Tag Archives: earthquakes

Energy

Oklahoma Fracking Companies Could Face Earthquake Lawsuits

1 Comment

Last week, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that earthquake injury lawsuits against oil and gas companies could now be heard in district courts. Previously, the oil industry had been trying to avoid such court cases and asked for them to be heard only through the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.

The State’s highest court rejected the request, stating:

The Commission, although possessing many of the powers of a court of record, is without the authority to entertain a suit for damages.

The court was in no way ruling that earthquakes are caused by companies using hydraulic fracturing technology to extract oil and natural gas.

Instead, the opinion spoke only of which court was best suited to hear such claims in Oklahoma. This opinion upheld the longstanding tradition of allowing district courts exclusive jurisdiction over private tort actions.

A recent flurry of earthquakes in Oklahoma have placed the state at the center of the fracking debate. A recent study by the University of Oklahoma, Columbia University, and the U.S. Geological Survey reported potential links between wastewater injection, a practice often used for the disposal of water waste in fracking, and earthquakes. The study has been heavily disputed and many conclude the earthquakes are simply a manifestation of natural causes.

 

Energy, State and Local Government

Oklahoma Follows Texas to Prohibit Hydraulic Fracturing Bans

4 Comments

On Friday, May 30, 2015, Oklahoma became the second state to officially ban local bans on hydraulic fracturing. The bill prohibits bans on hydraulic fracturing, as well as other oil and gas drilling operations. The three-person Oklahoma Corporation Commission will now continue to act as the main regulator of oil and gas operations in the state.

Governor Mary Fallin said:

Corporate Commissioners are elected by the people of Oklahoma to regulate the oil and gas industry. They are best equipped to make decisions about drilling and its effect on seismic activity, the environment and other sensitive issues.

The bill was written in response to proposals to increase oil and gas drilling regulations in major cities and as an increasing number of Oklahomans become disgruntled with the mounting number of earthquakes. Sponsored by leaders in the Oklahoma House and Senate, the bill passed the House by a vote of 64-32 and the Senate by 33-13. Amendments to the original bill will still allow cities and municipalities to place “reasonable” restrictions on oil and gas operations, such as setbacks, noise, traffic and fencing regulations.

The bill comes at a time of great controversy within Oklahoma as the Oklahoma Geological Survey recently said increases in earthquakes were “very unlikely to represent a naturally occurring process.” In February, the U.S. Geological Survey published a paper written by Oklahoma Seismologic Austin Holland stating that the increase in seismic activity in Oklahoma was from human-induced activities.

Kim Hatfield, chairman of the regulatory committee at the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association (OIPA) responded:

This is something the Oklahoma Geological Survey, Oklahoma Corporation Commissions and OIPA have been working on for well over a year. We knew this was a possibility.

Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas producers have a proven history of developing the state’s oil and natural gas resources in a safe and effective manner.

 

Land Issues

Looking Under the Crust ― Seismic Activity, Fracking and Graphs

5 Comments

Texas has always been a battleground between skeptics and environmentalists, but a developing trend of seismic activity has also turned it into a promising research laboratory for scientists and seismologists.

Volcano Discovery, a group of scientists dedicated towards the global study of volcanoes and earthquakes alike published the following figures which the NCPA has reformatted without tampering or omissions of data:

quake freqency texas

Important disclaimers include:

  • the final apparent drop in seismic activity, which may simply be due to the fact that we are only halfway into January
  • an omission of point for November in 2013, for which there was no data
  • However, the most important fact uncovered, is that though this chart measured the frequency of the earthquakes, further analysis of data collection methods, times and earthquake locations has led us to believe that there is significant double-counting occurring in this data… Meaning that two or three different cities may have noted the same tremor, yet the data was recorded as multiple bouts of seismic activity.

Regardless of this skew, and the likelihood for overstatement in this data, it is difficult to refute the clear trend in this chart. Indeed, the Dallas Morning News states,

There is evidence that some central and eastern North America earthquakes have been triggered or caused by human activities that have altered the stress conditions in earth’s crust sufficiently to induce faulting.

According to the Dallas Morning News, these activities include what you would expect,

… impoundment of water behind dams, injection of fluid into the earth’s crust, extraction of fluid or gas, and removal of rock in mining or quarrying operations…

But even if these tremors are truly increasing in frequency due to fracking and fuel extraction, is it really a threat to Texas’ lives and infrastructure? There is no recent record of significant damage due to tremors in Oklahoma or Texas, what’s more many of these tremors are occurring in areas where the population density can be as low as five people per square mile… denoting a very rural or sparse suburban setting.

Six months of data from Volcano Discovery’s records were randomly selected and analyzed for changes in magnitude and depth of Texas earthquakes:

magnitude texas quakes

depth of texas quakes

Depth has decreased and magnitude has increased, however in assessing these results, we always must prioritize one of the most basic rules of statistics: Correlation is not causation. What’s more, a larger sample of months can give more definitive results. There is still much research to be done on the origin of these earthquakes, and not enough risk to human life and private/public capital given what we know, at least not enough to make drastic decisions set forth by some environmental groups.