Experts see no big danger in fracturing

On January 24, 2012 — No comments

A 4.0 magnitude earthquake near a Youngstown, Ohio, natural gas well on New Year’s Eve has invigorated the public debate on the safety of hydraulic fracturing.

Activists there and elsewhere, such as in the United Kingdom, have called for a moratorium on the fracking process, increasingly widely used to extract gas from shale rock. In response, energy company officials have said their wells may not be to blame for nearby earthquakes.

So is fracking a dangerous source of earthquakes that should be halted? Or is it harmless when it comes to quakes? Scientists say the truth is somewhere in between, but generally believe fracking poses manageable earthquake risks.

Scientists began to understand that humans could cause small earthquakes in the 1960s, when the U.S. Army drilled a 12,000-foot well at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, near Denver, to dispose of waste fluids (perhaps nerve gas waste). This created a series of unusual earthquakes in the area.

Later that decade, at an oil field in Rangely, Colo., tests were done and seismologists found that changes in the number of earthquakes recorded per year correlated with changes in the quantity of fluid injected into the ground.

For the rest of the story visit, Experts see no big danger in fracturing