USGS—-Don’t Blame Fracking for Oklahoma Earthquakes

While many environmentalists and anti-oil and gas industry advocates contend ‘fracking’ has caused Oklahoma’s surge in earthquakes, a recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey says otherwise. However, it points to the hundreds of wastewater or “salt water” disposal wells.

“USGS’s studies suggest that the actual hydraulic fracturing process is only very rarely the direct cause of felt earthquakes,” stated the article that also focused on the study by USGS geophysicist William Ellsworth. “While hydraulic fracturing works by making thousands of extremely small “microearthquakes,” they are, with just a few exceptions, too small to be felt; none have been large enough to cause structural damage.

But the article made it clear that underground disposal of wastewater co-produced with oil and gas, enabled by hydraulic fracturing operations, has been linked to induced earthquakes. However, the existence of an injection well does not mean that it will eventually cause an earthquake.

“Although the disposal process has the potential to trigger earthquakes, not every wastewater disposal well produces earthquakes. In fact, very few of the more than 30,000 wells designed for this purpose appear to cause earthquakes,” stated the USGS article.

The Geological Survey also makes it clear that “man-made earthquakes have been a reality for decades.”

It said it has been long understood that earthquakes can be caused by the impoundment of water in reservoirs, surface and underground mining, the withdrawal of fluids and gas from the subsurface and the injection of fluids into underground formations.

Read entire article from USGS.

Read USGS article