Bill Moyers - A series of 77 earthquakes in Ohio — including one strong enough to be felt by humans — was caused by the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, scientists claimed in research published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
Small earthquakes have been attributed to fracking in Ohio before. But those earthquakes were all too small to be felt. [The] study is the first time scientists have attributed a larger earthquake to fracking, the process of injecting high-pressure water, sand and chemicals underground to crack shale rock and let gas flow out more easily.
The scientists, from the University of Miami, identified 77 earthquakes of varying size in the Poland Township of Ohio, all occurring between March 4 and March 12 and all located near a group of oil and gas wells. The quakes ranged between magnitudes of 1.0 and 3.0, but the local community reportedly only felt one, a magnitude 3.0 on March 10.
According to study co-author Robert Skoumal, that magnitude 3.0 quake was “one the largest earthquakes ever induced by hydraulic fracturing in the United States.”
To make his determination, Skoumal and his colleagues compared the series of earthquakes to reports that showed the timing of fracking at those oil and gas wells, all operated by Hilcorp Energy. They found the earthquakes “coincided temporally and spatially with hydraulic fracturing at specific stages of the stimulation,” the BSSA said in a press release.
The research doesn’t prove that all fracking causes earthquakes, but it does suggest that fracking occurring near fault lines has the potential to cause them. The BSSA noted that the 77 Ohio quakes occurred along one fault line within .06 miles of the well sites, and that fracking occurring at other nearby wells not near that fault line produced no seismicity.
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