Strong Earthquake Oklahoma

[janetjanet998]

felt all the way into IA

 

M5.6 #earthquake strikes 123 km NE of Oklahoma City (#Oklahoma) 8 min ago. Effects reported by witnesses:

[the ghost of leroy]

That was fun. Would love to do it again. 

[JoMo]

Felt it here. Thought it was wind. Looked outside, no wind. Last experienced Earthquake in 2011, and this one felt stronger.

[jojo762]

I was about 30mi north of the epicenter. Bed shook, doors shook, everything shook, much more intense from the normal tremors I feel on what seems like a daily basis. Looks like people felt it anywhere from Austin TX to Des Moine IA. Tied for largest in Oklahoma history. 

[raindancewx]

Supposedly there are at least correlations between solar-minimums and earthquakes/volcanic eruptions. Will be interesting to see what happens if we really are entering an extended period of lower solar activity.

[Hoosier]

Could it be related to fracking?  I know that has gotten increased attention in recent years.

[JoMo]

40 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

Could it be related to fracking?  I know that has gotten increased attention in recent years.

It could be. Fracking wastewater injection usually causes smaller earthquakes though. It's possible that the wastewater injection and the small earthquakes could be 'lubricating' old faults which is what's causing them to slip, resulting in the bigger earthquakes every now and then. 

[Jonbo]

I slept through it here in western Iowa. Though my sleep tracker did notice my body coming out of the deep sleep (to light) at that time for a moment.

[ValpoVike]

On 9/3/2016 at 1:27 PM, Hoosier said:

Could it be related to fracking?  I know that has gotten increased attention in recent years.

I do believe it is.  Here is a chart of Oklahoma earthquake activity, followed at the very bottom by a chart of US oil production.  There certainly seems to be a very strong statistical correlation.

[nrgjeff]

Activity is likely related to the waste water injection only. The actual fracking, extracting oil and gas, is not the issue. Waste is injected much deeper than where the fracking process takes place. Oklahoma gov finally placed a moratorium on those waste water injection sites. Fracking may continue, but not the waste water injections. Kansas and North Texas local govs already had similar policies: no waste injection but fracking to extract oil and gas may continue.

[cstrunk]

I felt the shaking in Dubuque, IA at approx. 7:07 AM. I was on the 4th floor of a 7 story hotel. I thought it was maybe a windstorm but I looked outside and things were pretty calm. It shook my bed back and forth and rattled coat hangers for about a minute or so. It was a very strange feeling.

[Jonbo]

I feel like we're about to reach a breaking point with fracking. It has major benefits but the side effects are becoming too significant to ignore. Especially seeing charts like that where you can't really deny correlation to causation. Just a matter of how long until the major lawsuits begin to recoup damages from these earthquakes (or if it continues on and it triggers a 7.0+) that are almost undeniably caused by waste water injection/fracking.

[the ghost of leroy]

it's almost like we should be building our economic future on something other than oil

[ValpoVike]

 

Activity is likely related to the waste water injection only. The actual fracking, extracting oil and gas, is not the issue. Waste is injected much deeper than where the fracking process takes place. Oklahoma gov finally placed a moratorium on those waste water injection sites. Fracking may continue, but not the waste water injections. Kansas and North Texas local govs already had similar policies: no waste injection but fracking to extract oil and gas may continue.

Agreed.  However, the question of how to dispose of the wastewater from fracking is still the big question if injection is such a big issue.

[Roy]

I roll my eyes at the fracking alarmists. They have been doing fracking for most of the 20th century. It only became the "cause" of earthquakes once it became known by liberal activists in the 21st century. It's just ridiculous. Why aren't there quakes in other regions of the country that have even more fracking than OK? 

[Stebo]

 

I roll my eyes at the fracking alarmists. They have been doing fracking for most of the 20th century. It only became the "cause" of earthquakes once it became known by liberal activists in the 21st century. It's just ridiculous. Why aren't there quakes in other regions of the country that have even more fracking than OK? 

Curious what industry you work for, but furthermore to answer your question, there are less fault lines in those regions and there have still been quakes there. Just not to the magnitude in OK because the lack of appreciable fault lines.

[Vandy]

 

I roll my eyes at the fracking alarmists. They have been doing fracking for most of the 20th century. It only became the "cause" of earthquakes once it became known by liberal activists in the 21st century. It's just ridiculous. Why aren't there quakes in other regions of the country that have even more fracking than OK? 

The use of deep injection wells has long been connected to increased earthquake incidence. Here is an example from the 60s in the Denver area:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/colorado/history.php

[ValpoVike]

 

I roll my eyes at the fracking alarmists. They have been doing fracking for most of the 20th century. It only became the "cause" of earthquakes once it became known by liberal activists in the 21st century. It's just ridiculous. Why aren't there quakes in other regions of the country that have even more fracking than OK? 

I'm no fracking alarmist (nor liberal), but I do have a science background and the data correlation is pretty damning.  As others in the thread have rightfully pointed out, it is not directly related to fracking but rather to injection wells.  There is certainly a valid discussion ongoing on how to safely dispose of the wastewater in a way that does not elevate pressure over a large region. 

To me it is a fascinating discussion, that the injection process can effect geological processes to the point where damaging earthquakes can occur.  10 years ago I too would have rolled my eyes, yet here we are.

 

[JoMo]

Upgraded to 5.8. Strongest Earthquake to ever hit Oklahoma.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/1092acaabb6249c5a28c521a862f328f/usgs-upgrading-oklahoma-earthquake-58-magnitude

[David Reimer]

It was certainly a fun earthquake in Norman. I've felt plenty before, but this was the first one that frightened me. Started out as 'usual' with M4+ with a little rumbling and a bit of a boom, but then the intensity increased big time and I actually felt the rolling. First time my monitors and other items on my desk jumped up and move all around. I was worried the big-screen was going to topple over! 

[JoMo]

New fault discovered?

http://www.kwch.com/content/news/Geophysicist-says-Pawnee-earthquake-happened-on-newly-discovered-fault-392522211.html

[Weatherdemon]

I kept seeing fracking typed in this thread as a the reason for the quakes or wastewater injection wells.

To clarify, Oklahoma produces tons of salt water . Sometimes to a 1:1 ratio with the oil being produced depending on the formation and well location.

The amount of waste water created by fracking is minimal compared to the salt water generated from standard oil production.

Most fluid pumped in for fracking is not recovered.

The salt water is produced regardless of fracking and has to be disposed of somehow. It's typically too expensive to re-inject at the well site so it's stored in salt water tanks onsite and picked up and injected into disposal wells elsewhere. These injection wells that are taking in saltwater produced from OK and surrounding states are what they think are creating additional stress and/or lubricating the existing fault lines.

 

[OUGrad05]

On 12/27/2016 at 8:14 AM, Weatherdemon said:

I kept seeing fracking typed in this thread as a the reason for the quakes or wastewater injection wells.

To clarify, Oklahoma produces tons of salt water . Sometimes to a 1:1 ratio with the oil being produced depending on the formation and well location.

The amount of waste water created by fracking is minimal compared to the salt water generated from standard oil production.

Most fluid pumped in for fracking is not recovered.

The salt water is produced regardless of fracking and has to be disposed of somehow. It's typically too expensive to re-inject at the well site so it's stored in salt water tanks onsite and picked up and injected into disposal wells elsewhere. These injection wells that are taking in saltwater produced from OK and surrounding states are what they think are creating additional stress and/or lubricating the existing fault lines.

 

1:1?  Actually in some cases the produced water to oil is more like 20:1 or higher.  

Really when talking produced water its very dependent on the formation.  Older dryer formations, think Anadarko basin, 80% of the flowback the first few months is actually fracturing fluid.  Miss lime on the other hand produces significant naturally occurring water for every bbl of oil for the life of the well.  

It is wastewater injection that is the problem, not the process of fracturing.  When I was on a committee to address these problems in Texas we had a lot of discussion regarding underground seepage, pressure front boundaries, etc, and Texas has by and large minimized or eliminated the problem, same can be said for KS.  In OK much of that water is being injected on top of the basement rock (arbuckle formation) and it's thought, as mentioned above to be activating older faults.  

This is something that can be worked around for most in the industry but the State also has to get serious about regulating and unfortunately the legislature has kind of hamstrung the OCC, even recent changes have been pretty limited and call into question the legality of some of OCCs rules.  OCC really is stuck in a bad spot due to the legislature on this one.  

There is some water coming into OK from surrounding states but it's a small % and isn't really a factor.  The real issue is we need real time monitoring of injection well depths, volumes and pressures, all of which should be closely monitored by the operator of the disposal well and the OCC should probably be allowed access to the data remotely via radio.  All of that cost money, getting taxpayers in this state to pay for needed services is extremely difficult, many voters also don't want the industry to pay for it either.  

I agree with someone above that something has to give, I've been in the industry for 12 years and can tell you that this can be done safely and without shaking houses and buildings apart.  It takes someone with balls at the state level to tell the taxpayers who are clueless that they are CLUELESS and to let the legislature do its damn job.  

A half dozen or more states handle these issues far better than OK, don't buy into all the BS that fracturing is dangerous, by and large, it's very safe.  Someone mentioned above it's been done for most of the 20th century, that's technically true but also misleading.  Hydraulic fracturing on the scale we're seeing now has really only been happening since the early 2000 and that was in the Barnett Shale west of FT Worth.  It's continued to accelerate and really began ramping up in OK big time in 2009.  The volumes of fluid used is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than what was used 40 or 50 years ago.  This is due primarily because of the shear volume of formation being fractured.  With 5,000 or 10,000 lateral feet being stimulated and sand and proppant volumes continuing to rise, so has the need for wastewater disposal.  Fracturing can cause very small earthquakes and has been documented in only a couple of incidents to cause anything above a 4.0, those were weird one-off type situations that are NOT anything close to typical.  

Wastewater injection has been known for 80+ years to induce seismicity and the volumes we're injecting without proper scoping of the location via seismic shoots and pressure monitoring is the problem.