http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/us/oklahoma-acknowledges-wastewater-from-oil-and-gas-wells-as-major-cause-of-quakes.html
[image and links in on-line article]
Oklahoma Recognizes Role of Drilling in Earthquakes
By MICHAEL WINESAPRIL 21, 2015
Abandoning years of official skepticism, Oklahoma’s government on
Tuesday embraced a scientific consensus that earthquakes rocking the
state are largely caused by the underground disposal of billions of
barrels of wastewater from oil and gas wells.
The state’s energy and environment cabinet introduced a website
detailing the evidence behind that conclusion Tuesday, including links
to expert studies of Oklahoma’s quakes. The site includes an interactive
map that plots not only earthquake locations, but also the sites of more
than 3,000 active wastewater-injection wells.
The website coincided with a statement by the state-run Oklahoma
Geological Survey that it “considers it very likely” that wastewater
wells are causing the majority of the state’s earthquakes.
The statement noted that the most intense seismic activity “is occurring
over a large area, about 15 percent of the area of Oklahoma, that has
experienced significant increase in wastewater disposal volumes over the
last several years.”
The statement and the website’s acknowledgment amount to a turnabout for
a state government that has long played down the connection between
earthquakes and an oil and gas industry that is Oklahoma’s economic
linchpin.
As recently as last fall, Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, indicated that
suggestions of a relationship between oil and gas activity and
seismicity were speculation, and that more study was needed.
In a news release issued Tuesday, Ms. Fallin called the Geological
Survey’s endorsement of that relationship significant, and said the
state was dealing with the problem.
“Oklahoma state agencies already are taking action to address this issue
and protect homeowners,” she said in a statement.
Tuesday’s actions met a mixed response from the oil and gas industry and
the governor’s critics. The Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association disputed
the Geological Survey’s conclusions, saying in a statement that further
study of the state’s quakes remained necessary.
“There may be a link between earthquakes and disposal wells,” the
group’s president, Chad Warmington, said in the statement, “but we —
industry, regulators, researchers, lawmakers or state residents — still
don’t know enough about how wastewater injection impacts Oklahoma’s
underground faults.”
Nor is there any evidence that halting wastewater injection would slow
or stop the earthquakes, he said.
One of the most prominent advocates of stronger action on the earthquake
issue, State Representative Cory Williams, a Democrat, said he had been
pleasantly surprised by the change in what he called the state’s “head
in the sand” approach to the quake problem.
But Mr. Williams, from earthquake-rattled Stillwater, criticized
officials for failing to announce further steps to actually curtail the
tremors.
Separately, he called on Tuesday for the state to halt wastewater
disposal in a 16-county section of central and north-central Oklahoma
that the Geological Survey has identified as posing the highest seismic
risk.
“I want a moratorium and then an action plan,” he said. “The only way to
protect the public is to say, ‘We’re done for now.’ ”
Oklahoma oil and gas regulators have taken steps to ensure that newly
drilled disposal wells do not create seismic risks. But they say they
have no authority to impose a moratorium, and only limited powers to
address the existing wells that are behind the increase in tremors.
Neither the governor nor the Legislature has pushed to increase their
powers.
Ms. Fallin has also approved a directive from state regulators that
Oklahoma insurance agents take courses in earthquake coverage. But few
residents had coverage before the quakes began escalating in 2010, and
policies have become increasingly restrictive as the pace of tremors has
quickened. Some homeowners with significant damage have filed lawsuits
seeking to recover repair costs from oil and gas operators.
In past decades, Oklahomans experienced only about one and a half
earthquakes exceeding magnitude 3.0 in an average year. But since a boom
in oil and gas exploration began in the mid-2000s, that number has
mushroomed. The state recorded 585 quakes of 3.0 or greater last year,
more than any state except Alaska, and is on course to register more
than 900 such tremors this year.
Most of the quakes result in little more than cracked plaster and
driveways, but residents in quake zones say the cumulative damage — to
their property and to their nerves — is far greater.
Larger quakes have also occurred. A series of shocks in 2011 exceeding
magnitude 5.0 caused millions of dollars in damage. Some seismologists
have warned that the state is risking larger and more damaging quakes
unless it acts to reduce the number of tremors.
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