ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Fracking may cause earthquakes much farther from the sites of its wastewater wells than previously thought, researchers said here Friday (May 2) at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America. In central Oklahoma, a cluster of four high-volume wastewater injection wells triggered quakes up to 30 miles (about 50 kilometers) away, said lead study author Katie Keranen, a geophysicist at Cornell University in New York. The earthquakes have since spread farther outward, as fluids migrate farther from the massive injection wells, she said. “The pressure is high enough from the injected fluids to trigger earthquakes.”
The money quote:
Because of the recent jump in earthquakes, and their significant size, the USGS plans to estimate the national shaking risk from “induced seismicity” for the first time, Rubinstein said. Induced seismicity refers to any man-made earthquake, including fracking, wastewater injection and geothermal plants
It’s good to see we are finally at a point where people in scientific power are admitting what ‘conspiracy theorists’ have known for years now: Fracking causes earthquakes. Pure and simple.
We need to grips with that premise. Fracking. Earthquakes.
And then evaluate what we are doing.
Is it worth extracting what we are to induce ‘seismicity’?
The quakes are small now. But that’s not. Who in the gas industry ever predicted years back that fracking would lead to mini quakes? And for all those ‘small quakes,’ look at Oklahoma: A 5.7 hit in 2011 and their current levels of activity in that state are higher than even the shaky west Coast California faults. Human actions are having a direct result on the planet..
And is it worth it?
Fracking-Linked Earthquakes May Strike Far from Wells
