Quakes Caused By Waste From Gas Wells, Study Finds

NPR.org ^ | April 11, 2012 | Christopher Joyce

[Mad Dawgg]

The U.S. Geological Survey will soon confirm that the oil and gas industry is creating earthquakes, and new data from the Midwest finds that these man-made quakes are happening more often than originally thought.

Earthquakes happen when faults in the Earth slip and slide against each other. There's continuous stress on innumerable faults on our continent, but seismologists like Bill Ellsworth, from the U.S. Geological Survey, started seeing something odd about 12 years ago.

"One thing we had begun to notice was that there were an unusual number of earthquakes in the middle of the country," he says, an area not known for quakes. They were small, though — usually just over magnitude 3. Then, in 2009, the shaking got much more frequent.

[Shadowstrike]

Thank you! You should email this statement to the USGS.

[Eccl 10:2]

“Some settling of contents may occur”.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Well done. Laugh of the day, on a day when I needed it. Many thanks.

[ThomasThomas]

http://205.254.135.7/dnav/pet/pet_crd_welldep_s1_a.htm

I am not crazy?

Oil well are shallower than most earthquakes.

[nathanbedford]

I join with every FReeper on this thread who has expressed skepticism about this study. I also have a great deal of skepticism concerning the source of the study and the distribution of the study through NPR.

My initial emotional reaction to this is to shout "bullshit!"

But it is also necessary to remind ourselves that science is science and politics is politics. It is the Democrats who distort science in the service of politics and we should never permit the same to be said of us. In other words, conservatism has no opinion on whether extraction of gas causes earthquakes. That is a matter for science not politics.

Conservatism can and should have very strong views about what to do about it if the report proves to be good science. Conservatism has a lot to say about making sure that the science is good and true and that the sources are credible and unbiased. But conservatism dare not prejudge the science.

[devolve]

WHEN I WALK




THE EARTH SHAKES

[expat2]

If true, this might be good. Big earthquakes are the result of high levels of stress building because plates are locked to each other. If frequent small quakes are indeed caused by lubrication of plate interfaces (and this is far from clear), it could serve to prevent the big quakes that do the major damage.

[ChildOfThe60s]

These Luddites are like Jason. They just keep coming back.

Global cooling
Ozone hole
Global warming
Rising Oceans
Disappearing polar bears
Climate Change
Man made earthquakes? Jules Verne lives.

Seems there was another environmental crisis a few weeks ago requiring the surrender of our few remaining freedoms as the solution.

[DocRock]

Funny thing is, the USGS is where I got the information used in my statement.

[The Duke]

Well, now I’m feeling honored. :)

[AZLiberty]

If fracking is safely relieving stresses that would have eventually led to a much bigger earthquake, I say, “Frack on!”.

[Big Horn]

There is no way to stop earthquakes. If we didn’t have earthquakes we would not have any dry land, only water.

[goodnesswins]

Where the heck did you get THAT number for water????

[Dogbert41]

A few years back we had a swarm of over 2500 earthquakes in my neighborhood over the span of a few short months. Nobody drills for anything around here but maybe a few water wells.

It’s just a sign of the times. A lot more scarier things are going to be happening, in the sun moon and stars. The waves are going to go crazy too. That’s just life.

[Redcloak]

So in other words, drilling for gas and oil is relieving stress along faults by causing small quakes rather than letting the forces build up until a single, massive quake occurs. Awesome!

Drill, baby, drill!

[PghBaldy]

I have a bunch of liberal friends. A little while back, they were going on about the horrors of fracking. It is their new fear. It was surreal.

[SuziQ]

Just because there are quakes that these folks are registering for the ‘first time’, doesn’t mean they never happened before.

[DH]

This “the sky is falling” article is for those who never took courses in natural science or mechanical or structural engineering. It’s to scare weak minded people to come in line with governmental brain washing to promote green energy.

Stop and think; how much pressure does it take to actually lift a column of solid rock that is a mile and a half deep and is attached to the surrounding strata itself 1 mm?

Well, I won’t get into mathematics but I will tell you that no machine made by man can do it...and never will.

[thackney]

How much water is used?

The amount of water necessary to successfully stimulate production in a gas well varies greatly. It primarily depends on the type of well drilled - horizontal or vertical - and the depth of the formation to be stimulated - shallow or deep. The deeper shale formations in the northeastern U.S. can use over four million gallons of water. Shallower, vertical wells typically will require much less water, about 100 thousand gallons or so, to complete the stimulation.

http://energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Real-facts-behind-fracture-stimulation-technology.pdf

- - - - - - - -

What about Water Usage?

It is not unusual for a typical deep shale gas well stimulation to require between 2 million and 4 million gallons of water. These numbers are significant, but they are small relative to the amount of water continually required to generate power from other energy sources.

http://anga.us/media/206825/hydraulic%20fracturing%20101.pdf

[King Moonracer]

AS the spotted owls and salamanders die off, the ground erupts out of sadness. Gaia is unhappy.....

[X-spurt]

Thanks thackney! I stand corrected and totally amazed.

[thackney]

In the Eagle Ford field in South Texas, the water use is even higher.

Chesapeake AVERAGES 4.8 million gallons of water to hydraulic Fracture each well.

http://www.chk.com/media/educational-library/fact-sheets/eagleford/eagleford_water_use_fact_sheet.pdf

As massive as that may sound, all of the wells together are only a couple percentage points of the areas total water usage. Most people don’t understand just how much water our population actually uses.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). - Richard Lindzen, MIT

[goodnesswins]

Just wondering....do those numbers take into account the RE-USE of water?

[TXnMA]

Numerous small quakes are good things! Small quakes "bleed off" stress within faults harmlessly -- lessening the energy build-up available to be released as damaging quakes...

[CodeToad]

Study? People don’t know how to do a study anymore. They have become illiterate and lack any logical reasoning skills. They start with the conclusion they want and back their “study” into it.

[thackney]

In most vases the water is not reused. Typically the water is mixed with sand and a relatively small amount of chemicals like biocide. After it injected the removed from the petroleum reservoir, most dispose of it in a deep injection well.

Some are startiing to clean it up enough for another frack job but most don’t due to greater expense.

[TXnMA]

Your 24,426 feet is 7.4 KM (4.6 Mi). That’s about a tenth of your “shallow earthquake” depth.

[Jotmo]

Coming soon to an Indoctrination Center…ah…”Movie Theatre” near you….The Day After the Day After Tomorrow.

A massive 25.3 earthquake is triggered in the Mid West by greedy oil companies inflicting harm on Mother Earth by drilling for their dirty oil.

The entire country between California and the Eastern Seaboard is destroyed, leaving only the liberals to rebuild, who, finally free from the inane religious ranting and greedy ravages of the troglodyte conservatives in “Fly Over Country”, are at last able to create the Progressive Utopia the world has longed for.

The script could write itself.

[darrellmaurina]

12 posted on Thu Apr 12 2012 21:35:48 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by Larry Lucido: “Well, yeah. You suck the oil out, there’s no more lube left, and the continents go dry and grind into each other. Just spray some WD40 down there and it’ll be fine.”

Best post of the week!!!! I needed a laugh today ;-)

[RipSawyer]

It all reminds me of a story in an old book called “A Treasury of Southern Folklore”, it is a transcript of a sermon copied down in a church in Mississippi IIRC. The preacher was warning the congregation that continued oil drilling would use up all the oil and grease that the lord had provided for the “axle” of the Earth and one day the Earth would seize up on its bearings and that would be hell or something like that.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Nature is a mother!

[Fresh Wind]

[RipSawyer]

“I was worried I mgith actually be”
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

See, there was an Earthquake right there while you were typing! It threw that g up and it came down in the wrong place. That proves their theory.

[CottShop]

llo

[The Working Man]

1 million gallon of water to frac one well? I’ve been around many a well frac job and they sure as heck didn’t have 150 frac tanks sitting on the site. Maybe need to revisit your 1 million gallon statement.

---

I have been told that the latest methods use Liquid Natural Gas instead of Water based Fracing fluids. It works fine and the normal well head methodology recovers the LPG during it’s working lifetime.

[Baynative]

"Fracking will be next."

That's the point.

[Mad Dawgg]

In Post 31 of this thread I said:

"It looks like someone is setting the stage for the Gub'Ment to put a moratorium on Fracking. I bet Obama has an Executive Order all typed up ready to go waiting on a big MidWest Earthquake to happen so he can ride in and grab the thunder!"

Well I guess I was wrong. Obama didn't wait for a big earthquake: White House creates natural gas task force

Money Quote: "In issuing an executive order to create the interagency task force, President Barack Obama said the group was needed to make sure federal agencies that oversee “the safe and responsible development of unconventional domestic natural gas resources” are on the same page."

[Graewoulf]

Meanwhile the drumbeat of Dictator Obama grows louder:

regulate -— control -— destroy -— Regulate -— control -— destroy -— REgulate -— control -— destroy -— REGulate -— control -— destroy -— REGU

[Smokin' Joe]

If, even for a second, we assume that the injection of wastewater into disposal wells is causing small earthquakes, that means stresses present in the Earth's crust are beinr relieved, without being stored up for some sort of megaquake later.

A series of small seismic events relieving stress might be eminently preferable to one big quake relieving all the stress at once, and far less damaging.

So, what's the down side?

Maybe someone should start "Citizens for a Stress Free Craton" or something...

[xzins]

I’ve gotten the following page 3 times in a row when trying to go to the link:

Page Not Found
Sorry! We can’t seem to find the page you were looking for. Please visit the NPR Help Center to report this page as missing, or use the links below to continue your search.
Search NPR.org

Other Options
All Programs A-Z
NPR Help Center
About NPR
Contact NPR
It’s a shame that your page is lost, but at least it’s in good company; stick around to browse through NPR stories about lost people, places and things that still haven’t turned up.

[Mad Dawgg]

Try this one:

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150440356/quakes-caused-by-waste-from-gas-wells-study-finds

[Smokin' Joe]

This is just another shot in the enviros anti-fraccing war.

You are right, but for it to work, you have to become a victim to the intentional obfustication of the media.

These aren't frac jobs, they are disposal wells.

Water is produced, in some proportion to the oil produced, and that water is commonly salt water far too saline to pour out on the ground or simply dump in a creek, and often containing Hydrogen Sulfide dissolved in it. The best way to dispose of it is to find a suitable porous formation far deeper than any viable aquifer, with low enough pore pressure and already containing salt water, and inject the production water into that formation.

Such disposal methods for production water have been in widespread use since the '50s and earlier, and have, on occasion been linked with small siesmic events, usually when near known faults. It seems odd that suddenly this has become some sort of issue (none of the events has been 'major', ever).

The only thing I can see is that the MSM will attempt to equate the long term injection of production water with the short-term and finite fluid injection of a frac job, and then confuse the two so they can somehow use it against fracking.

The Commies' war on (our) oil continues.

[kcvl]

http://www.diggles.com/openhouse2003/030530P-11_Bill_Ellsworth.jpg

Earthquake Science Center Staff Directory
William L. Ellsworth
Employee
ellsworth@usgs.gov

Phone: 650-329-4784
Fax: 650-329-5163

U.S. Geological Survey
345 Middlefield Road MS 977
Menlo Park, CA 94025-3591

Room: 3A-109

[Mad Dawgg]

It looks like NPR moved the story on their site causing the FR links to the story to be dead, if possible could you update the links in the above story with this one:

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150440356/quakes-caused-by-waste-from-gas-wells-study-finds

[kcvl]

“If drilling caused earthquakes, TX would have slid into the ocean 100 years ago; and Oklahoma and Louisiana would be giant sink holes.”

Arkansas would be too! And we have an ‘evil’ oil refinery and Murphy Oil in our town. Imagine the HORROR! /s

I want an oil well drilled in MY BACKYARD...bring it on! I’ll even decorate it at Christmas.

[xzins]

Thanks, MD. It worked.

That said, there was nothing in the article that showed comparisons to normal seismic activity in the supposedly affected areas. Also, there was nothing explaining the difference between a tectonic plate shift and a simple shift of mass.

For it to be an earthquake, technically it must be a plate shift. A landslide is not a quake, and a sub-surface slide would also not be a quake, but it would register seismically, iirc.

[kcvl]

We can do it this way...

Oil field workers following the discovery of the Richardson No. 1 well at the Smackover Pool in Union County, Arkansas; July 1922.

Or this way....

China $15 billion to improve Iraq's Rumaila oil field

China A $20 billion investment into the Sudanese oil industry

[okie01]

Such disposal methods for production water have been in widespread use since the '50s and earlier, and have, on occasion been linked with small siesmic events, usually when near known faults. It seems odd that suddenly this has become some sort of issue (none of the events has been 'major', ever).

Thanks for the additional information and perspective.

The left's war on prosperity continues...

[TXnMA]

Eldorado?

[CottShop]

on the east coast, states liek NY have had am oratorium on drilling and frackign in order to ‘study the issue’ of ‘polluted water claims’- they have been studying this issue since apaprently 2008 and still haven’t been able to come up with any stats? Yet comunities all over NY are banning drilling altogether because residents THINK it might lead to contaminated water despite the lack of evidence to support such fears?