Are Arkansas' Natural Gas Injection Wells Causing Earthquakes?

Are Arkansas' Natural Gas Injection Wells Causing Earthquakes?

abcnews.go.com

Hundreds of small and medium-scale earthquakes have been rattling the area around Guy, Ark., and residents say wastewater injection wells being drilled in their area are to blame.

"It gives new meaning to the term 'rock your world,'" said resident Johnny Passmore. "There is no foundation. You are just shaking and you can't go anywhere because it's shaking."

(visit the link for the full news article)

We are talking Arkansas and not California here. The people say there is something rocking their world and they have an idea about what it is.

Josh Fox, the director of the Oscar-nominated documentary, "Gasland," questioned the industry's claims of natural gas as a clean energy source. His film is critical of a drilling method called hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as "fracking," where fluid is injected into rock, breaking it to release natural gas.

We were just discussing "fracking" in these forums in the past few days. Only then the topic was about dumping carcinogens into the wells. www.abovetopsecret.com... Now it seems to be a different matter. Can this practice really cause earthquakes? Is "fracking" really fraught with problems or is it just poorly understood? And poorly understood by whom?

"We do not agree with the conclusions," said Chesapeake Energy spokesman Danny Games in a recent television interview. "We believe there is a lot of natural seismicity in this area and there's a lot more sub-surface data, and science and facts that need to be brought to bear."

There are hearing scheduled to discuss this matter. Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission says they have to side with public safety, maybe in a way science doesn't fully support. but the people calim the ground just rolls and rolls giving off loud thunder claps. They say it is just too much a coincidence.

Since the two injection wells were shut down in March, the earthquakes have not completed stopped in Arkansas. But Scott Ausbrooks, a geologist with the Arkansas Geological Survey and a lead detective on the case, said they have tapered off dramatically.

The people say they feel like they are living on a roller coaster. Could their assumptions be correct?

abcnews.go.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Originally posted by Erongaricuaro
The people say they feel like they are living on a roller coaster. Could their assumptions be correct?

Well all you have to do is look at USGS history for the region. If there has never been a series like this before the fracking... and they are drastically tapering off when they stopped...

Seem like their assumptions may be correct. Pumping things into and out of the ground has consequences

Long Beach Ca. sank 26 feet from pumping oil out until they pumped sea water back in...

In the late 1930s, oil was discovered under Long Beach harbor. Its production helped Long Beach recover from the Depression and provided revenue to support expansion and modernization of the harbor as well as enriching individuals who owned land in the area. As a result when land near the oil field began to sink, those who were profiting from pumping the oil out from under the land resisted any suggestion that there could be a link between oil production and subsidence. They hired experts to defend their position. As the subsidence continued, those whose property was damaged by the sinking, but who were not benefiting from the oil production, hired experts to determine what was really causing the sinking.

While the controversy continued, the land kept sinking. It sunk like a big bowl and the bottom of the bowl was more than 25 feet below its previous elevation. Some warned that if the sinking continued, the ocean might inundate the city. The Navy Shipyard was near the bottom of the bowl and the Navy didn't own the mineral rights of the Shipyard so they were suffering damage but receiving no benefit so in 1958 the Navy sued all of the oil operators. Although the suit was never litigated or settled, it helped to convince many people that a proposed solution, pumping water into the fault blocks where the oil had been taken out, should be implemented. And that solution stopped the sinking.

salticid.nmc.csulb.edu...

San Joaquin Valley, California sank 30 feet from pumping out water from under the ground... the WHOLE VALLEY

Subsidence due to compaction of fine-grained sediments began in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1920's and in the Sacramento Valley in the 1950's. The area most affected has been in the southern and western parts of the San Joaquin Valley (fig. 93). Approximately one-half of the valley, or about 5,200 square miles, had subsided at least 1 foot by 1977; the total volume of subsidence was greater than 17 million acre-feet. The land surface declined nearly 30 feet from the 1920's to the late 1970's in an area southwest of Mendota (fig. 94). Importation of surface water and reduction in ground-water withdrawals during the 1970's slowed or stopped the decline of ground-water levels. In many cases, this allowed recovery to pre-1960's water levels and prevented further land subsidence.

www.thelivingmoon.com...

reply to post by Erongaricuaro


Check out my Thread on Oil+Lava and Water being removed helping to cause earthquakes and having a symbiosis along with humans making it so we feed the earth life and it feeds us life. seems like a few of you would like it.

It definitely is, just ask Indonesia what fracking has done to their country.

Villagers near Sidoarjo noticed a mud volcano beginning to erupt at 5 a.m. local time May 29, 2006. It was about 500 feet from a local gas-exploration well. Every day since then, the Lusi mud volcano has pumped out 100,000 tons of mud, or enough to fill 60 Olympic-size swimming pools. It has now covered an area of almost 3 square miles to a depth of 65 feet. Thirty thousand people have been displaced, and scientific evidence is mounting that the company drilling the well caused the volcano. “The disaster was caused by pulling the drill string and drill bit out of the hole while the hole was unstable,” said Richard Davies, director of the Durham Energy Institute and co-author of a new paper in the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology, in a press release. “This triggered a very large ‘kick’ in the well, where there is a large influx of water and gas from surrounding rock formations that could not be controlled.”

Link to full story and pics


Then there is Queensland where an earthquake just occurred in a very unusual location. Queensland sits on a massive amount of coal seam gas and the mining industry is taking over. If you want to see something scary have a look at this interactive map and play around with it. Click on a few different mining options on the left and you'll see the entire state is being torn up. Disgusting!!

Queensland Mining Map

Originally posted by zorgon

Well all you have to do is look at USGS history for the region. If there has never been a series like this before the fracking... and they are drastically tapering off when they stopped...

This is absolutely correct. Anyone can download the USGS data. I downloaded it going back 10 years and all the suspicious activity started in October 2009 with a lull until a major pickup in activity in October 2010. The coordinates available put the earthquake activity right in the location of the wells. How much more "proof" does one need?

I live approximately 4 miles as the crow flies from "ground zero" where most of the epicenters are located. The experience with the quakes are always the same. There is a loud rumble that increases in intensity and then a shaking "boom" like something just hit your house. I have a rather large 3 story house. During the quakes that were over 3.5, it felt as if someone just tilted my house up and then laid it back down. The walls & ceilings were making popping & cracking noises. Chandelier would sway. They are very short in duration and we have seen no damage...yet....but others who live closer have had worse luck. There have been pictures on the local news of people with cracked walls and ceilings.

The kids have started having "earthquake drills" at school on a routine basis. That has never happened before in this area. Of course, the local officials are walking a tightrope. They don't want to run off the gas companies in the area because of how much they contribute to the local economy.

We do have an ongoing thread here on ATS regarding the fracking in Arkansas and the damage it is doing. We even have "Susan Frey", the resident featured in the Nightline news story, as an active ATS member and contributor in the thread.

ATS Thread - Earthquake Swarm In Arkansas Intensifies...

"Hey guys let's keep #ing with mother nature." All the while we don't even have the proper technology to control the forces of nature yet. I'm down here in Memphis. Those assholes are going to kill us all over here.

Originally posted by UtahRosebud
We do have an ongoing thread here on ATS regarding the fracking in Arkansas and the damage it is doing.

You mean this one?
"Earthquake Swarm in Arkansas Intensifies. Memphis, Tennessee could be epicenter for the next big one"

Kinda another fear mongering title, dontcha think?

METHANE

Early in the year there were a lot of weird animal, fish and bird deaths... mostly the media and 'experts' had no clue, though some did suspect methane releases from the earth as a cause (methane in water will rob the oxygen so fish suffocate)

In the Gulf Oil spill disaster there was one odd thing... Yes it was a man made accident, but during the leakage, there was an extraordinary release of methane along with the spill..

Methane in Gulf "astonishingly high": U.S. scientist

(Reuters) - As much as 1 million times the normal level of methane gas has been found in some regions near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, enough to potentially deplete oxygen and create a dead zone, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday.

www.reuters.com...

Though some oil is indeed made by fossil plants and animals, I believe most of it, and especially methane, is created deep withing the earth, a theory gathering support in main stream science as they are discovering oil wells have been refilling themselves.

With all this release of methane from beneath the earth's crust, the pressure on the mantle has to change as well.

Now we saw a fish kill of Redondo Beach in California...

Redondo Beach fish die-off: Tests show oxygen levels at 'almost zero'
latimesblogs.latimes.com...



So do we have a source of Methane that coincides with this massive kill?

Well yes... a huge Mud Volcano off Redondo Beach

Methane Hydrate
In addition to naturally occurring oil and gas seeps in the Santa Barbara Channel, north of Los Angeles, methane and hydrogen sulfide gases are actively discharging at the crest of a mud volcano only 24 kilometers west-southwest of Redondo Beach, California. The mud volcano is 30m high and its top is about the size of a football field. It formed as gas-charged sediment from depth squeezed up to the sea floor, probably along an active fault at the edge of the offshore Santa Monica Basin. The top of the mud volcano is about 800m below the sea surface, and at this depth the water pressure is 80 times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. As a result, water and methane gas at this pressure "freezes" to form what is termed a methane hydrate. The hydrate ice becomes incorporated in the surrounding ocean-floor sediment. The photo of a cross-section of a sediment core (see below) reveals the rapidly disassociating chunk of hydrate (methane ice).

walrus.wr.usgs.gov...



The fish kill was March 8, 2011. Shortly after the fish kill a few miles away at the Gulf of California there were a series of quakes:

18-MAR-2011 01:44:12 25.42 -109.71 4.5 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
17-MAR-2011 10:52:42 25.32 -109.70 4.2 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
14-MAR-2011 01:43:49 25.44 -109.66 4.0 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
13-MAR-2011 16:07:34 25.29 -109.75 4.6 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
13-MAR-2011 05:54:25 25.28 -110.08 4.0 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
13-MAR-2011 02:50:11 25.44 -109.76 4.6 24.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 21:58:39 25.31 -109.84 4.5 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 20:16:58 25.42 -109.73 4.3 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 17:54:18 25.51 -109.79 4.7 14.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 17:13:01 25.48 -109.72 5.1 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 14:11:04 25.40 -109.65 5.3 12.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 13:26:02 25.35 -109.93 5.5 17.6 GULF OF CALIFORNIA
12-MAR-2011 12:03:42 25.26 -109.96 4.4 10.0 GULF OF CALIFORNIA

More Disasters from Mankinds Drilling for oil

Mud Volcano Was Man-Made, New Evidence Confirms
February 11, 2010

A new analysis shows that a deadly mud volcano in Indonesia may not have been a natural disaster after all. The research lends weight to the controversial theory that the volcano was caused by humans.

Villagers near Sidoarjo noticed a mud volcano beginning to erupt at 5 a.m. local time May 29, 2006. It was about 500 feet from a local gas-exploration well. Every day since then, the Lusi mud volcano has pumped out 100,000 tons of mud, or enough to fill 60 Olympic-size swimming pools. It has now covered an area of almost 3 square miles to a depth of 65 feet. Thirty thousand people have been displaced, and scientific evidence is mounting that the company drilling the well caused the volcano.

“The disaster was caused by pulling the drill string and drill bit out of the hole while the hole was unstable,” said Richard Davies, director of the Durham Energy Institute and co-author of a new paper in the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology, in a press release. “This triggered a very large ‘kick’ in the well, where there is a large influx of water and gas from surrounding rock formations that could not be controlled.”

www.wired.com...




Lake Peigneur sinkhole disaster

No description required seeing is believing



Now I hear that some scientists are considering drilling a hole into the magma bubble at Yellowstone...

Ummm BAD IDEA

Those shallow quakes in AK sure do look like they're directly related to the frac'ing. I find the deeper quakes to be even more concerning as they are indicative of an indirect effect going deeper - perhaps much deeper pressure being relieved by the shallow frac'ing procedure - materials working their way up causing much more extensive crust changes than just the few KM apparent in the shallow quakes.

Geothermal Energy Project May Have Caused an Earthquake

The geothermal issue above is likely due to just changing the energy levels, and thus altering the heat flow and thereto crust pressures. How much more of an effect would the actual displacement of physical materials be?

And like that Cracking An Eggshell thread I wonder what sort of immense change that billion gallons of oil+ spewing from deep beneath the ocean floor has caused, for nothing was put back in its place.

.

reply to post by Erongaricuaro
Just a note to say that although there has been fracking in this area, and there might be a possible connection, we think that the entire North American Plate Craton may be uplifting, and that the earthquakes that this area is experiencing may have more to do with that than anything else. There are many more things that are happening that indicate uplift around the plate, a huge increase in sink holes in all the states that are not part of the North American Plate, unusual and non local sounds that indicate deformation around the edge of the North American Plate due to a high energy release into the atmosphere and other signs of deformation such as mountain ranges sinking and the valley in front of them uplifiting (Tetons). The behavior that is happening in Guy Greenbrier area is consistent with a rift system experiencing uplift. The government knows about this and has been working hard to get ready. I am not a fan of fracking, and they may have sped up a few things, but this is much more than fracking. There has been a moratorium on fracking in this area for about a couple of months.

Just a note to let you know, that Arkansas thread is a serious discussion that has been ongoing for months.
Also it's gotten so involved it has its own bibliography thread so folks reading the thread can see all the referenced material and not disrupt the discussion. Without having to read the 235 pages to get up to speed on previous topics already covered. Here's the link to the bibs...www.abovetopsecret.com...

Hope this helps and you come over and join us, and check out our on going work.
Also here are some helicorders for the AR area folkworm.ceri.memphis.edu... Watch that one, some of them have sensitivities turn up way too much. Here's another good one we use www.geology.ar.gov... Wooly Hollow is close to the area we watch near Guy AR.

Don't discount based on the fact you think a title is inflammatory or fear mongering. It's not. Like ATS mission statement Deny Ignorance. Keep an open mind and be prepared to learn what it is you are discussing before inserting foot in mouth. Hope to see y'all over there.

But more importantly, if you have information to share and references that support this discussion please please join the thread, all contributions and reference material appreciated. We have gotten MSM attention, which have been using our Bibliograhy for resources, so come by and share.

Originally posted by SunflowerStar
Don't discount based on the fact you think a title is inflammatory or fear mongering. It's not.

"Memphis, Tennessee could be epicenter for the next big one"

Based on what scientific data? Thread is over 200 pages, can you point to me proof that Memphis is the target of 'the next big one?"

reply to post by SunflowerStar


Thanks for an invite....


As a local resident who is very close to the matter at hand, I'm interested in the thread. However, I detest when threads get so long like that. It makes it hard to have meaningful discussion to those people who weren't involved in the thread right from the beginning because opinions/statements/facts/myths/misstatements are bound to be repeated. I know its probably a personal thing. I just prefer smaller threads....

Originally posted by CIAGypsy
Thanks for an invite....

yeah I know what you mean Got chewed out for not reading the whole thing before making a post after being asked to go there.
:shk:

Was told my posts had already been covered... so I did an ATS search of that thread and NADA

I kinda figure if someone is invited in asking a question that should be at the tip of the tongue would be safe