...where crying about?

Neighbor in my cube farm had ask me about fracking. I tried to give her a simple honest answer that I remembered from my days at Shell which mainly centered around the enormous pressures that the rocky formations exert at the depths.

I didn't get halfway through the explanation and she blurts out......but what about all of the earthquakes in Oklahoma? To me the answer is still the same. Can you pump liquids at high pressure to fracture rock and cause a rocky formation to have artificial earthquake?

Can someone give me a brief refresher why fracking does not cause earthquakes and why we haven't heard of any more in the news? Seems like we would have continued to have more.

I remember the oil lobby saying it was the wind turbines that were causing the earthquakes.

Probably stone quarries.

I mean there's earthquakes and then there's just the ground moving a bit,

Fracking causes cow farts

Cow farts cause global warming

Global warming causes earthquakes

Earthquakes cause covid

Covid causes pipelines to be canceled

Cancelled pipelines causes fracking



Make sense?

Once they figured how to manage the Arbuckle and where/how to inject the water at certain pressure and depth it calmed down quite a bit. Also, a 2015 and a 2020 oil downturn also helps. That is my understanding, but I am a midstream guy, so take it for what it is worth. Ha.

Jefe07 said:

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Fracking doesn't cause earthquakes. Reinjecting produced water causes earthquakes.

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Understood. Was talking in broad terms.

Understood. It's pressure management. The state cut way back on the amount of water allowed to be injected. Also downturn cut back on activity. And just a better understanding of the situation. But I've never worked OK, so someone else is likely much more knowledgeable.

Tons of family in OKC, Edmond and Tulsa.

I never experienced an earthquake when I lived in OKC, moved around '88.

Been up to visit family over Xmas and stuff, earthquakes every time.

But, they are not really a problem. It's not like the ground shakes for 15 seconds. It's one small move that takes an instant. It sounds kind of like someone got really carried away with tannerite from like half a mile away. Pretty harmless, just annoying.

Good chance that these are actually relieving pressure to avoid a real earthquake in the future. Still a lot of learning in this department, but I will say that the earthquakes in OK are not really a big deal.

Fracking Karens

You can barely feel a 3.0.

A bunch of tiny earthquakes are inconsequential.

Jefe07 said:

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Fracking doesn't cause earthquakes. Reinjecting produced water causes earthquakes.

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Frac'ing may cause micro-seisms, but rarely that ever makes it to the surface depending on the targeted hydrocarbon reservoir, but it seems the continuous daily injection of waste water could alter the subsurface stresses and reactivate dormant or old faults that are in equilibrium.

A better answer may be, so what. Unless the Richter scale impact climbs significantly, there should be little to no impact. Maybe a coffee cup on the edge of a table teeters off if there's a 3.0 quake.

When I was overseas, we had a massive seismic surveillance program to monitor for the government of that country. The issue there was actually seismic activity tied to subsidence of the ground, as we were pulling half a million barrels a day out of the ground.

we need to be fracking the hell out of the west coast...particularly Hollywood

MouthBQ98 said:

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You can barely feel a 3.0.

A bunch of tiny earthquakes are inconsequential.

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I've been in a 7-7.1 in Santiago Chile. I freaked the eff out. Locals laughed at me.

FBG_Ag78 said:

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I've wondered what caused all of the earthquakes before there was fracking.

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It's King Kong monsters fighting in Earth's core. I saw it on TV.

We lived in OKC for 25 years and also had a lake house at Tenkiller Lake in far eastern OK. For the first 10 years we had very few tremors in OKC, but then they became more frequent. We were at our Lake house when a pretty big quake occurred in central OK near Shawnee. We damned sure felt that one, a 100+ miles away. That one did some damage to a few houses and also some buildings at a Baptist College in Shawnee.

This coincided with a pretty dramatic increase in small tremors throughout the state and the OK Geological Survey at OU was tasked by the state to investigate. I had a friend who worked there. They DID conclude that waste water injection (from fracking wells) was the cause of the dramatic increase in tremors/earthquakes.

O&G is a HUGE money maker for OK in jobs, taxes, etc, so the state (a conservative RED state, mind you) didn't go apecrap over the situation, but worked with the O&G industry to develop REASONABLE restrictions and regulations that had a relatively small impact on the industry but DID DEMONSTRABLY reduce the number and severity of tremors and earthquakes.

My friend who worked at the Geological Survey told me the new restrictions/regulations were targeted to vary in strictness depending on the history of events in different areas of the state. It's a dynamic process in a sense that from time to time an area will see an increase in events and the state will increase restrictions for that area.

I think that was a very common sense approach and it has been VERY successful in OK. It was a conservative state working with a vital industry to come up with a great solution. Lib states want to just ban fracking out of hand, resulting in a loss of jobs and revenue, instead of working with the industry to reach a reasonable solution.

just my 2 cents.

cisgenderedAggie said:

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Fracking Karens

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. Great band Name

There's areas around McAllister Oklahoma where you're constantly mixing 18 wheeler loads of cedar fiber and cotton seed hulls just to keep circulation while drilling intermediate.

No idea where all the fluid goes, but that seems like a great place for all the states disposal wells lol

Zero tolerance rules will almost always work to the detriment of the overall group, unfortunately it's about the only concepts leftists can manage to wrap their heads around.

NormanAg said:

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We lived in OKC for 25 years and also had a lake house at Tenkiller Lake in far eastern OK.

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Re-injection of fluids is correct, not the fracking. Good info here and nothing to add other than how did a lake get that name.

It was named after a Cherokee Chief named Tenkiller.

Quote:

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A popular question asked by tourists is how Tenkiller Lake came by its unique name. In 1947, construction was begun on the Tenkiller Ferry Dam across the Illinois River. The lake was named after the Tenkillers, a prominent Cherokee family who owned land and operated a ferry service near the site where the dam now stands. Legend has it that during the "Trail of Tears" era, the Cherokee warrior was given his name by the soldiers and pioneers at Fort Gibson because of the 10 notches in his bow.

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Nice.