Since the Keranen et al. paper a few months ago, there has
been much discussion on the relationship between earthquakes and wastewater
disposal wells from unconventional hydrocarbon extraction (a.k.a. fracking).
Most of this discussion related to earthquake swarms on
What is immediately apparent is that despite the much larger
size and production, Texas
has slightly fewer quakes. The next biggest
fracking state, after Texas , is North Dakota , which has recently surpassed Alaska and California to
be the USA ’s
second biggest oil producer (three times more than Oklahoma). Its
earthquake map looks like this:
Even the Keranen et al. paper stresses that many injection
wells are aseismic, and that a mere four wells account for the majority of
earthquakes. This sort of attention to detail is important to consider when
evaluating this technology. Understanding facts and details is the first
step in uncovering processes which we can then use to improve our use and
stewardship of natural resources.
And finally, just for comparison, here is the seismic map
for Alaska ,
which I’m putting up here because of the beautiful Benioff zone which has
nothing to do with petroleum at all.
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