Are Arkansas Earthquakes Related to Fracking?

Location of a Magnitude 4.7 earthquake in Arkansas on February 28, 2011.

Arkansas has been hit with a ton of earthquakes lately (as well as mass fish and bird deaths), and a large number of the earthquakes haven’t even been in the New Madrid Fault region. A number of people have been drawing a connection between the earthquakes and hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking), and two gas disposal sites have actually been suspended from use of injection wells (the prime suspect) now.

“The two drilling operations are Chesapeake Energy and Clarita Operating,” Shellee Tyler of Planetsave writes. “They have ceased operation of the wells near Greenbrier and Guy pending a panel meeting on the matter on March 29.”

Whether or not the earthquakes are related to the fracking is still far from conclusive, but a number of experts have expressed the belief that there is a relationship.

“The Arkansas Oil and Gas commission says there is likely a link between the wells and the earthquakes,” Sarah Eddington of The Seattle Times writes. “There have been more than 800 quakes in the area in the past six months. with a magnitude 4.7 quake, the strongest in Arkansas in 35 years, hit there Sunday.”

“I can’t go into detail at this time, but I can say that we believe there is a potential correlation between injection operations and earthquakes at one or both of those wells,” said Shane Khoury, deputy director and general counsel for the commission.

This “clean” source of energy (natural gas) keeps running into issues. Recently, it was found that the climate benefits of natural gas are actually far overestimated. And as we all know by now, it has been linked to plenty of water quality problems and even flammable water.

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Image via USGS

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http://Web Francis Milholland

Not only are they related to earthquakes but they are destroying our water which is more important than natural gas!We had them test our water and they say chlorine is in it ,well we have never added chlorine to our well.It has oil that float’s on top of the water,we don’t add oil to our water.
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fwiw dept: as a kid growing up in denver colorado in the 60′s, we started having earthquakes. really amazing. turns out it was the Rocky Flats Army depot, they were disposing of outdated chemical weapons by pumping them deep into the earth, eventually causing massive structural adjustments.

http://importantmedia.org/members/zshahan/ Zachary Shahan

interesting…

http://Web Bob Wallace

Is anyone discussing the possibility that if fracking is causing quakes it might actually be a good thing?

Fracking is only going to cause tremors if there is plate pressure present in the area. Normally pressure will build until it is sufficient to move stuff around. Stuff may not slip until the amount of pressure is high, and that can mean a large, destructive quake.

Triggering tremors while pressure is less might serve to relieve pressure thus avoiding a large quake.

Johann von Erdbeben

Very interesting point. One thing worth considering: Would we be able to reliably control the release of energy? That is to say, are the nearly daily 2.5′s that Guy/Greenbrier are experiencing standard issue, or would more pent up energy mean daily 5.0′s or 6.0′s until the fault has exhausted itself? I like the idea though- certainly could warrant some further research if this is found to be a possibility.