Feeling the Pressure

Oklahoma is dust bowl, tornado country. And Oklahoma City and environs are the focal point for American twisters: “The rotating mix of air currents forms giant supercell thunderstorms that tend to breed tornados, and Oklahoma City appears to be smack dab in the middle of it. The local terrain certainly helps—there aren’t many large bodies of water nor are there mountainous regions in the area that can complicate tornado formation. Large rivers, great lakes or proximity to the ocean can potentially cool warm air, which may ease the severity of thunderstorms that form downwind of these bodies of water.” mentalfloss.com. This central region has had 149 major tornados (untold number of little ones) since 1890, and the vision of dark clouds spinning above sends shudders down the spines of residents everywhere.

But aside from twisters, heavy rains, ice and snow, Oklahoma residents have been grateful that they haven’t had to worry about hurricanes and… well, earthquakes. Earthquakes? Hmmmm? Maybe that complacency is not well-placed anymore. The process of extracting pockets of oil and gas from less accessible fissures deep within the earth’s crust – hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and the resulting disposal wells that are needed to deal with the resulting effluents – is all about using pressure to make the earth mankind’s resource. And pressure underground carries risks.

For the most part, the pressure from the injection of high pressure, chemically-treated water to force out the natural gas and oil generally only causes micro-quakes as the earth opens those hidden pockets of wealth to the geologists managing the process. But if there are hidden faults down there… or not too far down the road, what fracking might not trigger, the use of high pressure to inject the wastewater back down into the earth is less controlled. Water simply flows where it can, responding to gravity and pressure as it migrates farther and farther from the site where it was originally injected. When that pressurized water, which also has a lubricating effect that helps geologic plates slide more easily, hits an inconveniently-situated fault… boom! Earthquake.

A 4.5 (Richter Scale) quake hit the area on December 7^th, with more than a few local scientists pretty much linking the event to disposal wells that followed fracking crews extracting natural gas from nearby underground fissures. “Oklahoma has never been known as earthquake country, with a yearly average of about 50 tremors, almost all of them minor. But in the past three years, the state has had thousands of quakes. This year has been the most active, with more than 2,600 so far, including 87 [in the first week of December].

“While most have been too slight to be felt, some, like the quake on [December 7^th] and a smaller one in November that cracked a bathroom wall in [Oklahoma City resident, Mary Catherine] Sexton’s house, have been sensed over a wide area and caused damage. In 2011, a magnitude 5.6 quake — the biggest ever recorded in the state — injured two people and severely damaged more than a dozen homes, some beyond repair.

“State officials say they are concerned, and residents accustomed to tornadoes and hail are now talking about buying earthquake insurance… ‘I’m scared there’s going to be a bigger one,’ Ms. Sexton said[, adding…] ‘People are fed up with the earthquakes…Our kids are scared. We’re scared.’

“Just as unsettling in a state where more than 340,000 jobs are tied to the oil and gas industry is what scientists say may be causing many of the quakes: the widespread industry practice of disposing of billions of gallons of wastewater that is produced along with oil and gas, by injecting it under pressure into wells that reach permeable rock formations.” New York Times, December 12^th. Wastewater is generated in massive amounts, and transporting it away by truck has proven cost-prohibitive. Except, perhaps those extra costs have to become a necessary part of the process of making us “energy independent.”

Who pays for the injuries and even the potential loss of life? The damage to infrastructure, structures and lost business? Are these “natural disasters” or man-made that should be paid for – if allowed at all – by the perpetrators? It’s not a theory anymore, so we really have to deal with the cost and damage that these techniques wreak upon our own citizens.

Ah, but the frackers are tell us a possible different story as to causation. “In Texas, some earthquakes have been connected to the industry practice of ‘water flooding,’ increasing the yield of older oil wells by pumping water into nearby wells to force the oil out, said Cliff Frohlich, a University of Texas scientist. In other cases, Dr. Frohlich said, just the extraction of oil and gas from a long-producing field has been seen to induce quakes…

“[And s]till, it is difficult to show a definitive link between a group of quakes and nearby disposal wells, and [seismologist Dr. Austin] Holland [with the Oklahoma Geological Survey] thinks there may be other explanations for some of the recent quakes, including the largest one, which occurred on a known fault line about 50 miles east of Oklahoma City.

“Oklahoma does have natural seismic activity, he noted, and has had a few powerful quakes in the past, including one with a magnitude of 5.5 in 1952 and one estimated at about a magnitude of 7 that the geological record shows occurred 1,300 years ago. He also thinks changes in the water level of a large nearby lake may be responsible for some of the quakes around Oklahoma City, although he says this is not the most likely explanation… The swarm of quakes has state regulators concerned, but cautious.” NY Times.

But even Dr. Holland is concern about disposal wells. Man-messing-with-nature can have some very nasty consequences. The weight of water behind a new dam in Sichuan Province (China) is another kind of man-made environmental meddling that is generally credited for having triggered the 2008 quake that killed 80 thousand people. What other unintended consequences will we see from our latest efforts to extract climate-changing fossil fuels?

I’m Peter Dekom, and environmental connectivity should be a whole lot more obvious to those messing with nature than it is!