Now established as fact and associated with fracking. The process water stays there as a poisonous legacy of our greed and stupidity for years to come as we continue to work towards making Earth uninhabitable.
Read the complete article here in Bloomberg News.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
Study: Earthquakes in Us Shale at Record Rates
David Wethe Bloomberg News
June 10, 2021
The number of earthquakes rattling the U.S. shale patch is growing exponentially as producers pump massive amounts of dirty water from their oil and gas wells back underground.
Tremors registering at least a 2 on the Richter scale quadrupled from 2017 levels to a record 938 last year and are on pace to top that this year, according to a Rystad Energy analysis of data in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico. Though earthquakes have long been linked to activity related to shale production, the report provides more evidence of the connection in the U.S. Southwest, where oil drilling has intensified in the past decade.
Earth Shaking
Seismic activity greater than 2.0 magnitude on the rise in U.S. southwest
Source: Rystad
Note: 2021 data is through first five months
Tremors in shale fields can also be caused by fracking, or blasting apart rock to release oil and gas. Most of those earthquakes, though, are imperceptible. The real danger is that if the oil field is situated along a geological fault, the fractures can cause a chain reaction and trigger a bigger seismic event.
To maintain water disposal at 2020 levels, the industry has to treat and recycle it, which could cost producers more than $1 billion a year, Hassler said.
