A major increase in the number of small earthquakes in the past two years in Oklahoma and Texas is being blamed on oil and gas mining operations which inject wastewater into underground wells, increasing pressure and causing earthquakes to occur.
And the quakes may not remain small, researchers warn.
"Fortunately, no one has been killed in any of these earthquakes to date but that's out there as well," Dr. Bill Ellsworth, USGS seismologist, told KOKO-TV in Oklahoma City.
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Oklahoma suffered 585 earthquakes in 2014. Historically, there have been an average of 1.5 earthquakes of a magnitude of three or greater each year, but now, Oklahoma is recording "an average of 2.5 magnitude 3 or greater earthquakes each day,"
the Christian Science Monitor reports.
The Monitor notes that Oklahoma "has surpassed California as the country's most quake-prone state."
In addition, researchers from Texas' Southern Methodist University (SMU) have drawn a connection between oil and gas activity and a rash of over two dozen earthquakes which hit Reno and Azle in 2013-2014 and the Irving-Dallas area in 2014.
In a study published in Nature Communications,
SMU researchers said their data allows them to move beyond calling mining and fracking a "possible" cause to a "most likely" cause.
In a statement, the Oklahoma Geological Society (OGS) said it "considers it very likely that the majority of recent earthquakes, particularly those in central and north-central Oklahoma, are triggered by the injection of produced water in disposal wells," the Monitor reported.
The Oklahoma state government confirmed the state "experienced 109 magnitude 3+ earthquakes in 2013 and five times that amount in 2014. The pace of earthquake activity has accelerated this year. The current average rate of earthquakes is approximately 600 times historical averages," and added, "we know that the recent rise in earthquakes cannot be entirely attributed to natural causes."
Texas oil and gas
industry group Energy in Depth said in a statement on the SMU study, "several issues in the paper raise questions about its conclusion," and it "appears to suffer from some modeling flaws," and points out studies from the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Research Council and the Environmental Protection Agency, which indicate that very few oil and gas operations have been implicated in earthquake activity.
SMU researchers stated that there are "many thousands of injection and/or production wells that are not associated with earthquakes" and called for more study.
David Pearson, a Texas Railroad Commission's seismologist,
told the Texas Tribune that the agency will not suspend activity at specific wells tied by the SMU study to the Texas earthquakes, adding, "the swarm has died out and has been quiet for some time."
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