This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Kansas Officials Admit "Strong Correlation" Between Quakes & Fracking
“If the government and the Kansas Corporation Commission care about the people of Kansas and the damages, they will order a moratorium,” exclaims Joe Spease, chairman of the Kansas Sierra Club's fracking committee following a report from Kansas officials, who have been reluctant to link the mysterious earthquakes in south central Kansas to fracking, admitted last week that "we can say there is a strong correlation between the disposal of saltwater and the earthquakes."
As LJWorld reports, it's the first time state officials have so clearly stated the likely cause of the earthquakes, which are afflicting a region where fracking is widely used, as Rick Miller, a geophysicist and senior scientist for the Kansas Geological Survey, said he believes the injection of fracking chemicals into the earth has been a catalyst for the quakes.
During hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” for short, operators use a mixture of saltwater and chemicals to break tight underground rock formations to release oil and gas. To get rid of the water after the fracking process, operators inject the water deep into disposal wells.
Naming the cause of the earthquakes is, in part, a matter of semantics. Questions have long been raised about whether fracking activity is causing the earthquakes, and officials in other states have concluded that it has. But Kansas officials consider the waste water disposal a separate process, and so have not considered the fracking itself to be the key factor in the quakes.
At issue now is what, if any, action to take. The state’s Sierra Club chapter wants Kansas to follow in the steps of New York, New Hampshire, Maryland and numerous local governments nationwide and call a moratorium on fracking. Others, including Lawrence Rep. Tom Sloan, ask where the nation will get energy if the option is off limits.
...
“He is not being sincere,” said Joe Spease, chairman of the Kansas Sierra Club's fracking committee and owner of a renewable energy company in Overland Park.
“It is so ridiculous, this issue of semantics,” Spease said. “There are millions of dollars in property damages happening, and we have our scientists playing word games.”
The Kansas Sierra Club supports a bill, not yet introduced, to impose a moratorium on fracking to give the oil and gas industry time to develop a solution to the saltwater disposal issue, Spease said.
“If the government and the Kansas Corporation Commission care about the people of Kansas and the damages, they will order a moratorium,” Spease said. “If they only care about the profits of the oil and gas (industry), it will be business as usual. I hope that is not the case.”
As RT reports, this is not the first linkage...
According to a team of scientists working under Duke University geochemistry professor Avner Vengosh, wastewater associated with fracking sites contains large amounts of ammonium and iodide, which may in turn encourage the formation of certain carcinogenic byproducts.
“We were not aware that they existed in oil and gas waste products,” Vengosh told ThinkProgress. “Until now, no one was aware — no one was monitoring for those contaminants.”
“The relatively high frequency of spills associated with the intensity of shale gas development and reports of an overall increase of the salinity in watersheds associated with hydraulic fracturing activities, combined with data presented in this study, suggest that the release of [oil and gas wastewater] to the environment is one of the major risks associated with the development of hydraulic fracturing,” the study reads. “Our findings indicate that discharge and accidental spills of [oil and gas wastewater] to waterways pose risks to both human health and the environment.”
As RT reported previously, a separate study published earlier this month determined that fracking in an Ohio community caused 77 earthquakes during a span of just a few days last March.
Ironically, two days after the paper published its report, four small quakes occurred in the southern part of the state and through neighboring Oklahoma.
* * *
Of course - only one thing matters...
State Rep. Tom Sloan, a Lawrence Republican who has served on several Federal Energy Regulatory Commission committees and task forces, said a moratorium would hurt the economy.
“How do you draw the line?” he asked.
“If you don’t allow fracking, you will shut down the entire industry,” he said.
* * *
- 10519 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -



Sounds like another kooky conspiracy theory
They should be thankful we are lubricating the faults so that no large buildup of energy occurs. We are preventing large earth quakes- but don't tell California.
Don't worry my fellow ankle-grabbers, uncle satan will come up with something that's agreeable to the the energy, insurance, and mortgage industries and certain to fuck us the private citizens. Earthquake insurance will become a separate mandatory policy which all homeowners in fracking zones (even those without a mortgage in order to “share” the burden) will be forced to pay.
This well funded OPEC sponsored attack on fracking is amazing.
Ummmmm, isn't oil also extracted from these places....for years and no earthquakes.
Now, fracking shows up and all of a sudden ----- earthquakes.
Wait...
Wait...
Wait...
It is fracking, it is causing all these quack I mean quakes to show up.
agreed. note the RT reference as well. I am sure they'd like to see US produciton plummet.
the quakes aren't a huge deal...very small in size and hardly noticeable at least so far. The water contamination ain't good though. I'm definitely for anything that can keep these guys from doing damage to fresh water supplies and aquifers.
But in certain areas they need to be aware of the greater damage they could be doing and not just indiscriminantly fucking things up and then moving on.
Remember in Colorado last year in May? This 4 mile long chunk of a mountain right in the middle of an extensive fracking operation completely collapsed into a massive landslide.
http://youtu.be/ljbLEX432ns
That's fucking some shit up right there.
I'm guessing there is a "strong correlation" between the Sierra Club spokeman's conjecture and his "green" business profit motive.
It just look like shale is doomed. More precisely someone decided that it is the right time to end this business. The ecology or something else. The excuse doesnt matters.
The shale had its 5 minutes in history and is over.
Are all earthquakes created equally?
I guess my landslide link above did not work? Here's a 2nd try at it. Sorry 'bout that, all you "folks" an such...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJbLEX432ns
Let me guess: you don't have a house there.
At least you don't claim that potnetially poisioning the groundwater of all future generations would not matter, like the scum supporting fracking.
"Fracking" (we used to call it "Enhanced Recovery" or "Thermal Injection") has been used for almost 60 years in California's Central Valley Oilfields.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_oil_recovery
Whereas, Texas has been "Water-Flooding" their oilfields even longer than that.
I don't recall anyone whining about increased earthquakes in Texas...
Co-incidentally, the last big Central California earthquake preceeds any such enhanced-recovery techniques (the 1952 Bakersfield Quake)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_California
This is all just paranoia and junk science...
If you don't think there's a difference between water flooding traditional oil wells via EOR to get that "last bit of oil" out and "fracking," which involves sticking explosive charges deep in the Earth and then spraying the sediment with highly toxic chemicals into a hole that didn't previously exist and is permeable to local water tables, you're either completely disingenuous, entirely ignorant of these basic differences, or a fucking moron.
Only one of us here is promoting "junk science," and something tells me it might be the guy whose handle is synonymous with "hustler."
No. You're the fucking moron:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing
You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
No, I think it's you who is either not understanding or mis-representing the facts. Where are the numbers? If fracking was so popular then, why did the 1970s happen? Why were there ever supply issues? Do you deny the "shale boom" too?
spraying the sediment with highly toxic chemicals into a hole that didn't previously exist and is permeable to local water tables
That portion of your sentence is the definition of junk science, my friend.
Take offense with my conclusion all day, but that's absolutely how fracking works. Blowing up sedimentary rock with pores of gas/oil inside, flooding them with a chemical solution, and pumping. It's the difference between using a traditional bidet to clean out that bunghole of yours and instead planting small explosive charges in your colon and backwashing with bleach to "get all the shit out."
As I was discussing with Pool Shark, I'm more than willing to be corrected on the link between fracking and earthquakes, as my mind is not yet made up on that front; not, however, with the basics of how fracking works, which you clearly don't understand in the slightest.
LOL I can't stop laughing after reading that extrations analogy. BTW good point
Don't lose any sleep over it. Anybody whose mind hasn't been subjugated by the propaganda machine can instantly see the difference between your educated thought process and that of a troll/spook/yes-man/controlled-non-opposition.
Thermal Injection, Water Flooding, and Enhanced recovery are not fracking. Those methods rely on the already existing permeability to inject chemicals, steam, water, or other into an already porous and permeable matrix ie sand stone, ie conventional reservoir. This is a low pressure operation that is common in many conventional oil and gas plays.
Fracking is completely different. Fracking takes a rock like shale or a tight sand (unconventional) which has oil and gas trapped in pore spaces that have little or ZERO permeability. The fracking is required to connect the pore spaces and all the oil/gas to flow. This is an extremely high pressure operation, completely different from those mentioned above.
So moral of the story is, comparing those things you mentioned to fracking is silly.
I suppose on some level is plausible that fracking causes earthquakes. However, my understanding is that earthquakes come from deep in the crust where tectonic plates are mashing into eachother. Fracking only occurs in the sedimentary rocks resting on top of the plates.
Is there a record of earthquakes in those areas before and after fracking? How strong is this correlation?
If it's not an earthquake then we need a new word for the ground is shaking because of shallow rock formations crumbling.
Quakes aside, it's undeniable that fracking taints water tables. I've got some beautiful property that, until recently, was untouched by Man. Now there's a fracking operation a few miles down the road, and half the orchards between my woodlot and there have shut down. Previously, fruiting was one of the area's greatest commercial operations; now it's been traded so some Canadian energy firm can taint rural water supplies to the point where folks will have to be "relocated" for "health concerns." Agenda 21, much? In fact, the county in which my rural land was purchased is in partnership with a "Sustainable Development" firm which partnered with Encana to open fracking operations in the region. Too coincidental even for the skeptic.
Does Russia benefit from outlining, perhaps even exaggerating, the claims of the frackin' frackers? Sure, just as RT benefits from stirring up the sentiments of the "Patriot" movement on RT America. Doesn't mean that their claims are universally false.
That is a separate issue on which you will get no argument from me.
I have no problem limiting injection wells to areas far away from groundwater tables. That's a given.
I was commenting on this ridiculous assertion that enhanced recovery causes earthquakes.
If that were true, Texas would have collapsed decades ago...
Fair enough claim, thanks for clearing that up. I jumped to conclusions instead of starting an open dialogue, my apologies. The Internet can make assholes of us all. The Saudis have been filling oil wells with seawater to prevent collapses for decades now and make oil below the wellhead accessible, this seems to be common practice. Unless I'm mistaken, though, none of this involved creating completely new cavities with explosives, merely expanding existing ones. I suppose my overarching point was that, as I'm not a geologist or in the drilling industry, I don't know if the supposed link between fracking and earthquakes is true or not and will withhold judgment until more studies are done. Perhaps you know something I don't? Willing to listen as opposed to being combative now.
Again, sorry to come out guns blazin' on 'ya.
It's plenty deniable. If commercially viable hydrocarbon deposits exist it's only because they're trapped under an impermeable layer of cap rock that's just as impermeable to the 99+% water / sand solution used in hydraulic fracturing as it is to the hydrocarbons it has held trapped for many tens of millions of years. The strong acids, peroxides and industrial solvents that we put down wells come way after the hydraulic fracturing is done.
Tell that to the folks in Pennsylvania who can't drink their well water anymore because it's flammable. Either these poor people who are out of a home are liars, or something went wrong on the way to the NatGas forum. Wonder which is more likely...
Rock bearing liquid hydrocarbons can be found very near, and all the way to, the surface in many areas including, drum roll please, parts of PA. See e.g., the Drake Well that struck oil at a depth of < 70' in western PA or reports of Native Americans in the area using pitch that bubbled to the surface naturally well before that. Now suppose you're in an area where pitch bubbles to the surface naturally and 20 bbl/day naturally flowing wells have been struck at depths of < 70' and you drill a water well to a depth of, say, 50'. Do you suppose there's a chance you might just crack the cap rock on a shallow deposit and let naturally occurring gas and / or oil into your well bore? Hint: yes. Is it more likely that the complaining party has struck a shallow reservoir in an area well-known for them (damn it's my fault and I won't be collecting a big check) or that hydraulic fracturing of a Marcellus well at a depth of, say, 5000' (score / jackpot justice /warm up the lawyers / pay me now) somehow went awry to the tune of an extra mile of vertical fracture when maybe 50 - 75' was spec'd? Hint: the former. Only the shrieking hysteric anti-science crowd believes otherwise.
^^ This.
I'm not a rock dude....and completely unqualified to have an opinion on anything other than the city water that flows into my house...and it has resorted to smelling like crap (literally) in a timeframe that correlates (in time only) with the fracking boom. I'm in Houston, and it also correlates with the construction of about 40 new high rise buildings that will soon be unoccupied.
Well someone has to poison the water supply. Otherwise who will buy all this bottled water?
There must be a ton of fracking going on in eastern Connecticut.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/connecticut-rattled-by-12-earthquakes-in-1-w...
heh heh. don't confuse them bro.
Thankfully low oil prices will kill a majority of this nonsense.
This "nonsense" of fracking is what killed HIGH oil prices.
Drill BABY Drill
Tools on the bottom, heading to China.
This remains nonsense because the HIGH oil prices were an illusion powered by QE.
This "boom," should never have ignited and this bust is going to be huge.
Nothing good comes to a country in the years immediately following a peak in oil production (or other keystone resources).
USSR peaked in '87 and they became the, "former," USSR in '91.
Argentina peaked in '98. What year did they collapse again?
UK peaked in '99. Did we see any economic trouble immediately after that?
Global conventional crude production peaked in 2005. Anything happen on a global scale shortly after that?
Go back 101 years to 1914 when we saw the beginning of the first world war and the Federal Reserve.
Guess what happened in 1913...
UK peaked in coal production.
The US will be peaking here again shortly. Are you prepared?
Plant a garden. As soon as you can.
nailed it SelfyG.....while, we hear a lot of "gold is money" talk.....in our world, ENERGY is money...got it, got progress...don't got it...or, got less of it - you've got a problem....and problems will be coming our way.
High oil prices had nothing or very little to do with QE.
When oil prices were once $140 how much QE had been released?
High oil prices were manipulated by a consortium of oil producers.
Produsers outside of that price control group have now become large enough to over come the attempts at price control at unreasonable prices. Now oil will trade as any other commodity - near the cost of producing the last barrell to satisfy demand.
We are also talking earthquakes with a magnitude of 1 to 3 on the richter scale ...... which can not even be felt
A semi-truck driving by in front of your house at high speed will shake your home more than a 2.0 earthquake
We need to ban semi-trucks driving in front of houses! These have kids in them. Earthquakes must be stopped at all costs!
This is exactly correct, came to say this. They make these quakes sound scary, but I'll bet 99% of the population in these areas can't even tell they're occuring. Anything below magnitude 3 is basically dismissed as your imagination. 3.0's can be felt, but they have to be significant duration to be noticed, and you have to be close to the epicenter.
Not that we shouldn't be aware of what we may be doing by Fracking, just that the earthquakes are as indicative of imminent doom as a flag burning.
It's hard for even the tv media around here to ignore the earthquakes when the studio starts shaking in the middle of a newscast.
all I know is that all these earthquakes are vibrating the weight right off me
The 3.0 - 4.0 earthquakes do damage here in Oklahoma. Also, I suspect frequent earthquakes under 3.0 can still do accumulated damage to structures which were never built with earthquakes in mind.
Saltwater in Kansas? It's pretty obvious considering the deluge of anti-Shale oil articles on ZH one or more of the Tylers has a serious hard on for killing them. Stock short maybe?
This article is clearly stretching the truth. No one knows what causes earthquakes and for some public offical to say that, is just well, guessing and not actual real knowledge.
You can find saltwater beneath all 50 states. It's called brine, genius.
Try opening a geology book instead of your mouth next time.
Brine is a solution created by injecting water into a salt dome. When you find a salt dome, it is a pretty good bet you will find some form of gas, oil or both. By the way, brine is used in a number of industrial processes. Salt domes are where the strategic petroleum reserves are stored.
The brine or salt water depth does somewhat depend on your exact location. However if you continue drilling several hunderd feet below the fresh water depth you will find water with high salt and other disolved minerals.
Thanks.
I don't see a need to insult people over it though.
So sorry,
I was a bit riled up this afternoon.
Regards
I will listen to the Sierra Club when all its members stop driving cars and stop flying around the country telling other states what they should do...
Good on you! The "all or nothing" approach to life is truly the only way to go.
Sarcasm? You betcha!
There is a flaw in your logic.
Fracking hell.
Surrender Dorothy!
You mean this Dorothy?
How about the fact that North Dakota has sunk what, 3 inches...
LOL- source?
The Accredited Times
Look, the state of North Dakota was mountainous until Paul Bunyon and Babe the Big freakin Blue Ox came there and mowed everything down. So, let's put the blame where it's deserved.
Plus correlation between fracking and flammable tap water - the gifts of fracking are so underreported:
Dakota man discovers his tap water is flammablehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2531083/Dakota-man-discovers-tap...
Scientific Study Links Flammable Drinking Water to Frackinghttp://www.propublica.org/article/scientific-study-links-flammable-drink...
Thoroughly debunked.
Your reply has thoroughly debunked the idea that you actually use the brain in your head.
Tapwater has always been flammable in certain areas of Alberta, and Saskatchewan.
No reason then that the rest of the world should not enjoy the benefits of flammable drinking water. Leave the tap water running and you have free heat and light. Maybe you can roast marshmallows as an additional bonus if you don't mind them a bit soggy.
CenterPoint Energy may send you a bill for that Gas.
Sssshhhhh,
Nobody want to hear methane is a naturally ocurring substance.
Martin Marietta recetly drilled an exploratory well in southwest Ohio to assess the potential for an underground limestone mine.
Guess what was observed in the borehole below the water table?
OMG, panic!
NSS - No Sh!t Sherlock!
I used to work out in Hays KS back in the late 80's. Fracking is not new, nor swabbing, nor is injecting saltwater back down a hole. This stuff has been going on for 40+ years, unless they've massive upped the frequency I doubt a cause/effect (correlation does not mean causation), looking at the map I would suspect Hugoton Wells NG or pumping water for pig-feed-corn is to blame. Or rather that the earth moves around with that kooky plate techtonics
Hell, most of the wells only got 1-10 B per day, and thousand of saltwater... who really gives a shit?
"unless they've massive upped the frequency"
You mean like happened during the shale gas boom?
The ' House of Saud' is probably stroking a huge effin boner right now... They can just let the EPA do their job for them.(shut down the competition)
The Arabs have many ways of protecting their market share. Remember that film "Promised Land" about Matt Damon and fracking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promised_Land_%282012_film%29
pods
I do remember... I try to stay away from Matt Flamin flix though. He and Ben Aflake make a great duo.
I thought this was a proven association many years ago? Fracking will increase the number of earthquakes. But they were small. Like fat lady falling off a Walmart Scooter small.
As for the Sierra Club and the rest of the globalist Agenda 21 fucks, DIAF.
pods
You had me at "fat lady falling off a Walmart Scooter."
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/fe/a4/fa/fea4faf70d09fb90c0588...
The sheep of the sheep bleat about Agenda 21. Your handlers are scaring you with boogey-men.
The two biggest threats to industrialized civilization are resource depletion and climate change.
The fact that most preppers consider those two things to be conspiracies means the powers that be are winning.
Resource depletion and climate change? Really? I'm guessing you've not studied economics, nor have done any serious study about the lies propogated by the Left when it comes to ...well... just about anything, but "climate change" in particular.
As soon as you explain the physics behind the fact that your furnace warms the air we'll discuss man's impacts on the global climate. :)
Resource depletion will be the real killer though. The second law of thermodynamics is never broken.
Solar radiation dwarfs whatever man outputs by a factor of a million or so.
Embrace Entropy. It IS the final arbitrator.
SelfGov, that's some weapons grade stupid right there. nice work.
"weapons grade stupid"
That's pure awesomeness.
One thing is 100% certain... If you are against fracking, the it is causing earthquakes. If you are for fracking, then it is not!
no shit sherlock
Ugh, another eco-crazy anti-fracking article.
So, does the fracking cause the earthquakes, or does the injection of waste water into (much deeper) disposal wells cause the earthquakes?
Just how significant are these earthquakes? Smaller than 2.0 on the Richter scale? Then who cares?
Qualify that "millions of dolalrs of property damage." What's he talking about, skyscrapers falling down?
Next, somebody will be cut&pasting links to thoroughly debunked flaming water tap articles.
And, right on cue:
Just how significant are these earthquakes? Smaller than 2.0 on the Richter scale? Then who cares?
The biggest recent one was 4.8 a few weeks ago. On the average they are in the low 3's. You can feel them strongly. Two nights ago I woke up at 4 am and the headboard was rattling against the wall. They are felt in a much wider area than quakes on the west coast. I lived in California for a long time, both northern and southern. I have felt more earthquakes here than I did in years there.
I care, asshole.
You're confident that the 4.8er was due to shale drilling and/or wastewater disposal? Is it possible that was just a "normal" tectonic shift earthquake - you know, the kind that have been happening since the Earth cooled, and that still happen?
Also, how many millions of dollars worth of damage was done to your headboard?
A building blew up in the north central Texas area a couple years back. There was an article about it on ZH. It registered quite high on the local seismographs.
The point is that, just like surface mining, the Earth is going to shake "some" when certain drilling operations are performed. But the magnitude of these shakes just doesn't amount to much. Meanwhile, nuisances people have been complaining about for decades are being blamed on the new technology with a recklessness that would make Tim Geithner blush.
BREAKING NEWS: KANSAS ALSO ADMITS STRONG CORRELATION BETWEEN WIND AND TORANTO OCCURANCES.
Ladies and gents, they've cracked the code.
What's a "Toranto Occurance?
Is that somewhere in Kanuhduh?
They fracking in Connecticut?
http://www.ibtimes.com/connecticut-rocked-11-earthquakes-one-week-1786792
Or are we maybe confusing correlation and causation?
What, you're saying that correlation isn't directly related to causation? Wait, wait... I need to go back and study statistics again... /sarc
It seems to me there are many more earthquakes all over the world right now...go to the USGS site...lots of earthquakes......I think its the solar flares..so we shoud shut down the sun...lol...Sierra Club....and the guy owns a solar company to boot....no conflict of interest there...
The creation of carcinogenic wastewater is of far greater concern to me than these microquakes, especially if that water gets into the water table, poisoning not only humans but every living thing dependent on non-treated water. What we as a society leave for wildlife to drink is criminal. Imagine what happens when treatment plants fail for one reason or another?
Those earthquakes are nothing.
Anyway, why aren't we opening up more offshore drilling for all the "regular" oil available off the coasts, especially California?
I would fucking LOVE to see a bunch of rigs right off the shoreline of Malibu...
If you eliminate a disease you eliminate the profits from the cure.
It is called creative destruction.
The message here is that if it is bad but profitable; it’s not so bad!
Balderdash!
As a Kansas who is well versed with the oil patch, I can say that no one is fracking new wells with oil at 47 in Kansas. At 47, the locals are actually paid about $40/bbl due to transportation expenses. Moreover, all of the large oil companies have pulled out of Kansas since the depletion rates have been so high. So, he asks for a moretorium....he already has it!!!
Especially down in SW KS. Not a big shale area /no-shit Few salt-domes of saltwater and a film of oil.
Oil price is not high enough, thats all. If oil was $500/BBL. Those same people would be claiming, well they are small earthquakes, so we will "wait and see".
lol. ;-)
The only reason for the earthquakes is all the heel-stompin' dancin' due to all that money flowin' out the ground like a big river!! Yeee haww!
Lost me at "government".
Fuck the environment. Pump at all costs......
obvious prpaganda piece here. The Sierra Club? please.
Is there any kind of modernization and energy production that they DO like? Oh, nevermind.
The Sierra Club BoD's would be among the first destined for the alligator feed processing plant.
When the idiots on this site talk about environmental issues you sound as dumb as central bankers talking about the economy. Hey dumb fucks why don't you ask a legitimate scientist what they think? There is a lot of oil oligarch cum on some of your faces. "Dont worry about fracking!" It's safe and doesn't have massive damages associated with it! Earthquakes from injecting high pressure water into the ground? Who cares! Jobs
Legitimate scientists?
Like those who have made the 9/11 official commition report?
Or those scientist talking about the global warming?
Please name for me a legitamate scientist to discuss environmental issues with.
I'd love to share my 22 years of experience in geology and the environment with them.
Sorry, I dont think you qualify.
Yes, let's ask the "legitimate" global warming lying scientists, they will know the answer.
1) they're not lying
2) they're more legit than any other source you'll cite in your life. Ever.
The reason a Glacier slides is because of the liquid water running under it, lubricating the ground it passes over
Not quite, Copernicus.
Glaciers slide due to......wait for it, wait for it...........GRAVITY.
Water can lubricate ice. It doesn't lubricate fault lines.
It most certainly does.
I have never felt an earthquake in Kansas. I was woken up in Chicago by one once. I didn't bother to read this article.
Fuck Kansas and Misery(missouri). I live in Kansas City, mo and I hate this fucking place. Can't wait to move back home!!! Let the earthquakes destroy these two states, i could give two fucks!!!
I live in Oklahoma City.
The other day I was putting ($1.66) gas in my car when about a 3.0 earthquake hit.
I just stood there and rode it out, enjoying the lower price.
But in all seriousness, it's obvious to me that fracking is causing these earthquakes in the central U.S. and other areas.
There's no reason for Oklahoma to have more quakes than California.
I'd read that the reason Oklahoma get's so many is because we lie at the edge of a fault line and perhaps it's more susceptable.
The only thing we could do would be to ban fracking for a couple of years and see what happens. Then bring it back. The evidence would be clear.
It'd financially hurt, but so do all the earthquakes with the potential for a much bigger one.
That would be awesome!!!! Ban all fracking so we can short the shale's into the ground and get filthy fucking rich!!
The fracking and injecting do not really "cause" the earthquake. It is not as if there is some vibration resulting from an explosion. The earthquake results from the release of already accumulated tensions in the fault planes. IF fracking or injecting is causing an increase in the number of minor quakes it is allowing that tension to safely release without the Big One.
Can anyone confirm whether insurance co's are refusing payouts for earthquake damage because the co's assert it's not nature but man-made? I heard that homeowners with insurance claims for foundation damage and such are not being compensated. Curious.
See the link above. Given that there is a fault line running down the middle of the frackin' state, I'm sure that insurance companies are looking for every excuse not to pay.
All...complete...bullshit. KansASS has a long history of earthquakes before anything was ever frikken fracked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1867_Manhattan,_Kansas_earthquake
http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Publications/GeoRecord/2001/vol7.3/Page1.html
and on and on and on....
so a standard industrial 7000 hp, 15,000 psi water pump can cause earthquakes?
What if terrorists got their hands on one?! They could go to the San Andreas fault, hook up their pump, and destroy California!!
Wasn't there a few surprising earthquakes in Connecticut recently? Must have been caused by all that fracking nearby ... or not.
We wouldn't NEED to frack if Obama would let us drill in the Arctic and off shore in the continental US...
The Sierra Club, now there is a disinterested party. They have a terminal case of carbonphobia. But there have been a lot of earthquakes in Connecticut lately caused by fracking.
Bunghole, so as a randy marsh level geologist do you not think fracking has increased earthquake activity in kansas?
https://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/fracking-arkansas/
Arkansas suspended fracking, due to increased quakes, from the website listed above, scroll down about 1/3 way to table 1 "Arkansas Earthquake History".
Yanno we are NOT talking about 1 little fracking operation in some remote drilling site. When they drill/frack, they perforate intensely, >hundreds of perforations per square mile is routine.
At the fracking apex in 2010 a quake (4.0 from Guy, AR), will knock the dishes off the wall a hundred miles away, and strangely lasted more than 45 seconds. Usually our quakes down here are much smaller, and rarely last more than 5 seconds.
wwxx
If everyone that believed in global warming would stop flying on jets, stop driving, and turn off their heat perhaps the world could be saved and the fracking and earthquakes would stop.
/s?
Here's what's happening:
1. There are always earthquakes, pretty much everywhere, but most are never felt.
2. The anti-fracking crowd has deployed seismometers to detect the quakes and is now pointing to these previously undetected quakes to generate controversy.
3. "fracking fluid" is 99.9% water and sand and there are more potentially cancer causing chemicals in your food and drinking water today.
4. "scientists" decry "large amounts" of chemicals want you to ignore the law of large numbers. .01% is still .01% and 10 million gallons would contain 1000 gallons of these chemicals which is a "large number" but insignificant overall.
5. these are the same people who sign petitions to ban dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) and efforts to stop mothers from passing on deoxyrobonucleic acid (DNA) on to their children.
average depth of an earthquake 70km, fracking depth 1-3 km....hmmm
Here's what happening:
Your an idiot.
How do I know this?
Simple! For one thing you claim "fracking fluid" is mostly water and sand, , therefore it is safe.
You also talk about the anti fracking conspiracy. It's not a conspiracy, people know those piece of shit frackers are in it for the quick buck and don't give a shit about the damage they cause. The only reason it's happening is because the economy is fucked, and politicians protect their buddies in the biz.
Nice bullshit addition about the dna and h20, paint "those people" as idiots verses you, the enlightened
He might be an idiot but not for the reasons you state.
And yes, fracking fluid is mostly water, they do this all the time in off-shore fields injecting sea water into the formations to push up the condensate....because, well, there's pleaty of water off-shore. Go figure.
But, the reason he may be an idiot is much simpler. If I may quote from the definitive university introductory text on earth quakes, "Earthquakes", fifth edition, Dr. Bruce A. Bolt, Page 91:
"Experiments of the effect of pressure on minerals containing water of crystallization and on water-saturated rocks do, however, suggest why fracture might occur at large depths in the earth. Water acts in a way that allows a sudden slip to take place, perhaps by providing a kind of lubrication along the side planes, but more effectively by increasing the local pore pressure and, hence, weakening rock."
He goes on to say, "The importance of water in earthquake generation came to the attention of siesmologists in 1962 when a series of earthquakes began near Denver, Colorado. Although throughout the years there had been some earthquakes in the area -- for example, one of Modified Mercalli intensity VII had occurring in 1882, and a few other local shock shocks had taken place since -- the natural seismicity had always been low. Suddenly, there was a change beginning in April 1962, when a succession of earthquakes was felt: Between that month and September 1963 local seismographic stations located more that 700 epicventres in the vincinity! The sequence continues for years, the largest earthquakes occurring in 1967.
Most of these earthquakes were within a radius of 8Km of the Rocky Mountain aresenal northeast of Denver, where weapons were being manufactures for the army. One of the by-products of this manufacture was contaminated water, which was at first allowed to evaporate from surface storage. But in 1961 the army switched to what seemed a more environmentally acceptable method of disposal -- to pump the waste liquid down a deep well, bored to a depth of 3670 metres. These wastes were injected under pressure intt the borehole from March 8, 1962 to September 30, 1963. Injection ceased for a year and then resumed in September 1964 through September 1965. Subsequentyly, earthquakes were felt in Denver.
The correlationbetween the amount of water inhected and the number of earthquakes was indeed quite strong:....."
So you see, this has been known for years. Now, the knee jerk reaction of all the loons and lefties will be, "STOP THE FRACKING IMMEDIATELY". Well just hold on a second here tex.......
We have already outlawed most other ways to make a living so now you want to outlaw this one as well? Hmmmmm...
And just a note, 3670m is WAY-WAY below the water table. Injection of hazardous materials into bore holes has been the standard method of waste disposal for decades. What is the watse going to contaminate down there, magma? The water table is at 100m, not 3670m.
BUT, this issue does have to be discussed but lets separate the envirofascism from the known realities.
Ok, I'm done.
Cheers,
squid
Joe Spease, chairman of the Kansas Sierra Club's
LOL
The anti Frackers are "fake environmentalists" seeking to make Greenenergy® more attractive by eliminating competition, oil and gas make Solar & wind and the Solar & wind energy-job agenda uneconomical.
Like all Socialists rule #1 outlaw the competition.
Greenenergy® is incredibly labor and capital intensive, we don't want labor intensive energy, labor is expensive, we want cheap energy for high dollar automated energy intensive jobs, let the 3rd world use solar, basket weaving isn't energy intensive.
Then there is the environmnetal cost of temporary greenergy (they use more oil/coal to make solar wind than it produces) the greenerngy movement is basically an exotic energy battery and jobs indulgence program that on net harms the environmment and makes America less a competetive nation.
20 years from now solar will be gone but not the the solar debt and solar e-waste.
If these people gave a shit about the environment they'd demand impeachment for criminal invasion.
lots more fracking is coming, do the math, 12 barrels per person per year X 20 million illegals (assuming 20 million could be 40) that's 240 million barrels per year in new oil/gas needed for every Obama Amnestee, those illegals have big families, you can chart their growth too.
BTW how does America get to energy independence by importing both labor and solar?
An article about "earthquakes" in which the size of the so-called "earthquakes" does not appear. That alone tells you something.
What else says something? The fact that "lots of little ones" seems likely to avoid larger ones (according to articles i've read). But regardless of all that, Kansas is in little or no danger of "the big one"... or "the large one"... or "the fairly large one"... or the "significant one", or...