A northeast Ohio well used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas drilling almost certainly caused a series of 11 minor quakes in the Youngstown area since last spring, a seismologist investigating the quakes said Monday.
Research is continuing on the now-shuttered injection well at Youngstown and seismic activity, but it might take a year for the wastewater-related rumblings in the earth to dissipate, said John Armbruster of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.
Brine wastewater dumped in wells comes from drilling operations, including the so-called fracking process to extract gas from underground shale that has been a source of concern among environmental groups and some property owners. Injection wells have also been suspected in quakes in Astabula in far northeast Ohio, and in Arkansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma, Armbruster said.
Read the rest at The Huffington Post
Ohio Earthquakes Caused By Drilling Wastewater Well, Experts Say
by Thomas J. Sheeran
6 comments:
fracking is out of paradigm
our dollar should be 2 x strong as Yen and therefore allow us to import more eco friendly oil, like the kind that flows out of the ground from middle east without hardship
iraq was a success right ? therefore we cannot use middle east terrorist nation stereotypes as an excuse to drill and frack our way into export puritanicalism
are the republicans saying that their policies in the Middle east were such a big failure that we have to drill here in such a catastrophically insane manner ?
The first Keystone pipeline which already runs over the aquifier in Nebraska was built with substandard steel pipe imported from India.
Maybe Keystone II is a bluffed attempt to rebuild without the same steel so they can tear down the first one.
Or maybe they'll just import more crappy pipe from India ?
Goog for Energy Secretary!
Franko for Secretary of Treasury and Nusimatic Certitude !
On a more somber note - Ohio sits on top of the New Madrid fault line which has been shown to be capable of delivering more or equivalent sized earthquakes as the San Andreas fault.
Remember the flooding in Ohio in the late 90's ?
I joked to my NASA colleagues that the rain was needed to lubricate the New Madrid fault line and keep it gelled.
Of course they did not know what the New Madrid Fault line was.
Ringing bells in Boston churches and swaying coastal Carolina lighthouses is what the New Madrid is capable of doing ...
Wow. Didn't realize that Goog. I wonder if Ohioans and neighboring states do. We are close to a fault here in Iowa, too, and it's not far from a nuclear plant.
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