State Corporation Commission investigators indicate they believe a hydraulic fracturing operation has caused small earthquakes in the past few days around the city of Yukon.
“The quakes we’ve had in the Yukon area over the past few days are clustered around the McWhirter well, where Citizen Energy is doing a hydraulic fracturing operation,” explained Matt Skinner, spokesman for the commission. “It has done volume reductions on several stages of the frack because of the quakes.”
He said the latest was a 50 percent reduction as of early Monday morning. But Skinner said there was no ordered shutdown of the operations.
“December 5th is when the operator expects to finish hydraulic fracturing operations. It’s not a shut down date from the OCC,” he added. “So far, all the Yukon quakes have been below 3.0 (magnitude).”
Citizen Energy is a Tulsa-based energy company and recently was the object of a Mustang city council hearing where permits to drill were granted.