gubment scientist next HOAX fracking=earthquakes

[Bill]

We all know these lying liberal gubment scientists are in on this hoax.. Probably the same ones lying about climate change..

Imaginary earthquakes, like imaginary glacier collapse & tipping points etc is little more than AlGorian vOOdOO science w/ no basis in facts known to the common man or women..

Five months before Saturday's 5.6 magnitude temblor in central Oklahoma, government scientists warned that oil and natural gas drilling had made a wide swath of the country more susceptible to earthquakes.

The U.S. Geological Survey, in a March report on "induced earthquakes," said as many as 7.9 million people in parts of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas now face the same earthquake risks as those in California.

The report found that oil and gas drilling activity, particularly practices like hydraulic fracturing or fracking, is at issue.

Saturday's earthquake spurred state regulators in Oklahoma to order 35 disposal wells, which are used by frackers, to shut down over a 500-square mile area.

The Environmental Protection Agency is also assessing the region, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin said.

Fracking is used by oil and gas producers to extract oil from the ground -- and it's behind the massive boom in U.S. oil production. Fracking is a far more efficient drilling technique, but it's also controversial.

Related: U.S. has more untapped oil than Saudi Arabia or Russia

The quake that struck Saturday is at least the second of its size to affect central Oklahoma since 2011.

Governor Fallin said six buildings on the Pawnee Nation reservation were left "uninhabitable" and emergency responders found a "variety of damage."

 

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Who are you going to believe? A bunch of ignorant peasants writing an eco-blog or Scientific American?

The recent uptick in the area's tremblers has been dramatic. From 1972 to 2008 only two to six earthquakes were reported per year in Oklahoma, and were often too small for people to notice. However, in 2009 nearly 50 earthquakes were recorded (pdf), and that number more than doubled in 2010 to 1,047, with 103 powerful enough to be felt.

This unusual seismicity has led some to wonder about increased activity in the area related to fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, which uses millions of gallons of fluid to break apart rock and release natural gas. The practice generates a considerable amount of waste liquid, which is often disposed of by injecting it into deep rock formations where it can lubricate faults. Hydraulic fracturing is common in Oklahoma, the nation's third-largest producer of natural gas, and has taken place there for decades (pdf). Now, with the discovery of natural gas deposits in other regions of the U.S., the extraction method is being used more widely and has raised concerns about its potential to contaminate drinking water.

Fracking has been linked to two minor earthquakes in northwest England, very likely by lubricating an already stressed fault zone and thus making it easier for the land to shift (pdf). A report in August (pdf) by seismologist Austin Holland at the OGS also suggested that a swarm of nearly 50 small quakes of magnitude 1.0 to 2.8 near the center of the state might have been triggered by nearby fracking.

Still, researchers say it seems unlikely that fracking had anything to do with last weekend's magnitude 5.6 quake. "There was a lot of deformation of the Earth here 300 million years ago that created huge geological structures in the subsurface that shift from time to time," Keller says. "We have an unstable situation here, and it's one reason why oil and gas is available here in the first place."

"I won't say that man's activity never ever caused the release of seismic stress, but hydro-fracks are such small things," Keller adds. "If we were talking a magnitude 1 or 2 earthquake, that'd be different, but it's awfully hard to imagine a hydro-frack being involved with one of this size. We also have to determine if there were any frack jobs going on there right now, but I don't think there were—it didn't happen in an area of particularly active oil and gas exploration."

As to whether the spike in earthquakes recently seen in the state might be due to fracking, "it is probably best not to attach much significance to perceived increases in seismic activity in Oklahoma—the occurrence of earthquakes anywhere is quite irregular," says seismologist Art McGarr with the U.S. Geological Survey. This surge in quakes might be a temporary statistical anomaly.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-fracking-cause-oklahomas-largest-recorded-earthquake/