Evidence Doesn't Support Fracking As Cause Of Texas Earthquakes - Investors.com

Evidence Doesn't Support Fracking As Cause Of Texas Earthquakes 

Evidence Doesn't Support Fracking As Cause Of Texas Earthquakes

BY MERRILL MATTHEWS

01/27/2015 06:19 PM ET

Some cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area such as Denton have heard calls for bans on fracking. View Enlarged Image

A recent spate of earthquakes in the Dallas area, centered around the old Texas Stadium in Irving, has raised concerns that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the cause. Making that correlation may be understandable, but it's almost certainly wrong.
The good news is that the series of earthquakes has been relatively minor — with the largest ranging in magnitude between 2.5 and 3.6 — and any damage appears to be generally limited to wall and ceiling cracks in a few homes.
But when news reporters ask those homeowners and other Irving residents if they have any idea what might have caused the quakes, some suggest that it could be fracking — a decades-old process that forces water into underground shale formations, driving oil and natural gas out of the fissures to be extracted.
The reporters almost never follow up with facts, thus leaving the fracking speculation unchallenged.
Fortunately, seismologists are investigating the Irving quakes. They have pointed out that there is no active fracking nearby.
While there are two wells in the earthquake vicinity, one never produced anything and the other was shut down in 2013, according to Craig Pearson, a staff seismologist for the Texas Railroad Commission.
These days, fracking gets blamed for almost anything that happens out of the ordinary. However, independent scientific studies have been unable to detect a connection between fracking and earthquakes.
The "evidence" for a connection is generally limited to anecdotal assertions.
There is another possibility: waste water injection wells, which are used to dispose of the water-chemical mixture used in the fracking process. The suggestion is that the water lubricates the lithologic layers and helps them slip, causing a quake.
However, even for seismologists who think there could be a connection between earthquakes and injection wells, they point out that the impact is usually within six miles of the injection well site.
The injection well closest to the Irving epicenter is 10 miles away.
While earthquakes are not common in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, they have happened — especially over the past five years. And the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been studying them.
There was, for example, a magnitude 2 quake on Jan. 6, 2012, about midnight, located six miles north by northwest of Dallas and about 12 miles southwest of Plano — that is, around Irving — according to the USGS. (I was up that night and felt it).
It turns out that Dallas sits atop an ancient mountain range, the Ouachita Mountain system, whose subterranean roots extend through a good swath of south and north central Texas, sweeping up into Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi.

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/012715-736588-unusual-quakes-in-texas-do-not-show-signs-of-fracking-activity-cause.htm#ixzz3Q8QaNAdl
Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook