Ohio stiffens regulations after concluding that fracking caused earthquakes

Ohio stiffens regulations after concluding that fracking caused earthquakes


It looks like regulators in Ohio are convinced !!

They have some new tough regulations for the fracking doers.

Sounds like fracking does cause earthquakes !!


Friday, March 9, 2012 18:31 EST -- The Raw Story

Ohio state regulators announced tough new regulations on Friday after concluding that the injection of wastewater underground as part of the controversial gas-drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” had almost certainly caused a dozen earthquakes near one well.

The regulations will require well operators to supply extensive geological data before requesting a new drill site, avoid certain rock formations, and keep track of pressure, volume, and the chemical makeup of all drilling water using state-of-the-art technology.

Investigators pointed to “a number of coincidental circumstances” connecting the quakes in northeast Ohio, which began in March 2011 and continued to the end of the year, with a well which had begun operation three months earlier. They also noted the presence of a fault in the rocks that was identified only after drilling began.

What a fracking coincidence !

“Our evidence strongly suggests that the injection fluid lubricated a previously unmapped fault and contributed to seismic activity,” a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources explained. “It was an unfortunate situation, and the operator drilled the well to specifications and operated within all permitted levels.”

Yay

+1 for my state

reply to post by xuenchen


Oh yeah, fracking causes earthquakes. So do a bunch of other human activities. Hopefully we can put on the brakes before it's too late.

reply to post by xuenchen




Excellent thread and topic. Fracking should be stopped before is is slipped under the radar like a bad drug passed by the FDA. Fracking also contaminates the water supply. In upstate NY which used to be known for pure clean drinking water, state land and parks made largely of shale have been sold and drilled for fracking. I wouldn't be so quick to drink anything down hill from a fracking location. Thank Cheney for giving the go-ahead on this while he was in office, promoting his own vested interest - fracking Halliburton. Somebody should sue him in a civil case for abuse of power.

I work in the oil and gas industry. Specifically I service and repair gas and oil wells. Fracking isn't generally the problem. Its the disposal of produced fluids. The injection wells that are used to dispose of the fluid are fairly shallow and operate by pumping the fluids into a zone under ground. The zone is determined by path of least resistance. Some disposal wells pump thousands of barrels a day into this zone. Side note: Old gas wells produce fluids as do new wells. Where I live and work in Arkansas we still frac to produce gas Wells. The only difference is where we dispose of the fluids. I was involved in the cementing and plugging the disposal wells here. Since the plugging the earthquakes have become almost non existent. Kept alot of water out of the wrong places. Water weight can cause alot of problems. Check into Scott Owen and his OGRE theories....

reply to post by xuenchen


Little , tiny Ohio earthquakes perhaps are being caused by fracking.
How many windows have been broken, or sidewalks cracked.... answer=none.

You would have to frack the entire eastern half of the USA to get an earthquake that would be assigned a color on the USGS quake map. People cannot cause big earthquakes, period.

This self righteously authenticated news shows how people in state government know so so little about so much

Those that do know, realize that any time you relieve pressure from a place in the earth, then the ground is going to creak a little. It happens when you take the oil out of reserves, and people in Texas know this ... a few ground trembles... big deal. Stupid Ohio winocrats that for years wondered why dead fish kept washing up on lake Erie shores, and came to the 'realization' years afterwards that it was because they were dumping the collective sewage of Cleveland 20 miles out into the middle of the lake, untreated.

If you want to stiffen something, how about the requirements of putting people in Ohio government in office.

reply to post by charlyv


Well said... The earthquakes we were having here in AR were nothing to cause any damage. They did diminish substantially after the state required us to plug the injection wells. But we do live on the New Madrid fault so the little tremors we were experiencing may have been preventing the pressure from building up to produce the "big one".

This is almost as bad as telling someone we are going to get a rain storm because a plane flew over us today!!

The Utica gas in Ohio is going to bring that place more money than they could have imagined.....They will revise their statement I am sure, once they see the $$$ come up....

If a well is done right from drilling to cementing to fracking and plugging the well, then there are no real issues with fracking....It is when these "cheap" companies do it with the bare minimun and no experience are there issues with the process...

People will come running to the fracking companies when their cars run on natural gas instead of oil....