>> I think it HAS been established that there's a direct cause and effect with fracking.
Just for the record, there is no meaningful evidence of fracking causing earthquakes. There IS evidence of wastewater injection causing it. These are two distinct processes, and I suppose they are conflated often because often fracking operations get not only oil and gas out of the ground but waste water from other sources (mostly, the fluid used in the fracking process).
In Oklahoma, in one year, over a billion bbl of water were injected and they did begin to have the bits of induced seismicity. Nowhere near the level, for example, of the induced quakes surrounding various geo thermal plants that have been long considered safe.
But another important point is that while these quakes are measurable, they are pretty insignificant. If you live in an apartment and an 18 wheeler drives by outside, you might get the same effect from that as you would induced seismicity from injection.
It is important to keep in mind that injection wells are used for all kinds of stuff -- for example, medical waste, runoff from meat processing plants, water leftover from manufacturing electronic components, and yes, even the production of solar energy.
It warrants further investigation but other than a few sizable quakes these are pretty much not very significant. |
