Bishop Hill Injecting reality
May 8, 2014 Energy: gas Many environmentalists - BH favourites Leo Hickman and Richard Dixon among them - are tweeting about a story (£) in the Times today which claims that fracking has been linked to an increase incidence of earthquakes in Oklahoma.
I heard this story yesterday and there is considerably less to it than meets the eye. According to NPR, the US Geological Survey noted an increase in the incidence of magnitude 3 temblors associated with injection wells. These are wells drilled for the purposes of disposing of waste water, often from oil and gas production.
At the head of the NPR story is this:
May 6, 2014
A previous version of this story incorrectly said that the United States Geological Survey had linked an increase in seismic activity in Oklahoma to fracking.
So not really earthquakes, and not fracking.
Bishop Hill
Leo is insisting that some of the water will have come from fracking operations and that it's therefore OK to say that fracking caused these tremors.
Reader Comments (19)
Leo ain't a bad guy, just a believer in any climatic snake oil that passes by, even when not sold as such...
That minor correction won't make a difference. I guarantee it will be quoted again, in earnest, by one of our green friends.
Its a good job all this sort of seismic technology wasn't around 50-100 years ago, we'd have had to close down all those coal mines, you know, the ones that everyone on the Left said we had to keep open because closing them would be detrimental to the national economy and destroy communities etc etc.
Cognitive dissonance is great!
I'm sure some of your readers will have been reminded of that legendary Times headline generations ago which became the paradigm of a newspaper non-story, 'Small earthquake ij Chile, not many hurt'. These guys now have gone one better, with 'Very small earthquakes in Oklahoma greatly exaggerated, no one hurt at all'..
I hope the chandeliers didn't shake too violently.
"When the Facts Change, I Change My Opinion." ..and keep credibility
..What does Leo Hickman do ?
twist the facts so he can keep his opinion.
- That's what respect for facts he has ... so how can he have any credibility ?
For perspective:
Sun and moon trigger deep tremors on San Andreas Fault
"http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091223133347.htm"
and
"People can cause earthquakes.
PARTIALLY FACT: Earthquakes induced by human activity have been documented in a few locations in the United States, Japan, and Canada. The cause was injection of fluids into deep wells for waste disposal and secondary recovery of oil, and the filling of large reservoirs for water supplies. Most of these earthquakes were minor. Deep mining can cause small to moderate quakes and nuclear testing has caused small earthquakes in the immediate area surrounding the test site, but other human activities have not been shown to trigger subsequent earthquakes. Earthquakes are part of a global tectonic process that generally occurs well beyond the influence or control of humans. The focus (point of origin) of an earthquake is typically tens to hundreds of miles underground, and the scale and force necessary to produce earthquakes are well beyond our daily lives. "
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/megaqk_facts_fantasy.php
"Leo is insisting that some of the water will have come from fracking operations and that it's therefore OK to say that fracking caused these tremors."
"Waste water disposal = fracking." Got it. Now, what do people who authorize the fracking itself say? Does Leo care?
(SORRY - I only read the Guardian like I read the NYTimes - linked by accident.)
(PS - I now live in fracking USA, Northwest - that is, Denver, Colorado. But in the 1980s I lived in the Northern Midwest. The world-wide TV show that my college roommate from Athens, Greece also adored was "Dynasty" - about the oil business in the same city, when the oil came more simply.)
If you look at the detailed map of Oklahoma earthquakes from USGS, they are occurring where the fracking is taking place, in the oil fields that surround the large Cushing refineries. I mean the clusters are centred right at individual oil developments as you zoom-in tighter and tighter.
But one of the reasons there is oil here is because there is a strike-slip fault zone, sometimes called the Nemaha fault zone.
The first recorded earthquake on this fault line was in 1918. There was a 6.0 magnitude earthquake in 1929. Both just outside Oklahoma City, more-or-less where the current series of earthquakes are occurring.
Fracking may not be helping but there were already earthquakes in the same area long before fracking or any oil developments.
Now we do know that some types of drilling and, especially, large-scale hydro-thermal projects cause moderate-sized earthquakes. The two largest hydro-thermal projects outside of Iceland have been shut down as a result.
How many big, dangerous earthquakes can you avoid by promoting small, stress-relieving earth tremors?
Could it be that activity in the oil fields in California has caused the mysterious postponement of The Big One on the San Andreas fault?
Arguably the most dense area of fracking in the world has been in the Permian Basin, surrounding Midland, Texas. There are no earthquakes there of a size to be noticed.
Christopher Booker will probably recall that Nick Garland used the same idea for his book about leaving the Telegraph and joining the fledgling Independent: "Not Many Dead". A rather sad reminder of what a great newspaper the Telegraph was once and what noble ideas the Independent had.
There is a report from 2012 that examines the risks. Their summary is below stating the fracking is low risk while wastewater injection, geothermal and CCS has higher risks. Not seen alarmist reports in the media about the last two. :)
In other developments water used for fracturing is now being re-used in some location following implementation of methods to prepare the water for reuse. Also read that the Japanese are trialling the use of CO2 for fracking, likely a source of dilemma for the green persuasion. :)
"WASHINGTON — Hydraulic fracturing has a low risk for inducing earthquakes that can be felt by people, but underground injection of wastewater produced by hydraulic fracturing and other energy technologies has a higher risk of causing such earthquakes, says a new report from the National Research Council. In addition, carbon capture and storage may have the potential for inducing seismic events, because significant volumes of fluids are injected underground over long periods of time. However, insufficient information exists to understand the potential of carbon capture and storage to cause earthquakes, because no large-scale projects are as yet in operation. The committee that wrote the report said continued research will be needed to examine the potential for induced seismicity in large-scale carbon capture and storage projects.
The report examines the potential for energy technologies -- including shale gas recovery, carbon capture and storage, geothermal energy production, and conventional oil and gas development -- to cause earthquakes. Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, extracts natural gas by injecting a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals in short bursts at high pressure into deep underground wells. The process cracks the shale rock formation and allows natural gas to escape and flow up the well, along with some wastewater. The wastewater can be discarded in several ways, including injection underground at a separate site. Carbon capture and storage, also known as carbon capture and sequestration, involves collecting carbon dioxide from power plants, liquefying it, and pumping it at high rates into deep underground geologic formations for permanent disposal. Geothermal energy harnesses natural heat from within the Earth by capturing steam or hot water from underground."
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=13355
What exactly are the negative consequences of magnitude 3 earthquakes? A broken tea cup?
Could it be that activity in the oil fields in California has caused the mysterious postponement of The Big One on the San Andreas fault?
time to slam a number on that, and charge through California state for the service.
They can always fire public sector workers to pay for the bill.
It doesn't work like that, does it?
It only works the other way round. Always. All of the time.
25% of GNP is state "organised" . This means 25% of the population live at totally different work and life conditions as the other 75%.no relocations, no periods without work 100% financial credibility and advantage in getting mortgages, long term family planning possibe regarding kids and schools, and self education, steadily built up pension etc etc.
pareto, Curiously 80% of the female population seems to be working in the latter part.
note also in soe countries sweden France this is already 50%+
Now if you would "vote" on this injustice you would never get a majority to change this: for starters you always have the families eg husband suffers in the real world but he has a nurse wife, so pleeaase let's keep that on the safe side shall we..how do you think the husband will vote.Also will nurses go to the polling booths compared to oil rig workers and McDonalds cashiers? What do you think: For the nurse this is a nice trip out, OF COURSE it will be organised so that all nurses can vote and have tea and cake as well. They will make a party of it.
It is an outrage that this situation exists though and this should NEVER be anything that is allowed to grow into accepted fact. The concept is called "social contract" You do not need a 80% majority of parliament to massage a law
but you MUST need it to install such injustices as some people fall for the whole of their lives OUT of this sort of comfortable lives off the back of others.
Consider a picnic with a bunch of friends. It is voted upon charlie will drive. You do not like that charlie is an idiot driving, but you lost the vote so you tag along. That is normal, otherwise things would never "get going". A majority is enough to get going. It substantially changes when charlie is subsequently allowed to divide the bread, decide where to walk and who is allowed to make the jokes and have a nap. Then your life is being run by charlie. No 50% of the votes will convince me to have charlie run my world.
Yet this is exactly what is happening with the champagne socialists. They live the good life, and decide what we, who are outside cosy privilege, should think while we take an ever shorter cold shower , to save carbon. So they can go jet to nice places for having a conference.
There never was a social contract for this. the end effect is , what they call society is their society more and more, and not mine.
There was at least one serious earthquake, 5.7 on the Richter, which destroyed 14 homes, attributed clearly to wastewater injection, in Nov. 2011 in Oklahoma:
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/3072
This link also notes a 4.8 magnitude quake about 50 years ago, tied to waste injection in Colorado.
I does appear that wastewater injection can be of high enough volume and pressure to cause earthquakes in places without much known earthquake likelihood.
Thus more wastewater should be recycled and reused, as is beginning to occur in the US; the message shouldn't be that fracking should be banned. If you put in place regulations that regulate wastewater injection amounts, problem largely solved, because if fracking is profitable, wastewater recycling will occur.
The regulations wouldn't have to be arbitrarily harsh; note that in the 5.7 tremblor, waste had been injected at little to no pressure for years (the site was a depleted oil well), but that after a considerable time, the pressure ramped up sharply, leading eventually to the earthquake. Any regulations should take into account pressure needed to inject; if little pressure is needed, then little risk.
That said, England isn't so large that there are going to be plentiful wastewater injection opportunities in the long run. If we emphasize wastewater recycling from the start, the less we will have to inject.
MikeC asks (2:07PM) "What exactly are the negative consequences of magnitude 3 earthquakes?"
The BBC report on the two three-point-something quakes we had a couple of weeks or so ago included the following horrific details:
1: A shower door rattled.
2: Ripples were seen on a cup of tea.
I hope you're quaking (pun intended) in your boots, Mike ... ;-)
May 8, 2014 at 12:31 PM | JamesG
People sure can!
Over 400 earthquakes have been recorded in this man made swarm. ... The largest earthquake in this earthquake swarm was ML3.4 in size, it had the depth of 3.9 km.
http://www.jonfr.com/volcano/?p=1514
They don't pay much attention to them in Iceland - they had 450 in the last 48 hours (none man-made):
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/
Mike Fowle (May 8, 2014 at 1:35 PM) should, perhaps, remember (or learn, maybe) that Nick Garland went back to the Daily Telegraph. If you want an example of how a newspaper sells its soul, you'd struggle to find a more egregious example than that of "The Independent".