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Seismological Society of America Claims Fracking Reactivated Ohio Fault
eldavojohn writes There have been suspicions that fracking has caused minor earthquakes in Ohio but last year seismic data recorded by the Earthscope Transportable Array was analyzed by the Seismological Society of America using template matching and has resulted in a new publication and press release making the statement that Hilcorp Energy's fracking in Poland Township in March of 2014 "did not create a new fault, rather it activated one that we didn't know about prior to the seismic activity." The earthquakes occurred in the Precambrian basement and lead the researchers to posit that further unknown faults may be activated by fracking. The press release ends with urging for "close cooperation among government, industry and the scientific community as hydraulic fracturing operations expand in areas where there's the potential for unknown pre-existing faults."
You are correct. That water had gasses in it before the fracking started.
well, gases is cheaper because the middle east is dropping prices to put the american frackers out of business. so.... yeah, take what you will from that
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Don't the mini quakes release energy from the faults more safely?
mini quakes along active fault lines release pent-up energy that protects against "the big one" -- but a dormant fault is like a healed over fracture in your bone -- if nothing disturbs it, it will continue to heal over. Now that it is active again, this will cause a chain reaction of stresses that will likely have continental and possibly global consequences, as it changes the way the other faults interact with each other.
Basically, it made all the related fracture lines that much less predictable.
There's a relationship, but like all commodities it's more complicated than that. But the futures markets and all sorts of stuff completely unrelated to supply and demand also are huge factors.
It is long past the point where these things happen in isolation.
I seriously doubt even this comes close to explaining it:
I'm not playing with words at all. I'm saying that modern economics is FAR more complex than "when demand goes up price goes up". Modern economics is full of vagaries, speculation, collusion, and other bullshit.
Despite claims to the contrary, economists don't know much more about how the economy works than you or I ... because economics is at least 50% ideology.
You look for, and see, the outcomes you believe in.
What economics is not, is an objective natural law. It's a series of observations which may or may not extend as far as people who use it claims, and whose premises may or may not be reliable.
Economics is NOT a real science. There's a lot more voodoo in it that people admit.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This is basic high school physics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it is conserved. If the amount of energy the fracking put into the ground was less than the amount of energy released from the earthquake, then clearly there was another source of that excess energy. Mainly, tectonic movements had built up stresses into the ground, which would have eventually been released as a natural earthquake if there had been no fracking.
Active fault lines are good. It means tectonic stresses are being regularly released. Inactive fault lines can be good or bad. If there are no more tectonic stresses being built up, then the fault can't cause an earthquake, and it's good. But if there are tectonic stresses being built up, then it's bad because it means that energy isn't being released at regular intervals. We just think it's inactive when it's really not, and it's going to cause a big doozy of an earthquake in the future.
Since the fracking triggered an earthquake, clearly there were stresses in the "inactive" fault, and the fault was of the latter type and thus not truly inactive, and the fracking merely relieved the stress. Basically, if a fault line can be "reactivated", then it was never really an inactive fault line in the first place.
There are some macro (continental-scale) arguments that can be made about plate movements and whether the overall rate at which the plates move (and thus build up stresses in the rocks) can be affected by deliberately relieving some of those stresses (e.g. fracking). And thus fracking could be bad because it increases the rate at which the plates move, and thus increase the rate at which stress builds up and earthquakes happen. But on the local level, the basic jist of the argument that fracking merely triggers earthquakes which were going to eventually happen anyway is correct. Anybody who understands high school level physics can see that.
In the industry paid-for response TruthLand they admit that it was due to fracking, but claim that the particular well in question was not properly protected with a concrete barrier. They claim that it should not happen elsewhere if the wells are constructed properly and steps are taken to avoid contamination.
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You forgot one thing though. The stresses could have been otherwise relieved along active fault lines. Tectonic stress isn't a point stress. It's not like a volcano that blows when enough stress builds up under it. There's no local buildup that then eventually causes an earthquake after long enough. It's more like a circuit, a whole system where stress is electricity that takes the path of least resistance. How large the system is depends on the geology of the particular area. Irrespective, the system absorbs the stress as a whole; stress propogates through the entire system, and the point of release is the weakest location in that system. If it's easier to release at an active fault (which it usually is), then it would be released there. Maybe in the active fault, it would be released there after a longer period of buildup, and/or it might be released over a larger area.
But now, all of a sudden, they opened up inactive faults. Inactive faults happen for multiple reasons some of which you've stated. If the inactive fault is inactive despite stresses building up under it, that means it stopped being the weakest point. If fracking is activating it, it means fracking is causing a strong configuration to turn into a weak one. It is weakening what's holding the fault in place. And in addition, the reactivated fault line causes all sorts of other unpredictable behavior in the area. Related fault lines that were once thought to be dormant could suddenly become active. Unrelated fault lines that were just strong enough not to be the weak point could suddenly become just weak enough to become the weak point. Fault lines we didn't know about previously could suddenly appear. Hell, this could trigger (however unlikely), an eventual plate split like what's happening in East Africa.
All this in and of itself isn't bad, at least not on human timescales. Continental earthquakes do happen, and they are usually fairly weak. But it does mean the location of where big earthquakes will happen become less predictable. And that's where the problem lies. Most of Cali is built to withstand upwards of a certain magnitude, say 6.0 (as an example; I'm pulling the number out of my ass). It's expected that Cali will be hit with a 6.0 periodically. People prepare for that sort of thing. Most of the midwest (or Ohio in this case) is not built to withstand a 6.0. It's not expected to experience a 6.0 earthquake. By reactivating an inactive fault line (via weakening), now Ohio or maybe some other part of the midwest can expect a 6.0 earthquake. Why? Because as you say, while that reactivated fault line is moving, it's great. But when it suddenly stops again, and for a long time, then the pressure begins to build. And since the previously inactive fault is now the weakest point in the system, that could very well be where the built-up pressure will be released, this time not so gently..
That's the cost of reactivating inactive fault lines.
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