Extraction of shale gas cause earthquakes

Oooh, special equipment!

seismic activities have been triggered by a number of dynamic forces including unweighting as the Illinoian and WIsconsin ice sheets retreated.
Water in fracture sets due to unseasonably high precip and , changes in erosion patterns have all been id'd and reserched.

Water and thixotropic fluid disposal from fracking fluid has been potentially linked to microseisms and low amp events in Ohio. Some intercratonic stresses are apparently being relieved but so far were talking about mR's of less than 4.5 no?

Central AMerica seismic events are clearly linked to regional plate boundry dynamics. (Not fracking fluids).

What special equipment are you speaking of,?Im a field geologist, maybe we have **** in common.
Ive done deep Deep resistivity Tomography to evaluate fluids in local aquifer bodies at 1000 m +. (And EM as well as reflection CT reports of the Alto plano of Argentina and Chile.)

One of my colleagues and a preeminent geophysicist, Julian Bulman, recently posted this article on Human Induced Seismicity to a couple of geological papers to increase awareness of the danger posed by humanity.

I hope you find it interesting and it has been produced with his full awareness and consent:

Human ingenuity and technological advances have given us the ability to interact with our environment as no other animal or plant has been able to do through the whole of our planets 4.54 billion year evolution in such a small and inconsequential geological timescale. This includes the ability to produce significant earthquakes and other seismic activities using these technological advancements.

As we have developed our technical abilities we have also inadvertently caused earthquakes and other seismic events. The simplest example of this is our conventional and nuclear weapons capability where various conventional explosions and nuclear tests have registered on the ML scale (Richter Scale). Going so far as to produce upwards of magnitude 5 quakes for some underground nuclear tests in the late 1950’s and also possibly leading to further quakes in otherwise quiet seismic areas.

However weapons are not the only way humans have induced earthquakes and other seismic events. These other inducements include fluid injection into the earth technologies, large earthworks and dam projects, mining and geothermal technologies. Here are several examples of how these technologies interact with seismicity:

Reservoirs - The mass of water in a reservoir alters the pressure in the rock below and through fissures in the rocks, lubricates the faults on which they may sit, which can trigger earthquakes (possibly extremely large magnitude quakes). Reservoir-induced seismic events can be relatively large compared to other forms of induced seismicity.

The first case of reservoir induced seismicity occurred in 1932 in Algeria’s Oued Fodda Dam. There have been similar incidents including the 6.3 magnitude 1967 Koynanagar Earthquake attributed to the Koyna Dam reservoir. During early construction of the Vajont Dam in Italy, there were seismic shocks recorded during its initial fill. After a landslide almost certainly triggered by this increased seismicity filled the reservoir in 1963, the local tsunami in the lake behind the dam caused by the landslide overtopped the dam causing massive a 250m high megatsunami and subsequent flooding with around 2,000 deaths, it was drained and consequently seismic activity has become almost completely non-existent. On August 1, 1975, a magnitude 6.1 earthquake at Oroville, California, was attributed to seismicity from a massive earth-fill dam and reservoir recently constructed and filled there. In Zambia, Kariba Lake may have provoked similar effects.

More recently, the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which caused approximately 68,000 deaths, is another possible example of a large dam project inducing seismicity. An article in Science suggested that the construction and filling of the Zipingpu Dam may have triggered the earthquake. However, researchers have been denied access to seismological and geological data to examine the cause of the quake further. Some experts worry that because of this apparent link with the 2008 Sichuan event the Three Gorges Dam in China may cause an increase in the frequency and intensity of earthquakes.

Mining - Mining leaves voids that generally alter the balance of forces in the rock. These voids may collapse producing seismic waves and in some cases reactivate existing faults causing minor or even large earthquakes. Natural cavern collapses that form sinkholes would produce an essentially identical local seismic event. We have also been responsible for several volcanic inducements by drilling into seismically active areas such as the Sidoarjo mud flow in Porong, Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia, which was caused by the company PT Lapindo Brantas sinking a natural gas well and then over pressurising the system by fracking (see below).

Geothermal energy - Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), a new type of geothermal power technologies that do not require natural convective hydrothermal resources, are known to be associated with induced seismicity. EGS involves pumping fluids at pressure to enhance or create permeability through the use of hydraulic fracturing techniques. Induced seismicity in Basel led to suspension of its HDR project. A seismic hazard evaluation was then conducted, which resulted in the total cancellation of the project in December 2009.

Hydraulic Fracturing - This is particularly pertinent at the current time with the non-debate (scientifically at least) over fracking technologies in the United States (no it’s not a swearword from Battlestar Galactica).

Hydraulic fracturing, to give fracking its correct term, is a technology used to induce or propagate fractures in rocks by injecting pressurised fluids into those fractures and thereby releasing held oil or gas allowing those fossil fuels to migrate either to existing reservoirs or to come directly to the surface. For simplicity, using fracking technologies, we are rapidly increasing and decreasing the pressure on natural faults within the earth’s crust to release hydrocarbons and actually lubricating and extending these natural fracture zones.

If you listened to opinion and editorial nonsense from the media you would assume that fracking is a safe, wholesome technology that is helping America become less dependent on foreign oil so three cheers for the good ol’ US of A. Unfortunately this is not the case and factual studies have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that these fracking technologies can and have produced substantial earthquakes and increase seismicity wherever the technology is used.

As a more pertinent warning; there are many fracking techniques currently being undertaken close by or actually on the New Madrid Rift faulting system and, due to not understanding how that fault zone may be activated, we could conceivably activate and therefore induce a magnitude 8 earthquake in the region.

That is why it is vitally important that any person understands that opinion is not fact. To cut to the chase any media source that promotes fracking as a safe technology are lying to the general public and are part of the scams and frauds perpetrated by business interests that could and will likely lead to an extreme event in more seismically active areas of the continental US.

Fracking causes seismic activity as the pressures are released, this is a fact backed up by years of research and evidential support. Fracking also causes many other potential environmental impacts including; contamination of ground water, risks to air quality, the migration of gases and hydraulic fracturing chemicals to the surface, surface contamination from spills and flowback and the various health effects of these. For these reasons hydraulic fracturing has come under scrutiny internationally, with some countries suspending or even outright banning its use.

That is not the case in the United States and for exactly the same reasons that there is a non-debate on human induced climate change. Namely this is because corporate America (and all large global producers affecting the environment) have far more money to spend on disinformation campaigns than scientists have on promoting their real and proven, and therefore, factual research.

Thus these corporates spend huge amounts of cash seeding junk science, disinformation campaigns, pressure groups and opinion to the mass media and this directly affects the vast majority of people’s views and opinions who believe that scientists are debating whether Human Induced Climate Change or Human Induced Seismicity is actually a real thing. The reality is far different.

To put it bluntly 97% of scientists agree that the earth has been heating up over the last 300 years due to the proliferation of carbon we humans have been putting in to our atmosphere with a particularly strong spike in the last 50 years or so. The other 3% of scientists, who are either on the fence or against these theories, are likely to be either financially supported by big business or are dependent on them in some way for funding (it pains me to say that most dissenters are geologists who rely on the energy companies for work).

This is the same for Human Induced Seismicity, seismographs are impossible to fake so any earthquakes that are in the vicinity of these various fracking technologies a link can be made using evidence support systems which is why there is no debate in the scientific community about fracking causing earthquakes, the science is proven and the earthquakes caused cannot be faked, especially in areas with little to no known previous seismic activity.

My advice is to not listen to opinion but to seek out the actual scientific studies for yourselves, if you don't understand them listen to someone that does like a scientist and not a journalist, politician, religious leader or someone else in the pay of big business or who has something to gain by being a denier.

Remember opinions are not facts. ‘Nullius in Verba' (“Take nobody's word for it”) the motto of the Royal Society.