Don’t forget that Texas Railroad Commissioner, David Porter, will be in Azle tomorrow night to discuss the recent earthquakes in North Texas.
Date: Thursday, January 2, 2014
Time: 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. CST
Location: Azle High School Auditorium, 1200 Boyd Rd, Azle, TX 76020
Press contact: Katie Carmichael, 512-463-8870
From the TRC website:
DOES HYDRAULIC FRACTURING CAUSE EARTHQUAKES?
Oil and gas activity occurs statewide with more than 280,000 active wells around Texas. At this time, the Commission has no data that links hydraulic fracturing activities to earthquakes.Has the Railroad Commission found any relationship between saltwater disposal wells and earthquakes?
RRC staff welcomes more data and science about current theories that hypothesize a causation link between minor seismic events and injection wells. RRC staff is closely following various studies that are being conducted to determine possible man-made causes of recent seismic events. Commission staff has participated in industry workshops concerning this phenomenon and cooperates with the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency whenever appropriate.
Seismic waves are continuously traversing the earth’s crust due to both natural causes and human activity. Texas has a long history of safe injection, and staff has not identified a significant correlation between faulting and injection practices.
Commission regulations require injection be confined to a permitted interval, and if faults, stratigraphy, or any other geologic phenomena are identified as a concern, they are evaluated. In addition, Commission staff could suspend or terminate a permit if science and data indicated a problem.
As epicenters are reported, RRC staff evaluates the area to see if there are any Underground Injection Control (UIC) wells nearby. For some reported epicenters, there have been no UIC wells nearby. If there is a UIC well nearby, RRC staff conduct physical inspections of the area as well as a review of UIC well permit restrictions to ensure compliance with Commission Statewide Rules.
Despite the commission statement above that “staff has not identified a significant correlation between faulting and injection practices”, StateImpact got through a FOIA, emails stating otherwise.
Read my recent blog post on Daily Kos: Fracking Earthquakes and Industry’s Deadbeat Dad Problem
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Well, have them explains these:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/161/3848/1301.short
http://www.stanford.edu/~meehan/la/pubs/pubbaldw.pdf
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00879951#page-1
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/distant-quakes-trigger-tremors-us-waste-injection-sites-says-study
And this study released in 2012 by Canadian regulators that proved 272 earthquakes in NE British Columbia between 2009 and 2011 (frac’ing started there in 2009) were directly caused by hydraulic fracturing.
“A search of the areas in the National Earthquake Database from 1985 to present shows no detected seismicity in the Horn River Basin prior to 2009.”
…
“Conclusion
Horn River Basin seismicity events, from 2009 to late 2011, were caused by fluid injection during hydraulic fracturing. All events occurred during or between hydraulic fracturing stage operations.”
http://www.ernstversusencana.ca/investigation-of-observed-seismicity-in-the-horn-river-basin
Maybe RRC staff and quake experts can’t read Canadian.
I made an open group on Facebook page called “Got Sink Hole, Subsidence, or Earthquakes near fracking?” so people have a place to put pics and testamonies out there for the rest of the world to see. https://www.facebook.com/groups/257014574451019/