Oklahoma earthquakes, what am I doing wrong?

[achiro]

The world is crumbling around me and I have yet to feel any of them. Not one.

[KantoSooner]

Any thing below a '3' you can't feel unless you're really, really close to the epicenter. Ours have been mostly 4 or below, meaning you'd have to be in the area and sitting still in a quiet room to sense them.

[Jacie]

I don't know what it registered but just before Christmas, we had an inch of ice on everything and we felt a cryoseism.

[achiro]

I don't know what it registered but just before Christmas, we had an inch of ice on everything and we felt a cryoseism.

I don't know what that it but it sounds a little dirty.

[olevetonahill]

The world is crumbling around me and I have yet to feel any of them. Not one.

Your just an "Insensitive" Bastage.

[badger]

you're not missing much. I experienced my first in Norman in the early aughts as an undergrad and I thought it was just a building shake from the construction going on across the street (Gaylord Hall was going up on Lindsey Street near the South Oval)

I felt another around the time Kirk Herbie's eyes infamously got huge a few years ago during a Stillwater broadcast here in Tulsa. Again, it was a bit of a shaking, then it was over. The dog that hates severe weather went a bit nuts, but nothing fell off shelves, there weren't smashing glass noises, nothing like out of the movies.

If I had a Jenga game going, perhaps the pieces would have fell, but I am not even sure on that.

[Jacie]

I don't know what that it but it sounds a little dirty.

Its a release of energy caused by groundwater freezing, expanding and sudden ground cracking.

[lexsooner]

I felt one at my folks' house in Edmond on Christmas Eve. It started with rumbling and ended with a really loud sound like thunder very close by. It turned out to be a 3.7 or so eartquake but was intense because the epicenter was less than ten miles away. My Dad knew immediately it was an earthquake because he is used to them. Frankly, I am surprised there is so little talk on this board about the quakes, considering how frequent they are. I am waiting for one large enough to damage homes and belongings, and then the energy industry deny the obvious - they are caused by fracking and the storage of waste water underground.

[FirstandGoal]

I felt one at my folks' house in Edmond on Christmas Eve. It started with rumbling and ended with a really loud sound like thunder very close by. It turned out to be a 3.7 or so eartquake but was intense because the epicenter was less than ten miles away. My Dad knew immediately it was an earthquake because he is used to them. Frankly, I am surprised there is so little talk on this board about the quakes, considering how frequent they are. I am waiting for one large enough to damage homes and belongings, and then the energy industry deny the obvious - they are caused by fracking and the storage of waste water underground.

I had just arrived home on Christmas Eve whenever I felt the one that hit Edmond. Most of the time I don't realize what they are until after the fact because the back of my house is up against a pretty heavily trafficked road and when the earthquakes occur it is hard to distinguish between those and a big semi driving down the road shaking the house. A couple of months ago when one hit, I could have sworn that a big truck had hit my garage door and we even ran outside to see where the damage was before realizing it was just another quake.

Either way, I'm really glad I signed up for earthquake on my homeowner's insurance a couple of years back...

[KantoSooner]

Okay, Lex, let's dig into this. You state a causal relation between 'fracking' and 'waste water storage' and earthquakes. Can you explain how that works? Oil wells typically do not exceed 10,000 feet in depth. (largely because the heat below that depth turns deeper oil into gas), that's 2 miles, give or take. Gas wells typically don't exceed 25,000 ft (as I understand it, this is a limit due to cost as much as anything), that's about 5 miles. Earthquakes tend to be centered at depths in the 20-50 mile deep range, though admittedly some can be shallower.
Since the evil oil and gas companies are likely to be going with the cheapest option possible, let's assume that they will store waste water as shallowly as regulators will allow and they sure aren't going to keep drilling once they've found what they're looking for. So, we can assume they aren't probing around much below the lower limits of their pay zones.
So, how does a pinprick five miles deep at most effect a mammoth movement of miles of rock, weighing trillions of tons somewhere 25 to 50 miles away?

I'm prepared to accept a reasoned argument in favor of your conclusions, but, for now, it seems to me that the 'causation' is orders of magnitude too small to produce the results observed.

[lexsooner]

Kanto, the studies out show a strong correlation, which is of course not causality. As far as the causal connection, from what I have read, the theory is the pressure/water from the fracking operations or stored waste water will migrate to a fault which is vulnerable to shifting, and the water and pressure provide just enough to cause an earthquake. 99.9 percent of the time, these processes result in nothing, but that one fraction of a percent of time some seismic activity will result. Being far from an expert, that's about the best I can give you.

[olevetonahill]

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSglP5JVWBQnajQFxJvxEbTy5k4SEAvb gyY-Js2rT5myTmlGeRQRg

[KantoSooner]

Lex, thanks for the reply. That's about what I'd heard, too. I guess I'll have to see more than apparent correlation before I am ready to draw conclusions. But that's just me and I have spent lots of time on 'ghost hunts' for causes of industrial quality issues so I'm perhaps too harsh a judge.

[olevetonahill]

Lex, thanks for the reply. That's about what I'd heard, too. I guess I'll have to see more than apparent correlation before I am ready to draw conclusions. But that's just me and I have spent lots of time on 'ghost hunts' for causes of industrial quality issues so I'm perhaps too harsh a judge.

Kan, I think where Most folks draw their conclusions from Is we rarely had EQs reported in Oklahoma and then these last few years the Increase in the frequency of EQs combined with the Deeper Drilling that has been happening AND the increase Fracking. Its assumed that Frackin is the Cause.
If you Look tho at the History of EQs here in OK. then you can see we have been having some Pretty serious ones thru out the years and Not just lately.

Im thinking its a Product of More sensitive instruments to measure em and The Natural order of things Much like Climate change I dont see the Human Race as Being the Perpetrators of either.

[KantoSooner]

OK is not particularly seismically stable: we're at one end of the New Madrid fault if memory serves and that one has produced quakes big enough to reverse the flow in the Mississippi river temporarily (early 19th century). I'm still not convinced human activity has much to do with this.
On GW, our inputs into the equation have been much larger and longer term than any fracking related activity. Is human action responsible for rising temps? You can argue that, but you can't argue the basic point that dumping garbage into the air/water/land is not an especially good idea.

[olevetonahill]

OK is not particularly seismically stable: we're at one end of the New Madrid fault if memory serves and that one has produced quakes big enough to reverse the flow in the Mississippi river temporarily (early 19th century). I'm still not convinced human activity has much to do with this.
On GW, our inputs into the equation have been much larger and longer term than any fracking related activity. Is human action responsible for rising temps? You can argue that, but you can't argue the basic point that dumping garbage into the air/water/land is not an especially good idea.

Agreed, That was my point on the EQs it just seems they are increasing , I think its just better sensing equipment and More reporting. The GW deal Is a combo in MHO A Little bit Man caused a lot more just Cause its Mother Nature and shes a Bitch.

[achiro]

I won't claim to know anything about it but it seems like that if fracking caused it that they would be seeing increased activity anywhere that heavy fracking is being done. Also, we have been under a pretty big time drought over the last several years, groundwater levels have dropped significantly. Couldn't it just be something to do with that? Like the huge cracks in very dry ground?

[badger]

Also, we have been under a pretty big time drought over the last several years, groundwater levels have dropped significantly. Couldn't it just be something to do with that? Like the huge cracks in very dry ground?

Agree that this may have contributed, because some Oklahoma lakes still haven't recovered, while the southwest corner is still extremely parched. I'm also hearing reports of quakes in Texas, where they also have lake level issues (and are trying to steal our state's water while they're at it).

[Skysooner]

Okay, let's talk fracking. This is coming from an engineer with a geomechanics Master's degree from OU.

Oklahoma is an unstable area. There are faults all around the state. The area that is moving is seismically active. Once you start to have earthquakes this is going to trigger other earthquakes as the rock systems start to release a bit.

There is truth in one thing you are saying. Putting water on a fault system that is under stress will cause it to move. There are water wells drilled near the San Andres fault and when the fault is about to go, the water levels in these wells drop as the pressure is just about to release. There have been causal relationships between salt water disposal and earthquakes in Irving, Texas; Arkansas and Youngstown, Ohio. This is after millions of barrels of water has been injected. These earthquakes are all rather shallow as the fault systems have to connect to the water source.

Fracking has only caused recordable earthquakes in 2 areas. There was a case in England and in the Horn River region of Canada (NE BC as I recall). This is a recorded fact, and there is documentation out there. My company operates in the area, and our people could feel level 3 microquakes right on the surface. We shut down operations there, and it was determined that fracking was a result. Here is the kicker. When you frac opposite a fault that is under stress, the frac gets all messed up anyway and doesn't provide any production since the sand we are trying to get put away just basically piles near the wellbore. We don't want to be fracking near these faults. These two situations were unique in that the faults were at an oblique angle to the primary stress direction. This is actually a pretty rare thing in areas with oil and natural gas production.

The earthquakes in Oklahoma have epicenters that are miles deeper than where the production (particularly in Lincoln Co.) is coming from. There isn't deeper drilling in Oklahoma. Instead the wells are just infilling areas where there is already established production (primarily in the Woodford or Mississippian zones). Lincoln Co. has been seeing some increased Hunton activity, but there have been Hunton wells there for years.

Most of what you hear about fracking is frankly bs that has no scientific basis in fact. It is the environmental lobby that is unhappy, because we have a cheap and abundant energy source that will put off renewables for many years since they aren't cost effective. Don't you think we would have had problems with earthquakes before this with all of the wells in Texas and Oklahoma before this? We have been fracking since the late 1940s.

[olevetonahill]

Good Post Sky very informative.

[badger]

Thx sky. Here's more Okla quak info from the Oklahoma Geological Survey (http://www.okgeosurvey1.gov/pages/earthquakes/information.php) is anyone's interested.

[KantoSooner]

Thank you Sky.

And, uh, "Yeah what he said!"

[Curly Bill]

Does Al Gore know about these earthquakes? Because I'm pretty sure he can prove it's our fault!

[olevetonahill]

Does Al Gore know about these earthquakes? Because I'm pretty sure he can prove it's our fault!

The Arrogance of mankind.

[Curly Bill]

The Arrogance of mankind.

Arrogance, dumassery, in Al Gore's case it's all of the above!

[olevetonahill]

Arrogance, dumassery, in Al Gore's case it's all of the above!

:very_drunk:

[KantoSooner]

It's hard to believe that Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones were roommates at Yale.

[Curly Bill]

It's hard to believe that Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones were roommates at Yale.

One I like a lot, one I would run over if I saw him walking down the road!

[Boomer.....]

Studies show one to three magnitude 3.0 earthquakes or larger occurred yearly from 1975 to 2008, while the average grew to around 40 earthquakes per year from 2009 to mid-2013.
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3710&from=rss#.Us78Sft0kzI


The sudden dramatic increase in occurrences is worrisome.

[KantoSooner]

Not especially. Earthquake frequency and intensity vary quite a bit. When I lived in Japan, we'd have dozens of earthquakes daily, most below the threshold of human recognition. Then we'd have months or years of 'lots of earthquakes' followed by other periods of 'few or none'.
Not sure if it's scientific, but we always liked having lots of small ones on the theory that they relieved pressure and thus prevented 'The Big One'.

Come to think of it, earthquakes are much like farts in that sense.

[Boomer.....]

So if we keep holding in farts we will eventually explode?

[olevetonahill]

So if we keep holding in farts we will eventually Assplode?

FIFY