Earthquakes and Fracking
There are a rising number of earthquakes in areas where there is hydraulic fracturing and growing scientific information shows that forcing fluids under high pressure deep underground can increase regional seismic activity.
An expert hired by the state of Ohio said that the 4.0 magnitude earthquake in Ohio on New Year’s Eve, 2011 did not occur naturally and may have been caused by high-pressure liquid injection related to oil and gas exploration and production.
Oklahoma used to average about 50 earthquakes a year, but between 2010 and the end of 2011 there were over 1050 earthquakes in areas where there is fracking. On November 5, 2011 an earthquake measuring 5.6 rattled Oklahoma and was felt as far away as Illinois.
As far back as the early 1960’s the U.S. government identified a link between the injection of fluids into deep wells and earthquakes. In his article “U.S. Government Confirms Link Between Earthquakes and Hydraulic Fracturing”, John Daly reported that the U.S. Army’s Rocky Mountain Arsenal (RMA) constructed a deep injection well in 1961 to dispose of the site’s liquid waste. According to the RMA, “The Army discontinued use of the well in February 1966 because of the possibility that the fluid injection was ‘triggering earthquakes in the area.’ ” In 1990, a study of the RMA events by Craig Nicholson and R.I. Wesson titled “Earthquake Hazard Associated with Deep Well Injection–A Report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency” stated that, “Injection had been discontinued at the site in the previous year once the link between the fluid injection and the earlier series of earthquakes was established.”
In 2011 the Oklahoma Geological Survey authored a study titled “Examination of Possibly Induced Seismicity from Hydraulic Fracturing in the Eola Field, Garvin County, Oklahoma”. The study found that 50 earthquakes occurred in an area within 3.5 km of a well being “fracked” in the Eola field of southern Garvin County within a 24-hour period. Forty-three of those quakes were both shallow and unique and the earthquakes ranged in magnitude from 1.0 to 2.8 Md. The OGS concluded that, “the strong correlation in time and space as well as a reasonable fit to a physical model suggest that there is a possibility these earthquakes were induced by hydraulic-fracturing.”