Fifteen small earthquakes shook central and northern Oklahoma over the weekend and into Monday, raising more concerns that hydraulic fracturing, called fracking, might be escalating the activity.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported the earthquakes. The largest one was a 4.3-magnitude near Langston on Saturday. That area also had a 3.3-magnitude quake around noon on Monday.
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Earthquake Track reported 25 earthquakes in Oklahoma in the past seven days.
“The best science available to us right now suggests strongly that fracking has nothing at all to do with these
small seismic events," an oil and gas advocacy group Energy in Depth told CBS News. Scientists have determined that fracking, which uses a powerful blasting of water, sand, and other chemicals into the ground to access oil and gas, can call small quakes that usually don’t measure on equipment.
But some people remain unconvinced, such as Magee and Lisa Liebl, who live in Oklahoma.
"My gut is just spot on that its fracking and injection wells that the oil and gas companies are doing around the area," Liebl told CBS.
Last month, concerned residents met in Edmond, Oklahoma, to talk with research geologists and officials about the situation, asking in particular that disposal wells be regulated. Those wells are used to dispose of the wastewater generated by fracking.
Austin Holland, a research seismologist with the Oklahoma Geological Survey, talked at that meeting about unprecedented activity in the state and that OGS will be working to determine if the increased number of earthquakes could be man-made, CBS said.
A journal Science report earlier this month that found that about 20 percent of central and east U.S. earthquakes could be attributed to four fracking wells near Jones, Oklahoma.
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