New Concerns Over Earthquakes In Oklahoma Near Vast Oil-Storage Facility (nytimes.com)

HughPickens.com writes: The NY Times reported on October 14, 2015 that a magnitude 4.5 quake struck Saturday afternoon about three miles northwest of the Cushing Hub, a sprawling tank farm that is among the largest oil storage facilities in the world, now holding 53 million barrels of crude with a capacity for 85 million barrels. The Cushing oil hub stores oil piped from across North America until it is dispatched to refineries. The Department of Homeland Security has gauged potential earthquake dangers to the hub and concluded that a quake equivalent to the record magnitude 5.7 could significantly damage the tanks and a study by Dr. Daniel McNamara study concludes that recent earthquakes have increased stresses along two stretches of fault that could lead to quakes of that size. "It's the eye of the storm," says Dana Murphy, vice chairman of the state's oil and gas regulatory body, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.

"When we see these fault systems producing multiple magnitude 4s, we start to get concerned that it could knock into higher magnitudes," says Daniel McNamara, author of a paper published online that a large earthquake near the storage hub "could seriously damage storage tanks and pipelines." "Given the number of magnitude 4s here, it's a high concern."

Comments

Well, frack you Oklahoma

[rmdingler]

To be fair, the storage vessels are largely above ground tanks with floating tops and earthen dams around them, unlike the salt dome reservoirs used for the national petroleum reserve.

It seems unlikely there would be a major ecological disaster from tank rupture, and pipeline ruptures could be contained rather quickly.

Unfortunately, some spillage is an accepted part of the energy trade-off provided by crude oil.

Re:Little quakes

[gcmd]

That might be true for naturally occurring quakes, but the quakes that we are seeing in OK and surrounding States are being caused by increased stress along these faults by the pressure of waste water being injected into the ground and moving the faults. The ground is settling and creating new stress points, which is leading to these larger quakes. What remains to be seen is what will happen as we continue to create stress in the system. Personally, I wouldn't buy any land downstream...