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

Time to cut funding for research

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

All these studies are creating fear, uncertainty and doubt among the people. They make the job creators look like villains despite creating several, I repeat, several not just one, minimum wage jobs while making a measly profit of a few million dollars. And all these ivory tower professors, funded by the bureaucrats in Washington, doling out your taxes to create regulations that destroy your jobs.

The only thing to do is to cut all funding for all research in all universities if they collect any data whatsoever about the safety of oil facilities. If you make the oil industry extract refine and sell gasoline using only safe procedures, it could potentially raise the price at the pump by 10 or even 20 cents a gallon, and the burden will fall disproportionately on the poor people, making it very regressive. Why are all you guys hate poor people?