Can fracking cause largish earthquakes?

[septimus]

(This might belong in GQ, IMHO, or MPSIMS, but Googling suggestss that this is a major on-going debate.)

Rachel Maddow claims that fracking causes earthquakes, including the largest earthquake in continental U.S. in recent years. Since these man-made earthquakes are almost exclusive to Oklahoma, they’re back in the news because anti-environment Oklahoma Atty-Gen. Scott Pruitt is on-track to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Especially interesting, I thought, was that 15 minutes before the big earthquake, millions of birds took flight all at once, creating an exotic visual event on weather radar. Here’s a pdf paper discussing the evolution of earthquake prediction ability.

[DSeid]

According to Science, fracking not so much so (mainly small ones) but wastewater disposal by injection into deep wells are another story, and are well established as large earthquake risks.

For example, several of the largest earthquakes in the U.S. midcontinent in 2011 and 2012 may have been triggered by nearby disposal wells. The largest of these was a magnitude 5.6 event in central Oklahoma that destroyed 14 homes and injured two people. The mechanism responsible for inducing these events appears to be the well-understood process of weakening a preexisting fault by elevating the fluid pressure. However, only a small fraction of the more than 30,000 wastewater disposal wells appears to be problematic—typically those that dispose of very large volumes of water and/or communicate pressure perturbations directly into basement faults.

[Ionizer]

@septimus

(This might belong in GQ, IMHO, or MPSIMS, but Googling suggestss that this is a major on-going debate.)

Rachel Maddow claims that fracking causes earthquakes, including the largest earthquake in continental U.S. in recent years. Since these man-made earthquakes are almost exclusive to Oklahoma, they’re back in the news because anti-environment Oklahoma Atty-Gen. Scott Pruitt is on-track to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Especially interesting, I thought, was that 15 minutes before the big earthquake, millions of birds took flight all at once, creating an exotic visual event on weather radar. Here’s a pdf paper discussing the evolution of earthquake prediction ability.

I live a bit south of OKC and clearly remember that quake. Shook the house noticeably and put some cracks in the brick-wall’s mortar. More interesting was that I was outside when I noticed a LOT of birds taking flight (lots of geese around here) plus both my dogs got really skittish, right about 15 minutes before the shaking. When I saw Maddow’s segment showing the radar imaging, it made perfect sense in hiundsight. My dogs also got skittish before a smaller quake a few months prior, too.

[usedtobe]

Does it cause earthquakes?

After the EPA is effectively destroyed, as promised by the Orange One, we will see.

How stupid do you have to be to inject oily water at intense pressure along a known fault line?

I remember the Loma Prieta (1989 World Series Quake - “Welcome to San Francisco”!) event well.

I cannot understand why anyone would treat known fault line so contemptuously.

[BeepKillBeep]

A friend of mine is very pro-environment but she knows I’m a scientist as respect my POV on scientific matters. So a couple of years she asked me what I thought. I read some papers on it and what I recall is:

• Yes, they seem to.
• They seem to generally be fairly minor.
• There is an open research question to whether the reason why they are minor is because the nearby fault lines have no major stresses and so the earthquakes are limited to the natural magnitudes plus some amount from fluid injection.

This third one is the important bit because what it means is that fracking near a fault line which can produce major earthquakes could be a big problem. I recall that one paper, which was quite well respected and cited heavily, essentially concluded that a robust geological and seismic survey should be completed in areas in which fracking is to be done. In suitable seismic areas fracking should be relatively safe, from the perspective of earthquakes.

Note, I’m not a geologist or seismologist. This is just what I recall reading.

[Melbourne]

Earthquakes are caused by continental drift, the things that cause continental drift, and by the effects of continental drift.

Water injection may trigger earthquakes. It may even trigger small quakes and prevent large ones. Which in economic analysis would probably not be a mitigating factor.

[Shagnasty]

I am a fractional owner of hundreds of fracking wells. As much as I hate to admit it, of course it causes earthquakes. I have seen the aftermath of many of them. Most of them are small but what do you expect when you literally inject millions of gallons of water, fracture subterranean foundations and pump out massive oil and gas fields? It is common sense that something has to give at some point and they often do.

The area where I grew up in the northern Louisiana/East Texas region used to be earthquake free but now they happen all the time thanks to fracking. Almost all of the damage is minor but it is still noticeable. It is ridiculous to think that pumping out massive quantities of liquids, gas and other materials 12,000 feet or so under the surface won’t effect anything else. OTOH, it is equally ridiculous, to think that fracking is pure evil and causes drinking water to catch on fire.