Two Monday morning earthquakes in southern Oklahoma are a puzzle to the oil and gas workers at the State Corporation Commission. Plus, continued quakes around the Bridge Creek Community have them scrambling as they continued to get complaints from area residents.
“We’re actively investigating this late round of quakes,” said Matt Skinner, a spokesman for the Commission in an interview with OK Energy Today.
The strongest of the southern Oklahoma quakes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey was 3.1 magnitude and struck at 9:42 a.m. in Love County. The epicenter was located about 7 miles south of the town of Wilson and had a depth of approximately 3 miles.
The quake occurred about 4 hours after a 2.9 earthquake rumbled through the Coalgate area. The USGS indicated the quake’s epicenter was 10 miles northwest of Coalgate which puts it near the small community of Centrahoma and at a depth of about 3 miles.
“We have one well completion operation shutting down for 6 hours at Centrahoma,” added Skinner. But he said the OCC’s investigators are “totally baffled” as to whether well activity in Love and Carter Counties is behind the sudden quakes in that region of Oklahoma.
As for Bridge Creek, an area where Roan Resources was requested to shut down completion activity a few weeks ago, investigators are puzzled as to the continued rumblings.
“The new activity starting Sunday was after a well finished its completion three days ago,” said Skinner. “We’re trying to figure out if perhaps it was a flow-back quake.”
Flow back is a process that follows the completion of a well.
“Never had a series of flowback quakes,” he added. “We have seen individual ones but never more than one. It happens so rarely. We got a really complicated situation and it’s demanding everybody’s attention.”