by the company Halliburton. You know - the company Dick Cheney was President of... The same Dick Cheney to pushed through the energy bill exempting energy company from polluting. Dick Cheney is just plain evil.
As someone jocularly points out, that should be more or less "east of the Continental Divide" (rather than "east coast") -- because the eastern half of the continent doesn't have big quakes often enough to remind them to build for quakes. They've long since forgotten the massive New Madrid quakes of the 19th century.
And Oklahoma is not a seismic-free zone in the first place. Here's a handy seismic zones chart -- you may notice OK in fact has a region of routine moderate earthquake activity:
http://www.ivi-intl.com/pdfs/I...
(And speaking as a long-time red-zone resident... y'all's wussies! :)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
http://www.ivi-intl.com/pdfs/I...
Oklahoma is NOT a quake-free region in the first place.
Now if western North Dakota suddenly started having quakes (since per USGS records, ND has the lowest incidence of quakes of any U.S. state, and what quakes ND has are of the lowest average intensity of any state) ....then I'd listen.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
First of all, injection wells are not "fracking" (which is properly spelled fracing) and injection wells used for disposal of wastewater are not injecting only water from hydraulic fracturing. There are thousands of wells drilled with traditional vertical drilling methods in Oklahoma that produce water. There are wells that produce 90% water and 10% oil for most of the life of the well and this is common in some formations in Oklahoma (e.g. Mississippi Lime). That water has to be disposed of because it has high salinity- it was once ocean water- and the salinity is hard to deal with economically in traditional municipal wastewater treatment methods. In fact the aerospace industry and many other high-tech industries use disposal wells for disposing of various waste material. All of these disposal wells are regulated by the EPA as Class 2 wells. These injection well operators are contractors, providing a service to hundreds of different clients, mostly oil and gas, but not exclusively. They have operated these businesses since the 1940's (although at that time there were even fewer regulations and some of those disposal wells turned into Superfund sites (Southern California is one of those). Large amounts of the waste recovered by skimming and cleanup crews from the Macondo spill was injected into disposal wells.
The oil and gas industry is recycling wastewater from hydraulic fracturing in many cases, but sadly not every operator can or will do it. Here are some examples in a WSJ article: http://online.wsj.com/news/art... There are companies that can recycle frac water to the point it is potable and a few are doing that. There are also companies that deliver their waste water to municipal sewage plant operators that can bring the water to standards that allow it to be discharged into surface rivers.
1. I would acknowledge and even argue that the oil and gas industry needs to find more methods of recycling frac water. However, the conventional vertically drilled wells that have been around for many decades produce more wastewater than fracing in some areas. Examples are Mississippi Lime wells in Oklahoma and Kansas, Austin Chalk wells in Texas and Louisiana, and Phosphoria wells in the Rocky Mountains. Even the historically drilled well targets in Pennsylvania and Ohio have large quantities of water production associated with the oil. I think one reason the oil and gas industry is not reacting quickly to this is that they have ALWAYS had this much water to dispose of and the practice of hydraulic fracturing looks like more of the same to them.
2. The EPA is doing a lousy job of monitoring these Class 2 wells. As soon as slight tremors are measured pumping needs to stop. Seismic surveys need to be done around the wells that have proven to be an issue and new wells need this added to the permitting requirement. Yes that will add $10 million or more to the cost of these wells, but the alternative is public hew and cry about the bogeyman (which is how the public views earthquakes, and most other natural phenomenon), and some legitimate concern about damages caused by these tremors to nearby structures.
3. My own opinion is that fracturing with water is going to become an obsolete practice. Quite a few wells are now being fraced with liquid nitrogen gel, liquid carbon dioxide gel, propane gel, and liquified natural gas. This is the frac fluid of the future that will eliminate the need for using water. It does less damage to the formation because it is either an inert gas (nitrogen), a solvent to oil (carbon dioxide, propane and methane) or is native to the reservoir (propane and natural gas). Most water fracs damage the formation by the water being adsorbed into the shale. This occludes porosity and makes the well harder to produce. It only works because it is cheap- not because it is efficient and ideal for the rock.
California is listed as having over 10,000 earthquakes a year. This figure is more than a tad shy of equaling that (by over 40 times, let alone out numbering it by a factor of two. To say it's double is rediculous.: To quote the USGS: "Each year the southern California area has about 10,000 earthquakes. ... If there is a large earthquake, however, the aftershock sequence will produce many more earthquakes of all magnitudes for many months." http://earthquake.usgs.gov/lea... "
Such policies have raised 250,000,000 people out of poverty in India and 400,000,000 people out of poverty in China. Yes, they do work. They're just not working here because they've been taxed and regulated out of the country.
Liberalism is the ideology of envy, resentment, hatred, and self hate - which you demonstrate by your "asshat company's pursuit of profits" phrase. In reality, that pursuit of profits is repeated on a personal level for every one of us. But with the company operating nearby, many local people's pursuit of profits, to get or keep themselves out of poverty, works better than if the company is NOT nearby.
They're likely to start fracking in this area. I say bring it on. If there's a minor earthquake and something cracks or moves, or maybe one of my trophies falls off a shelf and breaks, well, that's what I have insurance for...
If it is possible to cause an earthquake, California is waiting for a big one. The stress has been mounting for a long time. If we cannot make several smaller earthquakes, at least make it on our schedule.