The DFW area has recorded 20 minor earthquakes in the last year or two and the small town of Cleburne Tx. had 7 small quakes in a months time over the spring and summer. Cleburne is in Johnson county and the most heavily drilled area in the Barnett Shale. They hired SMU to investigate.
Until this started there had never been an earthquake in the area before.
Similarly, some geophysicists with the United States Geological Survey are intrigued by the prevalence of natural gas drilling near the North Texas earthquakes. USGS research geologist Russell Wheeler recalled a situation in the 1960s when the U.S. Army was trying to get rid of some liquid toxic waste on the north side of Denver. The Army drilled a couple miles into the earth and began pumping the fluid in, but the process was halted when earthquakes resulted, he says.link
Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the agency’s National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., wanted to know when natural gas drilling started in the DFW area.
Told the boom began in 2001 and has accelerated in the past two years, Caruso said, “That’s all I’m going to say about that.”
Is it related to the earthquakes? “I’m not going there,” he said, and suggested looking up “induced seismicity.”
