As if conventional drilling wasn’t already destructive enough, the oil industry has devised even better ways to destroy our home world. The full impact of production, distribution and utilization of the “black gold” will likely never be fully understood or defined. Unfortunately earthquakes are only a small symptom compared to the overall scope of the devastation cause by the greed centric petroleum economy… all of which could have been avoided by employing suppressed nonpolluting technologies.
Earthquakes are becoming more frequent and more intense in the US, including “man-made” earthquakes in areas not near a fault line, according to two studies released this week.
The new earthquake hazard map from researchers at the US Geological Survey points out 17 typically dormant areas where wastewater injections from hydraulic fracturing operations might be the root cause of high seismic activity.
Oklahoma is leading the way, registering more quakes of magnitude 3 or higher than California last year, according to the report released earlier this week. The state’s seismicity rate was 70 times greater than the background seismicity rate observed prior to 2008, according to state officials.
Moreover, Oklahoma’s sharp rise in quakes is “very unlikely to represent a naturally occurring process,” since the quakes are occurring over the same area that saw a big jump in wastewater injections over the last several years, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Oklahoma Geological Survey.
“These earthquakes are occurring at a higher rate than ever before, and pose a much greater risk and threat to people living nearby,” said Mark Petersen, chief of the USGS’s National Seismic Hazard Modeling Project and lead author of the report, in a statement with Thursday’s release.
One such event in 2011 near Prague, Oklahoma, where workers had been injecting wastewater underground for 18 years, triggered a magnitude 5.6 quake strong enough to buckle a highway and destroy 14 homes, slightly injuring two people. – Source: ‘Man-made’ earthquakes: Is fracking adding to seismic activity in US?
Who thinks this is a good thing?
Large fracking operation in Pinedale Oklahoma which experienced a series of 4.0M+ earthquakes in 2014-2015.
APR
About the Author:
Recovering tech entrepreneur. Notable events: video game (1983 Spelunker); ahead of it's time RAD software for the Amiga computer - CanDo (early 1990's); co-founded large regional internet access provider, Internet America which became publicly traded on NASDAQ - GEEK. Since 2001 has re-evaluated life's purpose and sought new energy technologies and researched alternative solutions to planet devastation.