Texas went big on oil. Earthquakes followed.
It’s been a big winter for earthquakes in West Texas. A string of small tremors rocked Midland County on December 15 and 16, followed a week later by a magnitude-4.5 quake, the second-strongest to hit the region in the last decade. Then a magnitude-4.2 quake shook the town of Stanton and another series of small earthquakes hit nearby Reeves County.
That’s an unsettling pattern for a state that, until recently, wasn’t an earthquake state at all. Before 2008, Texans experienced just one or two perceptible earthquakes a year. But Texas now sees hundreds of yearly earthquakes of at least magnitude 2.5, the minimum humans can feel, and thousands of smaller ones.
The reason why is disconcerting: Seismologists say that one of the state’s biggest industries is upsetting a delicate balance deep underground. They blame the oil and gas business — and particularly a technique called wastewater injection — for waking up ancient fault lines, turning a historically stable region into a shaky one, and opening the door to larger earthquakes that Texas might not be ready for.
The state is finally trying to change that. In December, the Texas Railroad Commission — the state agency that regulates oil and gas operations and no longer has anything to do with railroads — suspended wastewater injection at 33 sites across a region where more than half a million people live. This is a notable turnaround for the Railroad Commission, which until recently did not acknowledge a link between oil and gas operations and earthquakes, and might be a sign of just how serious the earthquakes have gotten.
https://www.vox.com/22891806/texas-earthquakes-oil-gas-drilling-wastewater-reinjection
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Texass. And damn Big Oil. (Also Oklahoma)
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