Oklahoma Earthquakes Are a National Security Threat (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A Bloomberg article makes the case that the U.S. must consider the earthquake situation in Oklahoma a national security threat. The town of Cushing, OK is small — fewer than 10,000 people. But enough oil is stored there at times to eclipse the entire U.S. daily usage. "The oil in Cushing props up the $179 billion in West Texas Intermediate futures and options contracts traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange." In the wake of the September 11th attacks, government officials posted guards near the giant storage facilities; they're that important to the U.S. economy.

Unfortunately, the rising seismic activity in Oklahoma is putting those tanks at risk. The article argues that if a terrorist attack would threaten national security, so must an equally devastating natural disaster. This raises major questions for the legality of fracking, which has been linked to the increased number of earthquakes striking Oklahoma over the past decade. "Last month the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which oversees oil and gas, ordered wells within three miles to shut down entirely and those between three and six miles from the town to reduce their volume by 25 percent."

Comments

Classic anti-energy lobby technique

[Applehu Akbar]

A large oil tank farm is an example of infrastructure that can be threatened by a number of disasters, from tornados to terrorism. But as soon as you say "fracking", the swarms of small earthquakes that lubrication of shallow rock strata can create suddenly become much more important than other threats that are historically worse in the region. You can get the same effect by dropping "nuclear" into any discussion.

Re:Classic anti-energy lobby technique

[Rei]

Why did you include two links neither of which have to do with earthquakes?

Anyway, this isn't entirely accurate:

This raises major questions for the legality of fracking, which has been linked to the increased number of earthquakes striking Oklahoma over the past decade.

It's actually wastewater injection that's tied to increasing numbers of earthquakes. Now, fracking often uses wastewater injection. But other types of oil production sometimes do as well, and fracking doesn't always involve it. It's important to keep clear on just what the problem is.

Re:Classic anti-energy lobby technique

[PolygamousRanchKid]

But as soon as you say "fracking", the swarms of small earthquakes that lubrication of shallow rock strata can create suddenly become much more important than other threats that are historically worse in the region. You can get the same effect by dropping "nuclear" into any discussion.

. . . and there I was, thinking that I could get rich with "Nuclear Fracking"

. . .

Re:Classic anti-energy lobby technique

[hey!]

I've looked into this -- to the extent of searching for papers and incidents described in the academic literature using Google Scholar, so take this with a grain of salt -- and I've concluded that there are two clear environmental concerns with fracking. The first, of course, is carbon. The lower the price of carbon-based fuel the more of it we'll use. All things being equal that would be a good thing, but the point is that all things are not equal if we emit more carbon.

The wastewater issue is complex, in that it depends on the locality and the stage of development of fracking in the area. Thus far the industry has been quite good about handling wastewater -- my concern is in some of the fracking boom areas there aren't good disposal options yet for "flowback". The industry is dealing with this by re-using flowback, but while this is great in the boom phase of fracking it's going to be hard to sustain in an area when the rate of new well drilling begins to peak. Eventually there'll be more flowback than can be re-used, and as far as I can see there is no plan for dealing with that in some places. This could potentially leave the taxpayers with the cleanup bill. You also have to factor in what practices an industry is willing to undertake in a boom situation as opposed to the eventual scenario of declining profitability.

This is not a crisis; it's something we have time to deal with if there's the political will. The problem is that there usually isn't much political will for dealing with problems that will manifest in fifteen or twenty years' time.

Groundwater contamination is also a serious concern, although it is clearly a matter of each site's local geology. It's an area that needs more research.

Re:Classic anti-energy lobby technique

[david_bonn]

Except if you live near oil producing areas using fracking and suddenly your well water becomes flammable:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

http://ecowatch.com/2013/11/07...

So while there may be some hysteria, I damned well would be hysteric if my drinking water suddenly became flammable.

In fairness, it isn't the fracking process that is directly causing the earthquake problem here -- it is disposing of the wastewater in certain deep wells that is causing the earthquake activity. I read somewhere that ninety percent of the earthquake activity is associated with less than ten percent of the wells, which tells me that if we are able to choose which wells we use for wastewater injection we can substantially solve this problem.

Ohio has had a similar, if less serious, problem:

http://www.livescience.com/493...

For all that, this whole story sounds like we are watching a classic disaster movie unfold.

Seriously though

[Ol Olsoc]

I stopped reading after the September 11th introduction.

Its a problem. A big one.

But are we going to start arresting earthquakes and sending them to Gitmo now?

Devastating earthquakes

[Christian Smith]

Those 2-3 richter scale earthquakes could cause devastation. The security guards' "best Dad" coffee cups might fall onto the floor and break.

The 4.5 scale quake might even set off the alarms!

Re:Error in summary

[Chris Johnson]

How much did THAT cost? It's got to be more expensive to force the EPA to lie.

I think you're telling more literal truth than you anticipated.

Re:Oh the Irony..

[rmdingler]

The tanks are holding 3 days worth of US oil consumption at their peak storage value of 60 million barrels, so no, the amount there is not a a large part of the oil that is produced by the process.

Fracking may or may not be of negative environmental consequence, but it is the reinjection of production water into formations through SWD (salt water disposal) wells that is being blamed for the uptick in small earthquakes.

The floating top tanks are surrounded by earthen dams and the pipelines can be shut down almost instantly, so a disaster from earthquakes is pretty much FUD> don't panic.

Re:Error in summary

[Ol Olsoc]

This raises major questions for the legality of fracking, which has been linked to the increased number of earthquakes striking Oklahoma over the past decade.

This isn't true. Even the EPA has been forced to admit that freaking is safe.

Pumping the used fracking water into wells might not be. When they do the drilling and fracking, they put chemicals in the water - some to make it slippery to aid in the fracking. There's no reason to believe they don't retain the same properties. Lubricate a fault line, don't be too surprised if it moves.

Fracking is almost certainly pretty safe. What I mentioned above might pose a problem. We've been doing fracking for a long time, and I think the big push now will be to research more environmentally safe or easily recyclable fracking fluid. Injection wells are just accidents waiting to happen.

Side note: After WW2, there was a lot of napalm left over, and they used it as a lubrication agent in fracking solutions for some time. I suspect a blowout could be pretty exciting.

Re: Actually, a Global Threat

[tlambert]

Eskimo: 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?'
Priest: 'No, not if you did not know.'
Eskimo: 'Then why did you tell me?'

Re:Predictable responses

[CrimsonAvenger]

And in 20 years, everyone will wonder why nobody saw the end coming.

Y'know, people were saying this when my daughter was a kid 20 years ago.

And they were saying this when I was a kid 40 years ago.

Hell, from what my Dad has told me, they were saying it when HE was a kid too....

Re:It's how our politics work

[Ol Olsoc]

Did you read the summary? Its entire focus is that the recent earthquake swarm is caused by fracking (unlike the many similar earthquake swarms that area has had in the past, apparently).

I RTFA, and there might be some serious issues with it. It has some severe inconsistencies with the report it cites:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

tl;dr version The report notes that increased fracking and the wastewater injection, if disposed in that manner, might be a problem. But the injection wells are the cause of the problem, not the nature of hydraulic fracking. Those injection wells have been there long before modern day fracking was around. Here's an abstract from Geology http://geology.gsapubs.org/con...

The takeaway is that the culprit here is injection wells for wastewater, which by the way, is not only loaded with brine water, and toxic chemicals, but lubricating agents. It was proobably never a good idea, even when these injection wells were utilized well before modern day fracking - like the culprit wells in Oklahoma.

As noted before, we need to make the fracking fluid more environmentally benign. It won't ever be completely so, as brine is picked up in drilling. But simply pumping it back underground will just expose local fault lines over the years, and endangers a whole lot of folks and real estate.

Re:Predictable responses

[pslytely psycho]

"Something is eating my cookies"

Well, obviously, you have a Cookie Monster infection....