Did Fracking Cause the Virginia Earthquake?
Fracking Injects High Pressure Fluid Deep in Rock Bed
***
Earthquakes in the nation’s capitol are as rare as hen’s teeth. The epicenter of Tuesday’s quake was in Mineral, Virginia, which is located on three very quiet fault lines. The occurrence of yet another freak earthquake in an unusual location is leading many anti-fracking activists (including me – they have just started fracking in Stratford, which is 40 minutes from New Plymouth) to wonder whether “fracking” in nearby West Virginia may be responsible.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the process of initiating and subsequently propagating a fracture in a rock layer, employing the pressure of a fluid as the source of energy. The fracturing is done from a wellbore drilled into reservoir rock formations, in order to increase the extraction rates and ultimate recovery of oil and natural gas and coal seam gas.
How Fracking Causes Earthquakes
According to geologists, it isn’t the fracking itself that is linked to earthquakes, but the re-injection of waste salt water (as much as 3 million gallons per well) deep into rock beds.
Braxton County West Virginia (160 miles from Mineral) has experienced a rash of freak earthquakes (eight in 2010) since fracking operations started there several years ago. According to geologists fracking also caused an outbreak of thousands of minor earthquakes in Arkansas (as many as two dozen in a single day). It’s also linked to freak earthquakes in Texas, western New York, Oklahoma, and Blackpool, England (which had never recorded an earthquake before).
Industry scientists deny the link to earthquakes, arguing that energy companies have been fracking for nearly sixty years. However it’s only a dozen years ago that “slick-water fracks” were introduced. This form of fracking uses huge amounts of water mixed with sand and dozens of toxic chemicals like benzene, all of which is injected under extreme pressure to shatter the underground rock reservoir and release gas trapped in the rock pores. Not only does the practice utilize millions of gallons of freshwater per frack (taken from lakes, rivers, or municipal water supplies), the toxic chemicals mixed in the water to make it “slick” endanger groundwater aquifers and threaten to pollute nearby water-wells.
Horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracking (which extend fractures across several kilometres) were introduced in 2004.
The Research Evidence
I think it’s really hard to deny there’s a connection when the frequency of Arkansas earthquakes dropped by two-thirds when the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission banned fracking (see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/21/fracking-shutdown-earthquakes-arkansas_n_851930.html). Note that they didn’t stop entirely, which suggests that fault disruption may persist even after fracking stops.
Braxton County West Virginia also experienced a marked reduction in their quakes after the West Virginia Oil and Gas Commission forced fracking companies to cut back on the pressure and rate of salt water injection into the bedrock (see http://www.hurherald.com/cgi-bin/db_scripts/articles?Action=user_view&db=hurheral_articles&id=43334).
According to a joint study by Southern Methodist University and University of Texas-Austin, earthquakes started in the Dallas/Fort Worth region after a fracking disposal well there began operating in 2008 and stopped when it was closed in 2009 (see http://www.watershedsentinel.ca/content/does-gas-fracking-cause-earthquakes).
Blackpool, England banned fracking immediately, without waiting to see if more earthquakes would occur.
The Need for Federal Action
Despite strong anti-fracking movements in New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia – based on dozens of cases of contaminated well water, poisoned livestock, destruction of wildlife, and tap water that catches fire and explodes – fracking has proved extremely difficult to regulate on a state and local level. New York governor Andrew Cuomo seems intent to allow the New York fracking to lapse. And a West Virginia judge has recently overturned Morgantown’s ban on fracking, on the basis that it violated the constitutional rights of Northeast Natural energy company.
Hopefully today’s events have caused some chickens to come home to roost for federal lawmakers. They need to send a clear message to Obama and the EPA to stop “studying” the issue – that he needs to show some testicularity in standing up to the energy companies that are financing his 2012 campaign.
Meanwhile there is a legal precedent of an Arkansas man suing a fracking company for earthquake damage to his home. For people with earthquake damage from today’s quake, there’s a very nice lawyer at http://www.fracking-lawsuit.com/ who would be delighted to give you a free consultation.
26 Comments
This entry is filed under Sustainability, The Global Economic Crisis and tagged with arkansas, earthquake, fracking, hydraulic fracturing, texas, virginia, west virginia.
You can also follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Or perhaps you're just looking for the trackback and/or the permalink.
i was thinking the same thing myself, i hear the past year or two, fracking has increased quite a bit.. to levels where they used to extract gas in the 70′s. they slowed down for awhile since the EPA put up protections for the environment, but they have not been that strict in the past few years.
Here in New Zealand, earthquakes are a big issue. A lot of homes and businesses in Christchurch can’t get insurance presently, owing to the two earthquakes that nearly wiped out the insurance industry.
The fracking company here in Taranaki is pretty slick. They are trying to cause a split in the environmental community by making a major gift to an environmental trust responsible for the marine reserve. Fortunately local Maori are dead opposed to it and have filed a complaint with the UN that it violates their indigenous rights.
In the oil in Saudi Arabia is removed by injecting salt water from the Persian Gulf into the ground, for every barrel of oil removed they inject almost twice that amount. I am not a geologist, so I don’t know if oil is in pools, or must be forced out the rock seams.
However, has Saudi Arabia seen a rise in earthquakes in that region?
To respond to your question, Lynne, the Saudis are replacing the pressure exerted by the oil to prevent the rock structures from collapsing. Because the integrity of rock structures is being preserved, I wouldn’t expect any pressure on faults. With fracking, millions of tons of salt water are being injected into layers of bedrock, forcing them apart.
Hi
Thanks for your nice posts. Please post more.
I guess fracking caused all these earthquakes as well. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/virginia/history.php
Eliminating slick fracks is one thing, but don’t create causality just for political gain. The east coast has far more earthquakes that you realize.
Fracking! I’ve never heard of an earthquake hitting the Eastern United States. They should frack the San Andreas fault in California and put the “cause and effect” question to bed, once and for all.
It took the book “Silent Spring” to bring about the eventual banning of DDT. Maybe a book called “Mommy, Where was California?” will start a nationwide ban on fracking.
Andrew, the only I’m making is that deep drilling has been causally linked to deep drilling in other regions. Here is an excerpt from an email a reader sent me this morning:
“When the incident happened in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 I dug into the elements of this ‘deep’ drilling. Ultimately, I was able to see what I needed to see. In Switzerland, with a geothermal project going full blast, some 10 earthquakes occurred. That prompted them to permanently suspend the project. Paying close attention, a group in California followed suit and ended their project.”
I’m not saying deep drilling caused the Virginia quake – I’m pointing out that it has in other regions and posing the question. Most of the feedback I have gotten is that people feel it’s a legitimate question.
Your point about political gain confuses me. How do I gain politically by writing about fracking?
This is absolutely absurd logic. My father was a really good geologist. I think this article would probably cause him to roll in his grave. I’m sorry but I don’t believe for one second that fracking caused a 5.8 earthquake that affected an area to include D.C., New York and Maryland.
Well, Martha, you better tell Scot Ausbrooks, the registered geologist from the Arkansas Geological Survey who is going to Virginia to study the East Coast quake. I suggest you have a look at the studies he’s done and tell him where he’s gone wrong. I’m sure he would be grateful for your expertise:
“A study headed by Scott Ausbrooks, geohazards supervisor for the Arkansas Geological Survey, showed a severe drop in the number of seismic events in the area shortly after the temporary moratorium was put in place March 4. In the 18 days prior to the temporary shutdown of the wells, there were 85 events of 2.5 magnitude or greater, but only 20 in the 18 days after March 4, about a 75 percent drop, he said.”
http://planetsave.com/2011/02/18/arkansas-earthquakes-related-to-hydraulic-fracking/
http://www.thesuntimes.com/news/x1704352837/Injection-wells-banned
July 29, 2011
Permanent disposal-well moratorium issued, July 31, 2011
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2011/jul/31/permanent-disposal-well-moratorium-issued-20110731/?news-arkansas
Arkansas Geologists Prepare to Send Quake Equipment to Virginia, August 24, 2011
http://ozarksfirst.com/fulltext?nxd_id=510617
I certainly believe that Fracking has caused the Earthquakes..just look at the comments..the fact is that there are Earth Quakes in places that they have not been before…It only makes sense that this is what is happening…STOP THE FRACKING ALL OVER AND FIND OUT..FORGET THE kEYSTONE PIPE LINE AND STOP BLOWING UP THE MTN TOPS..OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES LIKE fRANCES SAID…STOP IT…WE DON’T NEED IT NOR DO WE WANT IT…
I found a website that says Saudi Arabia had 30,000 earthquakes in 09. I really hope this is not true. Regardless I think we should send some geologists over there to study the effects of fracking and drilling in this region so we will better understand what is going to happen in our region. In response to one reply on here. I am not a chemist, but I don’t believe it is ok to replace oil with sea water to keep the ground steady. Oil is much more dense than water, thus things are less likely to dissolve in it. Any way here is the website and if this stuff is true, it is not just Virginia that should be worried.
http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/unexpected-volcanic-activity-saudi-arabia-0575/
Thanks for the link, Randi. I think it will be extremely important to support Ausbrooks now. There seems to be an effort in the geological community to discredit and marginalize him (as they did with researchers who alerted us to the dangers of fluoride, cellphones, and genetically engineered food).
Randi says “Oil is much more dense than water, thus things are less likely to dissolve in it.” Oil in fact is less dense than water, and floats on water, including in underground reservoirs. And density has no correlation with what dissolves in a substance. For example, other hydrocarbons (like say benzene) would dissolve in crude oil, but water would not. It has a lot more to do with charge distribution and relative size and shape of the molecules of the solute vs the solvent.
Fracking poisons our water and our soil, thus the animals will die and the vegetation will contain these chemicals. It causes cancer. It kills children, the most innocent. I have no doubt that it is also responsible for earthquakes. And what for? Greed. The corporations lie. Wake up America. We are so busy with our cell phones and computers and our “stuff”…. what good is it all if we have no clean water? Much more important to drive a BMW and have a private jet. I was born in the wrong era. God help us.
Mario Salazar emailed me the following information via my Contact Form:
“There are at least 2 episodes that can be atributed to fracking. In Colorado in an Army base they were injecting (salt?) water at very high pressures and it caused tremors. EPA ordered the abandonment of this activity. There is also an episode in Ohio in the 1980s.”
“According to geologists fracking also caused an outbreak of thousands of minor earthquakes in Arkansas”
Well many readers may take this as the truth but many of these geologist were connected with the anti-fracking movement. Even before this was written these they were proven wrong. Bad info and out of date.
News story from Reuters today, 3/9/12: “Ohio agency says fracking-related activity caused earthquakes”: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/09/us-energy-fracking-ohio-idUSBRE8281DX20120309
Thanks for the link, Meredith. We are battling with some Neanderthals here in New Zealand. They make out that we’re out of our minds for demanding a moratorium, like most civilized countries are doing.
[...] felt the earthquake yesterday that was centered in Mineral, VA. But hydraulic fracturing has been causing “freak” earthquakes in the eastern US, [...]
[...] blogger, Stuart Bramhall, posted research into this question, “Did Fracking Cause the Virginia Earthquake?” here. A few excerpts: Earthquakes in the nation’s capitol are as rare as hen’s teeth. The epicenter [...]
[...] By Dr. Stuart Bramhall 23rd August 2011. Find Full Article Here:- [...]
[...] was originally posted on The Most Revolutionary Act blog. H/T to Tiffanie for [...]
Bosch Washing Machine Door Hinge…
[...]Did Fracking Cause the Virginia Earthquake? « The Most Revolutionary Act[...]…
[...] mention that fracking is a possible cause of earthquakes. Texas Governor Rick Perry signed a bill that required oil frackers to disclose the chemicals used. [...]
[...] [...]