From Texas Tribune: Texas regulators on Tuesday tightened rules for wells that dispose of oilfield waste, a response to the spate of earthquakes that have rattled North Texas. The three-member Texas Railroad Commission voted unanimously to adopt the rules, which require companies to submit additional information – including historic records of earthquakes in a region– when applying [...]
What is behind the tremors in North Texas? Starting late last fall, a swarm of quakes struck the communities of Reno and Azle outside of Fort Worth. It’s hardly the first community in the Lone Star State to have to deal with damaged foundations, cracked windows and rude awakenings from quakes: there have been nine [...]
From KERA News: Alex Mills is a company man. He heads the largest state oil and gas association in the United States. He’s based in Wichita Falls, 90 minutes northwest of the Azle-Reno area, where a series of earthquakes hit six months ago. This story is part of our series on “What’s Behind the North [...]
From KERA News: Doualy Xaykaothao KERA News Heather DeShon leads an SMU research team looking into what’s causing the earthquakes in and around Azle and Reno, which are northwest of Fort Worth. Heather DeShon is a geophysicist at SMU. She’s studied earthquake sequences in Indonesia, Nicaragua, but also in North Texas — in Cleburne. Now she leads [...]
From KERA News: Barbara Brown is known to some of her neighbors as “The Digger.” She earned that nickname after collecting thousands of documents about oil and gas drilling, shortly after she says a swarm of minor earthquakes damaged her dream home, and those of her neighbors in Reno and Azle. Brown is an Army [...]
Hugh Fitzimons is a rancher from Dimmit County who also serves on the Wintergarden Groundwater Conservation District. Last week, he stood before the three members of the Railroad Commission of Texas and gave a stark warning as to why he was concerned about the proliferation of disposal wells. With oil and gas drilling booming, so [...]
For perhaps the first time in its history, the state legislature held a hearing Monday about earthquakes. But we’re not talking about natural tremors, we’re talking about man-made earthquakes. Texas has seen quakes measuring 3.0 and higher increase tenfold since an oil and gas drilling boom began several years ago, with the first quake swarm [...]
These can be shaky times for Texas. The number of recorded earthquakes (most larger than 3.0) has increased tenfold since a drilling boom began several years ago. The Lone Star State is now one of the shakiest in the country, coming in sixth in the continuous U.S. for having larger quakes last year, according to EnergyWire. [...]
Photos by Landov Tomorrow is primary day in Texas, and in the race for the open seat on the Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator, you might be curious to know where exactly the candidates stand on the issues. Those issues include swarms of earthquakes linked to oil and gas drilling activity; property [...]
Scientists have known that man can create earthquakes by injecting fluids into the ground for decades. But if you listen to the people campaigning to regulate the Texas oil and gas industry, you may think the idea was in serious dispute. Every Republican party candidate this primary season for the Railroad Commission denies that there [...]
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