Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Seismological Society of America Claims Fracking Reactivated Ohio Fault

Posted by samzenpus on from the whole-lot-of-shaking-going-on dept.

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."

4 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Good luck with that. by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Despite there being no published science about its safety, and despite evidence that it is actually polluting wells and ground water ... it will keep happening.

    Because government officials are all paid heavily by the oil and gas industry to make damned sure they can do anything they want to, right up to tearing up private property because they want to.

    These short sighted clowns only care about profits, and don't give a damn about anything else.

    I can't imagine government is going to start reigning in corporations any time soon ... which means all laws and policy will continue to be so skewed in favor of corporations as to be laughable.

    America is nothing but an oligarchy these days.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Good luck with that. by SydShamino · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They (the owners of the company, not the pseudo-person company itself) would happily agree to those terms, knowing that they are protected by investor and bankruptcy laws, and eventually their own deaths and inheritance laws. Those terms are thus meaningless. Long-term environmental protection must be done through preventative regulation, not through post-damage punishment, as the time scales ensure those responsible cannot be adequately punished.

      I'm not making any claim as to whether fracking causes long-term environmental damage (though I'm happy it's not happening under my house), just pointing out that if it did, reactive punishment wouldn't stop it.

      --
      It doesn't hurt to be nice.
  2. Re:"Don't install a basement" by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 5, Funny

    I told the Precambrian family not to install a basement. But did they listen? Noooooo.

    Well then... this is obviously their fault.

  3. Re:Scientists are government officials too by Layzej · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Citing "Australia right now" in support of "Global Warming" (also known as "Climate Change") is ridiculous

    Maybe, unless you have insight into the trends and Australia Now is consistent with those trends. Extremes that would have happened about 2% of the time in the 30 years prior to the 80's were happening about 6% of the time in the 30 years prior to 2010. In the last 15 years they have occurred about 10% of the time: http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of... . This trend of increasing extremes is what we would expect in a warming country: http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of...

    The picture becomes even more cohesive if you look at the temperature trend in the context of radiative physics and what we know about the atmospheric CO2 trend.