Did Fracking Cause the Virginia Earthquake?

[Divernan]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Did-Fracking-Cause-the-Vir-by-Dr-Stuart-Jeanne-B-110823-993.html

Earthquakes in the nation's capitol are as rare as hen's teeth. The epicenter of Tuesday's quake was in Mineral, Virginia, which is located on three very quiet fault lines. The occurrence of yet another freak earthquake in an unusual location is leading many anti-fracking activists (including me -- they have just started fracking in Stratford, which is 40 minutes from New Plymouth) to wonder whether "fracking" in nearby West Virginia may be responsible.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the process of initiating and subsequently propagating a fracture in a rock layer, employing the pressure of a fluid as the source of energy. The fracturing is done from a wellbore drilled into reservoir rock formations, in order to increase the extraction rates and ultimate recovery of oil and natural gas and coal seam gas.

How Fracking Causes Earthquakes
According to geologists, it isn't the fracking itself that is linked to earthquakes, but the re-injection of waste salt water (as much as 3 million gallons per well) deep into rock beds.

Braxton County West Virginia (160 miles from Mineral) has experienced a rash of freak earthquakes (eight in 2010) since fracking operations started there several years ago. According to geologists fracking also caused an outbreak of thousands of minor earthquakes in Arkansas (as many as two dozen in a single day). It's also linked to freak earthquakes in Texas, western New York, Oklahoma and Blackpool, England (which had never recorded an earthquake before).

[hobbit709]

1. not this time.

Fracking quakes are rather shallow.

[kentauros]

3. I question the idea that it was fracking, too.

Not because of the depth, but because of the area affected. Fracking quakes are very localized. This one covered hundreds of miles all up and down the north-east coast. That's a natural quake in my book.

[hobbit709]

6. USGS says it's a previously known fault.

There's more than enough real problems with fracking without trying to pin every quake in the country on it.

[kentauros]

13. True.

I pointed this out on another thread, but the fracking issue has made us paranoid. Now any quake is suspect, no matter what the actual data says...

[Divernan]

2. Ban or minimize fracking and frequency of earthquakes drops drastically.

Industry scientists deny the link to earthquakes, arguing that energy companies have been fracking for nearly sixty years. However it's only a dozen years ago that "slick-water fracks" were introduced. This form of fracking uses huge amounts of water mixed with sand and dozens of toxic chemicals like benzene, all of which is injected under extreme pressure to shatter the underground rock reservoir and release gas trapped in the rock pores. Not only does the practice utilize millions of gallons of freshwater per frack (taken from lakes, rivers, or municipal water supplies), the toxic chemicals mixed in the water to make it "slick" endanger groundwater aquifers and threaten to pollute nearby water-wells. Horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracking (which extend fractures across several kilometres) were introduced in 2004.

The Research Evidence
I think it's really hard to deny there's a connection when the frequency of Arkansas earthquakes dropped by two-thirds when the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission banned fracking (see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/21/fracking-shutdown-earthquakes-arkansas_n_851930.html). Note that they didn't stop entirely, which suggests that fault disruption may persist even after fracking stops.

Braxton County West Virginia also experienced a marked reduction in their quakes after the West Virginia Oil and Gas Commission forced fracking companies to cut back on the pressure and rate of salt water injection into the bedrock (see http://www.hurherald.com/cgi-bin/db_scripts/articles?Action=user_view&db=hurheral_articles&id=43334).

According to a joint study by Southern Methodist University and University of Texas-Austin, earthquakes started in the Dallas/Fort Worth region after a fracking disposal well there began operating in 2008 and stopped when it was closed in 2009 (see http://www.watershedsentinel.ca/content/does-gas-fracking-cause-earthquakes).

[Overseas]

19. I didn't know about quakes and fracking in Arkansas, West Virginia. and Texas.

Thanks for the information.

I also hope the natural gas companies can be forced to prioritize public safety more by stopping the addition of toxic chemicals to the millions of gallons of water needed to force the gas out of the rock. Even if it is less efficient to force the gas out with plain water, using toxic chemicals to speed things up for immediate profit margins is so short-sighted. It works for natural gas investors who live far away but endangers our national health security.

[Overseas]

33. This Virginia quake seems different, but injecting waste water into rock has caused seismic activity

before. I am glad the probably incorrect speculation has caused more discussion about the techniques used in fracking. I don't think all concerns about fracking should be dismissed just because some people have wrongly attributed it to the Northern Virginia quake. It is convenient for natural gas PR firms to laugh at the probably incorrect linking in order to imply that all such concerns are unwarranted. That's a common PR technique-- make the opposition look hysterical, and encourage those who support the reckless technologies appear like heroes who are so courageous for taking a strong stand against the hysterical moonbats. Polarizing the issue into two camps-- Hysterical Moonbats and Those Who Support Tough Choices-- allows the oil companies to proceed with reckless technologies, instead of forcing them to curb their profits somewhat to do things more safely.

If fracking only causes smaller, shallower quakes, are those worth the extra profits from the current procedures used to extract natural gas? They're certainly worth it to those who profit directly from the sale of natural gas, but should the standards be more rigorously regulated? Should the cost of the repairs needed for the spate of minor, shallow quakes that can occur as a result of fracking be included in the oil companies' liabilities? Should oil companies be prevented from injecting toxic chemicals into porous rock that could seep into local groundwater? Should they use plain water, even though it might be slower and less profitable, in order to better protect public health?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1806584

Shortly before midnight Mountain Time on August 23, the largest earthquake in Colorado in more than a century, with a magnitude of 5.3, sent tremors as far away as Kansas. Some twelve hours later, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake centered in Northern Virginia sent shock waves as far away as Toronto. The local damage in each event did not appear extensive, though structural effects, on bridges, tunnels, nuclear power plants and more are yet to be determined.

Through the afternoon and evening of August 23rd, the national media uncovered the big story of the East Coast quake: where their colleagues posted in New York or Washington were and what they thought when they felt a bump, sway, rumble or funny feeling. But with no national correspondents already on site, the Colorado quake was left to the locals. But both quakes were profound, rippling with far-reaching lessons about our outdated and unsafe energy practices that we ignore at great peril.

1. Human activity can cause earthquakes. No less an authority than the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) asserts this. And they offer as an illustration a series of atypical Colorado quakes in the 1960s, resulting from the Army’s injection of waste fluid produced by its Rocky Mountain Arsenal chemical weapons plant northeast of Denver.

2. Seismic activity has been linked to the injection of waste water from the unconventional production of natural gas using hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking). A southeastern New Mexico area that has been experiencing repeated earthquakes since the late 1990s are near the injection wells for oil production waste water, the New Mexico Tech Observatory has reported. In April 2011, in Arkansas, two natural gas wells were closed down until scientists can determine why over a thousand unexplained earthquakes occurred in areas near drilling sites and waste injection wells. Since the well’s closing, a supervisor at the Arkansas Geological Survey reports, incidence of earthquakes have declined dramatically, much as they did in Colorado fifty years ago.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/24/5-things-the-media-isnt-telling-you-about-human-activity-and-earthquakes/

[slackmaster]

52. So, you'd rather have less-frequent, more severe earthquakes?

The energy that powers earthquakes has nothing to do with fracking. Earthquakes are going to happen where they are going to happen. I don't see why having more frequent, less destructive events would be considered a bad thing.

[truedelphi]

55. And you got your degree in tectonics where? n/t

[slackmaster]

56. One need not have a degree in a branch of science to be able to spot an obvious bullshit argument

I don't have a degree in evolutionary biology, but I take creationists on all the time.

[truedelphi]

59. Okay then, why not take on the facts in this article posted in "New Scientist"

Heavy Rain Can Trigger Earthquake
New Scientist ^ | 2-25-2008 | Catherine Brahic

Posted on Monday, February 25, 2008 6:39:42 PM by blam

Heavy rain can trigger earthquakes

13:44 25 February 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Catherine Brahic
Full article is at the URL

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13371-heavy-rain-can-trigger-earthquakes.html


The rain-induced tremors occurred in karst landscape. This forms a distinctive topography of soft carbonate rock, such as limestone, riddled with deep channels and caves in which water pressure could build up.


Huge downpours of rain can trigger earthquakes in landscapes riddled with caves and channels by increasing pressure within underlying rock, suggests a new study.

It was already known that rainfall could cause tremors, but the amount of water needed is much more than previously thought, says Steve Miller, a geologist at the University of Bonn, Germany.

In recent years, geologists have documented small earthquakes that occurred after heavy rainfall in Germany, Switzerland and France. All were low in magnitude – meaning they could be detected by seismographs, but not felt by humans.

Some experts have suggested that although the rainfall was heavy, the fact that rain could trigger an earthquake at all suggests that it takes extremely little to produce a tremor. They concluded that the Earth's crust in a delicate balance, teetering on the edge of...

####
In order to not interfere with copyright protections, I won't post more of the article here.

However I suggest you follow the link posted above and then take on some information that might be new for you.

Millions of gallons of water are used to create the essential conditions necessary for the fracking opoerations to achieve the goal. So when you combine the two piecs of information, that is:

Piece A being water can cause rainfall, if there are caves and caverns

with Piece B - fracking causes tunnels and of course caves and caverns and then since multi mega gallon doses of water are applied,

The only conclusion I can come up with is that fracking is a likely suspect.

[slackmaster]

60. It supports my point completely.

You seem to be clueless as to what I was trying to say.

The only conclusion I can come up with is that fracking is a likely suspect.

It doesn't make any difference in the long run whether earthquakes are triggered by some kind of unusual fluid presence, or whether they happen on their own when the resistance of rock on either side of a fault is finally overcome by building pressure.

For any particular location that is prone to earthquakes (i.e. faults), the amount of energy released in the form of earthquakes over the long haul is determined by forces that cause pieces of crust to move relative to one another, which has nothing to do with local events that trigger individual earthquakes.

For any given fault, you can have more frequent smaller earthquakes or less frequent larger ones. Fracking, if it triggers earthquakes, cannot lead to earthquake-related damage that would not happen in the absence of fracking.

[Common Sense Party]

4. Could be...

Every time my lady and I are fracking, she feels the earth move.

[MineralMan]

5. Is there fracking in the immediate vicinity of Mineral, VA?

There is not. Fracking may cause very minor earth tremors. I don't see any mechanism for fracking to cause a 5.8 quake nowhere near a fracking operation.

This is a known seismic zone. It has had earthquakes in the past. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. Truly.

[hobbit709]

7. Occam's Razor is unknown to most people

[MineralMan]

10. Yes, but the principle of it is just plain common sense.

I understand why people who don't understand much about seismic activity might wonder about fracking in connection with this earthquake. But, the actual physical characteristics of the quake and its location should be enough to negate those questions.

The connection between minor earth movements and oil drilling and fluid injection has been known for a very long time. But...all such earth tremors have been small and located in the immediate vicinity of the drilling and fluid injection. They have nothing to do with larger quakes in known seismic areas. The structures involved with quakes of the magnitude of the one in Virginia are not associated with the structures connected with fracking operations.

Add to that the nonexistence of any fracking operations in the immediate vicinity of this earthquake and it's simple to see that there is no relationship. Pointing those things out, however, will probably just get me some angry comments. :shrug:

[kentauros]

16. No angry comments from me!

:thumbsup: for the lucid explanation :D

[sofa king]

30. There is, however, man-made compression in that area.

Mineral is located only a few miles from Lake Anna, which is a man-made lake built by the damming of the North Anna River starting in 1968. It functions as a giant cooling reservoir for the nuclear power plant there.

The lake itself has a surface area of 13,000 acres and has a central channel up to 80 feet deep. That's many zeroes of metric tons of water pressing down on the Spotsylvania fault.

If one must search for a human cause for the quake, I think Lake Anna would be the place to start. But I still don't buy it myself.

[kentauros]

31. I would think that one way of determining if that lake has any effect

would be to compare the density of the soils removed to make that lake with that of water. My initial guess is that the original soils were heavier ;)

[sofa king]

35. Interesting.

Once again, I failed to name my pseudo-source in my above post:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Anna

I don't think a whole lot of soil was moved. Most of VA's man-made lakes simply take advantage of our billion-year old topography and fill up the drainage area of a particular river system. But some soil certainly must have been moved.

It might be worth noting that there is still another dead-end path to blaming humans, which is that Louisa County was heavily mined for gold. But the depth of the quake was about a thousand times deeper than any of those mines could likely reach. That doesn't automatically discount them, but it makes it highly unlikely (to me, a person who is not a geologist) that they played a role.

[kentauros]

36. Gold mines are generally deeper than even coal mines

but not deep enough to have this kind of effect, like you point out.

I have wondered if coal mine explosions in the past have ever triggered anything. I doubt they were ever of the magnitude of underground nuclear testing, where those have indeed been linked to earthquake activity. Even there, the effect is relatively localized, compared to this quake.

How long has this lake existed? You might want to compare the possibility of this being a factor with other dammed lakes and the history of earthquakes in those areas.

In the end, though, there may not really be enough pressure from all that water to really make a difference on the crust of the earth. More likely it's all due to movements below the crust and so forth :)

[MineralMan]

38. The lake began filling in 1972. It was full in 18 months.

As for the gold mining in that area, most of it was placer mining, with just a bit of hard rock mining. It didn't make much of a dent in the mountains there. There's a very large nugget from that area in the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian. It was The USA's first real gold mining area, with a rush that started in the early 1800s. As soon as gold was discovered in California, the rush died out.

People can, and do, still pan for gold in that area of VA, with some success, though.

As for the lake, when you consider the depth of the quake, the water in that lake is a tiny fraction of the weight on that region. It just doesn't seem that likely that it would affect the faults. They're too deep, really for a little lake to do much.

[kentauros]

42. I guess I should have said "underground mining"

as I was thinking of that former gold mine in Colorado that is now used for detecting neutrinos. As I recall, it's over a mile deep. That's still shallow for earthquake depths, but is the deepest kind of mine I can think of.

What you say with regards to the water in the lake was what I was thinking, too. Unless that same volume were filled with refined uranium, I can't imagine that it would have enough density and weight for the crust to really notice.

[MineralMan]

43. Right. I don't think there was much of that in VA. It was the early

19th century, so any mines would have been fairly shallow there. .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining_in_Virginia

[kentauros]

45. After scrolling down through that list,

I wondered if there was an equivalent one for oil wells in Texas. Instead I discovered that in just the East Texas Oil Field there were over 1,000 oil wells in a tight area! So, probably no comprehensive list for all Texas oil wells ;)

Plus, since the subject of fracking comes from the oil industry, I can't think of any instances where oil wells have caused earthquakes. Plenty of subsidence of large areas of land, but no quakes. If drawing out all that liquid from fields that can reach depths of five miles hasn't upset existing faults and triggered earthquake events, then I'm pretty doubtful of fracking doing the same in the case of this quake. It was just too big to have been anything but a natural cause.

[MineralMan]

46. Yup. There you go.

Fracking has been in use in the oil industry for some time. Really, the problems it is causing now seems to be mostly related to NG escaping or bad cementing. I don't know. I just can't see any relationship with deep faults and this new gas fracking. Our human enterprises are just so insignificant on a geological scale. A lot of people just don't understand that, I think.

[kentauros]

47. Well, you do have to consider

that it takes time to read, and who has time for something as quaint as reading these days? Jerking that knee is so much easier! :P

[Ohio Joe]

17. +1 - nt

[RedCloud]

37. The mother fracker, Eric Cantor, is from that region.

[w4rma]

58. There is hydrofracking going on about 160 miles away from Mineral, VA on the Marcellus Shale

Formation. It started only about 6 years ago.

[MineralMan]

61. No effect on the epicenter of the earthquake.

Silliness.

[w4rma]

62. None at all? Not anything? I find people that talk in absolutes to be usually

trying to con me, sell something to me or are just plain ignorant about how the world works.

How can you be sure that there was absolutely no effect, whatsoever, without any testing -- or even, apparently, knowing the first thing about how hydrofraking causes earthquakes -- at all?

[MineralMan]

64. Is that what you find?

OK. Have a nice day.

[SidDithers]

8. No...nt

Sid

[Aerows]

9. No - New Madrid fault line is right between the 5.3 and 5.8

If you look between the 5.3 in CO from a few days ago and the quake in Virginia, the locations run in a direct line across the New Madrid fault line. That has always been a concern.

[MineralMan]

12. The New Madrid Fault is not connected in any way to either the

Colorado or Virginia seismic areas. There is no relationship whatsoever to the New Madrid fault. None. Lines drawn on a map have nothing to do with geology. They are just lines on a map, used for reference.

[Aerows]

14. It's still interesting to note that

if you draw a line, it goes right through there. When there is disruption one place, there tends to be disruption somewhere else, even if they aren't completely connected.

[MineralMan]

21. No. It's not really interesting to note that.

In order for an earthquake to be connected to another earthquake, there must be some connection between the fault systems. There is no such connection in this case. The seismic zone in Virginia is a very, very ancient one, dating back to the Pangea days. The New Madrid fault is of a completely different era, and has to do with the mid-continent rift basin, an area where the plate began to split and spread apart. That rift failed to continue. Different geological era. The Colorado zone is connected with the Rocky Mountain geological structures and is in no way connected to either of the other two zones.

It's a serious mistake to attempt to tie seismic zones to each other without at least knowing something about those zones. Common sense doesn't work in this case. A knowledge of geology and plate tectonics is required.

There is no connection. It is that simple.

[Aerows]

24. Well, it's not interesting to you

But it certainly tells me that there is a lot of geothermal activity on ALL of the areas in our world. Is that a trend? The volcano in Iceland was a harbinger of things to come, in my opinion.

You are not the only person on this board that has a background in science, MM, and ignoring attempts to make sense of different events in our world is condescending, at best. Ignoring the trends that we are entering a period of significant geothermal activity seems rather short-sighted. Historically, these things do go in waves.

[MineralMan]

25. Believe what you want.

I don't care.

[Aerows]

26. You could have fooled me n/t

[MineralMan]

27. When I respond to a post, I am not just responding to the poster.

I'm writing for anyone reading the thread. I truly do not care what you believe. That's your deal. If what you say is incorrect, I may post something to that effect, so others will have a different point of view to read. See ya.

[Fuddnik]

34. !

:crazy:

[robcon]

11. Fracking doesn't have nearly the energy to cause an earthquake

I think most DUers know that, but I suspect these threads may just be intended to be disinformation in some cases.

[MineralMan]

15. Not really disinformation, but incorrect association by people

with no knowledge or background in seismology. It happens all the time. I don't really fault anyone for asking the question. But, once a clear explanation is made, that should be the end of it. Sadly, it is not, and we will hear this fracking thing over and over again, and have to refute it over and over again.

It's just lack of knowledge that leads to incorrect speculation.

[slackmaster]

53. Kudos to MineralMan for not "faulting" anyone for asking the question

:rofl:

[Hutzpa]

18. Could be

it is highly unusual to for an earthquake to occur around these parts, thats what makes this whole earthquake thing
much more mysterious. Furthermore, this is the second earthquake in two years down here in DC, the first was last
year. I tend to laugh at some of the explanation given by the experts whom seem to think that the earth moved,
Oh really! In an area where the soil is considered to be barren in scientific terms.

We have a black man at the White House and suddenly we've had two earthquake in two years. Could be
FRACKING, but don't hold your breath.

[MineralMan]

22. Actually, the Virginia quake is in a known seismic zone.

There have been earthquakes there before. They just don't happen often enough for people to remember them very well. You're incorrect. It is a seismic area.

[Hutzpa]

28. Ok lets say I'm wrong

can you at least think about it from this perspective, would fracking trigger an earthquake considering fracking is done
in an area that is known for its seismic activity?

[MineralMan]

32. I can't answer that question. It could, if the injected fluids were

in an actual fault zone. At least it could on a theoretical basis. But, the small tremors associated with fracking are much more localized than that. Any time you start cracking underground layers, you can have some localized tremors. That's been demonstrated for years with the use of injection to increase yields from oil wells. Similarly, removing large amounts of water from deep aquifers also can trigger localized earth tremors. These are not associated with seismic fault zones, though, but are cause by local failure of structures.

Even quarry blasting can cause localized tremors in the 2-3 magnitude range. That has occurred in many areas. None of these, however, involve seismic faults, but are merely localized effects.

Studies were done, and experiments made in the 50s and 60s and perhaps later, to test the idea of injecting fluids directly into seismic faults, with the idea of relieving built up stresses smoothly. Generally, this idea was abandoned as impractical. Some minor tremors did result from those experiments.

Fracking is generally used to fracture limestone and shale structures, not bedrock structures where seismic faults exist. The goal is to crack structures that hold natural gas so the gas can be released and utilized. Earthquake faults do not generally originate in those structures, although those structures may reflect the existence of earthquake faults in other structures.

It's all pretty complicated, and I can't really fully explain the whole thing in DU posts. It's easy enough to research, though. Google will find tons of information on fracking and earthquakes and fault-zone geology. If you have a couple of weeks to devote to learning about this, you can educate yourself pretty well, as long as you stick with sites that are fact-based and not get distracted by woo sites. It's all very interesting, and you could spend years learning about it. That's what I've done. Geology and plate tectonics have been a strong interest of mine since the 1960s, so I've read extensively in the area and even was in a business that required a lot of geological knowledge.

It's too complicated to deal with in short messages.

[Hutzpa]

39. Great

then I can see a rogue company with political backing exploiting fracking for political gains, yes fracking is down to free up gas that is
trapped underneath a limestone, but who is to say that unscrupulous corporation are not tampering with the bedrocks, whereas instead
of freeing up gases from limestones they instead drill on the bedrocks just to create pandemonium, knowing exactly the type of outcome
that will result from their activities.

[MineralMan]

40. Why would a company do that?

That's getting into weird conspiracy theory areas, I think. I won't follow you into those areas. Have a great day.

[Ikonoklast]

50. A typical gas well drilled in multiple directions and fracked cost

$15 million dollars and takes 50 days...that is drilling directionally into relatively soft shales, and if everything goes without a hitch.

Most take more time, and money to completion and production.


Unless it's Dr. Evil trying to create earthquake mayhem, I don't see anyone doing such a thing.

[snooper2]

54. DAMN YOU! You uncovered my evil plan!

it was all going so good too :sad:

[Lex]

20. Oh please, everyone knows it was 'teh gay' marriage. nt

[Silent3]

23. There are plenty of good, solid reasons to oppose fracking without...

...adding craziness to the mix.

Fracking might lead to some small localized seismic activity, but there isn't anywhere near enough energy involved in the process, or potentially releasable by the process, to shake a sizable stretch of the eastern seaboard, not enough by a few orders of magnitude.

[Uncle Joe]

41. I wonder if a relatively rapid weight imbalance could occur from

enough mountain top removal, coal mining; which has the ability to spark, aggravate or magnify tremors and in turn quakes?

[MineralMan]

48. Again, probably not. It's all a matter of how deep the faults are and

what percentage of the material over them had been removed. In most cases, it would represent only a small percentage of the total. Man's efforts to alter geology rarely make that much of an impact, compared to the huge amounts of material that are involved. You'd have to look at each situation, I guess.

[guitar man]

29. Wait 5 minutes

Some fundy preacher nut will be along to blame it on fracking, like they do with every natural disaster :silly:

[FreeJoe]

44. Pigeons on the World Trade Center

Fracking has about as much influence on earthquakes as pigeons landing on the World Trade Center did on its collapse.

[cherokeeprogressive]

49. HAARP!

It was HAARP that caused it. Another experiment gone bad. Tsunamis, earthquakes, hell even traffic jams are caused by HAARP! It's true it's true!

I heard that some say Jesse The Body is already knocking on doors and being followed by black helicopters because he's close to exposing just how bad HAARP really is.

[snooper2]

51. And people wonder why I automatically dismiss everything from "opednews" ROFL, off to the dungeon

Off with you I say, be gone ignorant OP :rofl:

[Warren DeMontague]

57. ***

[ThomWV]

63. I don't want to bust anyone's bubble, but there is no gas drilling where the earthquake took place

The drilling and fracking is being done in the Marcellus shale, the earthquake was center on the east side of the mountains. There is no gas on the east side of the mountains. No gas mean no fracking. Sorry 'bout that.

[w4rma]

65. It's highly unlikely that any fraking being done 160 miles away caused this.

I completely agree. Also, the earthquake's epicenter was very deep under the ground, where as epicenters stimulated by fraking are usually closer to the surface.

[Overseas]

66. I'm glad the improbable speculation has drawn attention to fracking techniques.

Even though this quake is most likely not related to fracking, I'm glad it has gotten more people to take a look at the process.

And different types of earthquakes have been seen as a result of injecting fluids into rock before, as noted above.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/24/5-things-the-media-isnt-telling-you-about-human-activity-and-earthquakes/


Hydraulic fracking is currently being done with quick & dirty methods in order to prioritize maximizing quarterly profits for the oil industry. The multinational oil firms figure that they are strong enough that having a nice guy on TV saying they use safe methods, and pushing all objections into the "ridiculous alarmists" category will suffice to protect their profits.

We need to insist that the safest possible methods of hydraulic fracturing be utilized to prioritize U.S. national health security and environmental protection (injecting toxic chemicals into porous rock endangers our water supply) instead of quarterly profits.

But I can imagine that in future discussions on the dangers of using the cheapest methods of hydraulic fracturing, commentators will ridicule objections by saying-- those darn alarmists even thought the Virginia quake was due to fracking! -- thus implying that all objections are that foolish.

It is not "bursting anyone's bubble" to state the truth that the Virginia quake was most likely not caused by fracking. We do not hope that fracking causes big quakes. We're not harboring a big dream bubble that obtaining natural gas would cause so much destruction.


My big dream bubble is that hydraulic fracturing can be regulated so that our national health security is at the top of the priority list, and not pushed down the list in order to maximize the profits of multinational corporations whose shareholders have other houses they can choose to live in when local water supplies are poisoned.