Fracking tests near Blackpool 'likely cause' of tremors

Fracking tests near Blackpool 'likely cause' of tremors

www.bbc.co.uk

It is "highly probable" that shale gas test drilling triggered earth tremors in Lancashire, a study has found.

But the report, commissioned by energy firm Cuadrilla, also said the quakes were due to an "unusual combination of geology at the well site".

It said conditions which caused the minor earthquakes were "unlikely to occur again".

Protesters against fracking, a gas extraction method, said the report "did not inspire confidence".

Six protesters from campaign group Frack Off climbed a drilling rig at one of Cuadrilla's test drilling sites in Hesketh Bank, near Southpor

(visit the link for the full news article)

I hope this makes them stop Fracking all over
with no regard to the environment.
they are poisoning the planet.
and now they have proof they cause earth quakes.

I bet they are told to say it is ok to Frack!
to much money involved to let this get belived.

Can someone who knows about fracking compare
the fracking with earth tremors and earth quacks please.


www.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by buddha


You would think with all the disasters caused by major Companies on this planet, they would learn by their mistakes. But as per usual, deny ability, comes into play. Just by luck commonsense has prevailed or else them continuing to drill, could have had severe consequences for the Blackpool area.

reply to post by buddha


Fracking itself doesn't do any major harm.. But it can cause large consequences.

I will try to describe how fracking works and what could be released by it.

Fracking is the process of pumping large quantities of water (easily about 200.000 m³) into a deep well to break the basement rocks in 3.000 m or deeper open to allow liquids like hydrocarbons or water to flow with a higher rate to the wells input.

The problem is that there is now a large quantity of water (the water which was pumped into the rocks for fracking) in areas where there could be a clash of varying geological layers which could be wedged.
An example is the earthquake in Basel (Swiss) in 2006, likely triggered by a well for geothermal waters which was in the process of being fracked. Basel is a town which is routinely shaken by a quite powerful quake every 300 years - which was overdue for some time, the last big one (M 5.6) in the year 1650.

So the water might have worked as a lubricant, greasing both layers and finally releasing their stored energies.
Link to wikipedia-article

OK then.....

"...unusual combination of geology at the well site".

What does that mean? Combination of what?

I can only suppose that people involved with drilling into the Earth for a living actually confer with geologists before engaging in these activities? I would have expected the local community to have had a say in this (I don't know anything about UK civics).

Fracking is the local remedy for generating revenue from previously unprofitable 'fossil' fuel deposits. So, is there an actuarial table out there that says "we will make so much money that the danger doesn't matter?" Or is this just more of the standard "exploit now... worry later" approach to commerce?

fracking in the UK should be banned untill the morcabe bay and north sea reserves become uneconomical to exploit

If Blackpool were to crumble and burn it wouldn't be the worst thing - that place is out of control with drugs, violence and crime now. I used to love going out in Blackpool when I was younger, now you're lucky if you make it home in one piece!!

I don't think the minor quakes should be regarded as that much of an issue to be honest, I think the worst damage it did was to cause a cup to fall off a shelf

Originally posted by Maxmars
OK then.....

"...unusual combination of geology at the well site".

What does that mean? Combination of what?

I can only suppose that people involved with drilling into the Earth for a living actually confer with geologists before engaging in these activities? I would have expected the local community to have had a say in this (I don't know anything about UK civics).

Fracking is the local remedy for generating revenue from previously unprofitable 'fossil' fuel deposits. So, is there an actuarial table out there that says "we will make so much money that the danger doesn't matter?" Or is this just more of the standard "exploit now... worry later" approach to commerce?

"unsual" could mean just anything besides plain, boring silicates (sands). There is a saying, I will try to translate it: "Vor der Hacke ist es dunkel", meaning that you don't know EXACTLY what you will find in the next meters of your drilling. Maybe granite, maybe hydrocarbons.
Usually, the drilling company will rely on seismic examinations, which do show the geological layers. But the resolution of this data is getting more and more coarse the deeper you drill - simply caused by the way the data was attained.

Then there is the problem of steering - a drilling head curls in a large spiral because of the high tension forces in its 3.000 m long steel tube, which is rotated by a rotary drive on the surface. You caaaan steer it using high-tech-drilling machines, but if you want it quick and dirty (and cheaper, of course) you might just take a bearing of "straight as possible downwards!"...

Of course, you WILL see a wedge of layers in your seismic data, these cleats are clearly visible even for nonspecialists. But this wedge could also conceal a deposit of hydrocarbons amounting to billions of dollars...

reply to post by ManFromEurope


Thank you for that explanation. It helps to understand how they can get a surprise like this. Hopefully one day they will explain the unusual circumstances that give rise to unexpected seismic disturbances like this one...

reply to post by ManFromEurope


Thanks for the explanation.
But I woudln't think 200 tonnes of water to break the basement rocks will
cause tremors as the water will absorb the pressure disturbances caused
by any impact loading.

Cant posibly be true - it is in the MSM.

Most likely they are digging undeerground bunkers for elite to escape the upcoming social unrest.

reply to post by Angelic Resurrection


The water will dissipate into long, very long clefts - usually when they frack, the resulting cracks are kilometers in length, so the water will just be dispersed over a large area with thousands of squaremeters in rock-surface.

As I said, the scientists in Basel are quite sure that fracking caused the (ML 3.4) quake in 2006 by greasing interlocked/wedged rock layers which would otherwise stay wedged for maybe another 100 years. But as they were greased, they detached itself and the stored strain-energy was set free to cause that quake.

The water itself did nothing, fracking some clefts itself is only monitorable by seismic devices because the resulting tremors of the process are too insignificant for humans to sense.

reply to post by Maxmars


Here you go: Seismic Report

Summary: "
- The Preese Hall-1 well encountered a pre-existing critically stressed fault
- The fault was transmissible so it accepted large quantities of fluid
- The fault was brittle enough to fail seismically
- The repeated seismicity was most likely induced by repeated direct injection of fluid into the same fault zone
- The strongest events took place around ten hours after the injection because the pressure spread out over a larger area
- It is unlikely that the actual opening of the hydraulic fractures induced the seismic events because there is a delay of many hours between the injection of fluid and the strongest seismic event. Fluid pressure on the fault, however, has a natural time scale which fits with the observed delay.
- The chance of any one of these factors occurring is small, therefore the probability of a repeat occurrence of a fracture-induced"

So there was a fault, it wasn't detected by seismic (which can happen if there is only a small offset between the layers) and it has released its energy. Sounds plausible to me.

I love the fact that the local protest group have called themselves "Frack Off".

Must have alot of Battlestar Galactica fans up in Blackpool.



Peace

Rock Ape

reply to post by Rock Ape


That would be cool. I do have to go and buy my BSG outfit if that is the case.

I loved BSG when it was on the air.