“A US Geological Survey research team says a remarkable increase in earthquake occurrence in the US in the past decade is “almost certainly man-made.”
According to the study by USGS, oil and natural gas extraction activity have possibly provoked a series of recent earthquakes from Alabama to the Northern Rockies.
However, USGS authors did not estimate a direct cause-effect relationship between oil and gas activity and earthquakes.
“It remains to be determined how they are related to either changes in extraction methodologies or the rate of oil and gas production,” says the abstract for USGS study, published by the Seismological Society of America.
However they gave a possible explanation for it. They relate it to drilling, which requires the disposal of millions of gallons of wastewater for each well. The number of wells drilled has increased over the past decade.
A recent series of earthquakes in north-eastern Ohio, the latest and largest being on New Year’s Eve, has prompted that state’s Department of Natural Resources to close or suspend development by natural gas drillers of five deep wastewater disposal wells pending an investigation into well impact on increased seismic activity in the area.
Earthquakes have been linked to so-called injection wells in other states. For example, Arkansas imposed a permanent moratorium on disposal wells in an approximately 1,200 square-mile area, due to enhanced seismic activity near the Fayetteville Shale.
“The acceleration in activity that began in 2009 appears to involve a combination of source regions of oil and gas production, including the Guy, Arkansas, region, and in central and southern Oklahoma. Horton, et al. (2012) provided strong evidence linking the Guy, AK, activity to deep waste water injection wells,” the study says.
The research team led by USGS geophysicist William Ellsworth, says the frequency of earthquakes began rising in 2001 across a broad swath of the country between Alabama and Montana and culminated “in a six-fold increase over 20th century levels in 2011.”
Meanwhile, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, shale gas production grew, on average, nearly 50 per cent a year from 2006 to 2010.”
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Yes, people pumping water in the equivalent of the epidermis layer of the Earth’s skin is causing earthquakes across the North American continent.
It has nothing to do with the Pacific Plate shifting, which would correlate with all the other geological activity we’ve seen, from Japan, to Thailand, to South American.
North America’s earthquakes are being caused by humans, unlike all the other earthquakes, which just happen to connect to the same MASSIVE FUCKING PIECE OF THE EARTH.
…
shhh … don’t tell the Woodshedder … he’s of the opinion that man has no significant effect on fauna, flora, atmosphere, terra firma and by extension, human beings
anything happening now has always happened in natural cycles & what is happening now is not necessarily due to humankind, therefore no need to change a thing … as you were
You convinced me Juice, I now believe that we should pay massive VAT’s and related carbon taxes to IMF, Clintons, Gores and HOBOma’s. Yes. (Wo)Man made earthquakes, tornadoes and summer seasons. Ice melts? Pay up! Pay the man! Dammit!
You can’t prove humans are responsible for global warming. Hell, you can’t prove that there is “global warming”. Is there even a definition of global warming? How can you prove something that has no measurable definition?
Weathermen can’t accurately predict the weather one day out. That’s because of the unfathomable amount of variables. Now, think about trying to predict the World’s weather – a forecast for the next 10 years. The sheer stupidity…
Most of the UN IPCC scientists whose work was used to start the first global warming fiasco at the UN later denounced their findings which they said were manipulated to achieve a desired result. The news media barely covered this story when it happened, and now you can’t even find a copy of it online.
Fuck all news journalists right up the ass.
@Juice – Wood does not live in New England which gets the “benefit” of burning the coal mined in his region and burned in Midwest power plants. If he did, the signs posted at his fishin’ hole would say: “Don’t eat the fish you catch, especially if they are big. This pond/lake is polluted with mercury.” If you try to eat fish from the rivers, you will get a goodly dose of PCB’s. Yes, I can’t eat any of the fish I catch. It’s all catch and release.
For the haters the bulk of the power in our state is generated by nukelar [sic], and we personally buy our power from a utility that’s primarily nukelar [sic].
Juice,
Since you’re whoring yourself out for eco-propaganda, how much will you cost for the rest of us to hire you?
If you work a little OT, I’ll give you an autographed photo of Saul Alinksy that you can stuff up your ass.
Man made earthquakes are good for everyone. They are so small that very limited damage if any results. The alternative is to store up all the energy for “the big one”. Think New Madras in the 1800’s when the Mississippi River flowed backwards.
Up with fracking. Down with > 7.0 earthquakes.
Regards,
The International Association of Drilling Contractors
American Petroleum Institute
CHK
XOM
etc etc etc
Haarp!