After pulling massive amounts of fossil fuels out of the Earth’s crust so we can burn it up into our atmosphere, we have a good sense of where the stuff goes. Our oceans. A global greenhouse. Our lungs. But what happens to the ground formerly occupied by those fossil fuels?

It’s becoming increasingly clear that oil and gas extraction processes are actually weakening the structural integrity of the Earth’s crust just enough to cause more frequent earthquakes, in places not used to them.

Oklahoma, for instance, is not known for earthquakes. Yet the central U.S. has seen an elevenfold jump in recent years, including the Sooner State’s largest earthquake on record. This 5.7-magnitude quake occurred on November 6, 2011 near Prague, Oklahoma. And research published yesterday in Geology from the University of Oklahoma, Columbia University, and the U.S. Geological Survey has made a direct connection to the disposal of wastewater from conventional oil production:

A new study in the journal Geology is the latest to tie a string of unusual earthquakes, in this case, in central Oklahoma, to the injection of wastewater deep underground. Researchers now say that the magnitude 5.7 earthquake near Prague, Okla., on Nov. 6, 2011, may also be the largest ever linked to wastewater injection. Felt as far away as Milwaukee, more than 800 miles away, the quake — the biggest ever recorded in Oklahoma — destroyed 14 homes, buckled a federal highway and left two people injured. Small earthquakes continue to be recorded in the area.

The recent boom in U.S. energy production has produced massive amounts of wastewater. The water is used both in hydrofracking, which cracks open rocks to release natural gas, and in coaxing petroleum out of conventional oil wells. In both cases, the brine and chemical-laced water has to be disposed of, often by injecting it back underground elsewhere, where it has the potential to trigger earthquakes. The water linked to the Prague quakes was a byproduct of oil extraction at one set of oil wells, and was pumped into another set of depleted oil wells targeted for waste storage.

As Climate Progress has written before, this practice of disposing chemical-laced water generated during the extraction of oil and gas has far-reaching effects. Drillers have been doing this for more than a decade, and the researchers note that the Oklahoma quake did not actually require very much wastewater. In fact, because we have been doing this for so long, the built-up pressure in the Earth’s crust changes the criteria of how quakes happen. The study’s abstract notes:

Significantly, this case indicates that decades-long lags between the commencement of fluid injection and the onset of induced earthquakes are possible, and modifies our common criteria for fluid-induced events.

So we could be paying for more than a decade of wastewater injection and fracking for quite some time with earthquakes. There’s not much more room 9,000 feet down. Wellhead records indicate that pressure in these areas underground increased by a factor of ten from 2001 to 2006.

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by Mark Trexler

As a risk management professional, I worry about getting caught unprepared for risk events I should have reasonably foreseen.  So we have mini survival kits in each car, we’ve scanned all the family photos so they can’t be lost in a fire, and we have taken photos of everything we need for potential insurance purposes (all stored off-site).

And then there’s “The Big One” – the 9.0 earthquake the seismologists say is overdue here in the Pacific Northwest, which would (or, more accurately, will…..) wreak absolute havoc on infrastructure (and, in all likelihood, my house, which is built on the side of a hill).  We’ve made sure that the house is properly bolted down, so it might not simply surf down the hill, and we’ve purchased earthquake insurance.

Our next project was to put together the recommended emergency kit with water, food, and other critical supplies for the aftermath of the earthquake.  We certainly hope that FEMA will be at the door soon after an earthquake, or at least make food and shelter available nearby.  But if The Big One hits, we could easily be on our own for days or weeks (sound familiar in the aftermath of Super Storm Sandy?).  Given that fact, how can I as a responsible risk professional be without an earthquake emergency kit?

Unfortunately, the problem is a little more complicated than simply recognizing the risk of a major earthquake.  A freeze-dried food salesman related the following comment he had heard at a recent home show: “Why should I buy your freeze-dried foods?  I have guns.  In an emergency I’ll just come and take your food!”  That puts a whole new spin on managing earthquake risk!  No longer is it just the earthquake, it’s the social fallout, and the impact of the social fallout on the utility of the risk management measure being considered.

Do we need to add guns and ammunition to my earthquake kit, and learn how to use them?  That’s an entirely different risk management calculation.  Maybe we should drop the whole idea of worrying about that earthquake preparedness kit, and assume it will work out for the best.  Because after all, even in the worst case we won’t be in any worse shape than our neighbors.

What’s interesting about this chain of thinking about personal risk management is how closely it parallels a lot of corporate thinking about climate change and corporate climate risk.  It’s common to hear the following explanation for the relatively low priority often given to climate risk (whether policy risk or actual climate impacts):

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Ohio ended 2011 with a magnitude 4.0 earthquake on New Year’s Eve, the second quake to strike the area within a week and the 11th of the year. That earthquake, the most recent and the strongest, was traced back to the fluid injection wells at a fracking site in Youngstown, Ohio. Indeed, all 11 earthquakes occurred “within two miles of the injection wells.”

Now, state officials are shutting down the injection wells and letting the waste fluids that were injected to “bubble back to the surface in an effort to relieve underground pressure.” The original injection pressure will force the brine waste water back out of the well into storage tanks, which should “help stop the ground from shaking.”

It is increasingly clear to experts and state officials that the earthquakes were triggered by the fracking process. The epicenter of the last earthquake was only 330 feet from the earthquake that occurred only a week before. For seismologists, the “evidence is convincing“:

John Armbruster, a Columbia University seismologist who installed the seismometers at the state’s request, said yesterday he thinks that the disposal well triggered the quakes.

“I find the evidence convincing,” Armbruster said.

Brine is salty waste water that comes out of the ground from working oil and gas wells, including shale wells that have been “fracked.” The fracking process injects millions of gallons of water and chemicals underground to shatter shale and release the trapped oil and gas.

More than half the brine injected in Ohio disposal wells comes from Marcellus shale wells in Pennsylvania. Ohio officials expect shale drilling and fracking to pick up in this state as energy companies tap the Utica shale here.

The serious danger of water pollution and earthquakes should serve as a warning to Ohio politicians who remain committed to opening up the state’s parks to fracking. Seventy percent of Ohioans oppose the idea. But perhaps politicians like Gov. John Kasich (R) are blind to the danger because of the level of donations they receive from the Oil and Gas Association.

But even the Ohio Oil and Gas Association supported the decision to stop the injections as “a rational thing to do.” The Network for Oil and Gas Accountability and Protection, however, wondered why such actions took so long. “What about earthquakes one through nine?,” said the group’s president Vanessa Pesec. “It seems remarkable to me that they would not have done something until earthquake 10.”

A previously unreported study out of the Oklahoma Geological Survey has found that hydraulic fracturing may have triggered a swarm of small earthquakes earlier this year in Oklahoma. The quakes, which struck on Jan. 18 in a rural area near Elmore City, peaked at magnitude 2.8 and caused no deaths or property damage.

The study, currently being prepared for peer review, follows news today that Cuadrilla Resources, a British shale gas developer, has found that it was “highly probable” its fracturing operations caused minor quakes of magnitude 2.3 and 1.5 in Lancashire, England. The Cuadrilla study could complicate the expansion of hydraulic fracturing for shale gas in risk-averse Europe, where France has already banned the practice.

That’s E&E News PM on the twin earth-shaking reports on an emerging concern about fracking, which involves blasting massive amounts of water through rock under high pressure to get the gas out.

If this had been happening to some renewable energy technology it would be all but fatal.  Oh, wait, it was:  “Fears of induced minor earthquakes have already complicated development of geothermal energy in regions like Nevada and Switzerland.”  See also LiveScience, “Earthquake Concerns Shake Geothermal Energy Projects.”

As the Economist notes in its piece:

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When a 5.8 earthquake in Virginia shook the North Anna nuclear power station, about 12 miles from the quake’s epicenter, the plant lost power and shut down. Later, officials discovered that massive containers storing spent fuel had even shifted during the earthquake at the North Anna plant. But according to a review of nuclear plants across the central and eastern U.S., the North Anna nuclear reactors are not alone — at least 27 nuclear reactors are at risk of severe accident because of an earthquake.

The preliminary review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ongoing for six years but which became a priority following Japan’s massive earthquake in March that led to a disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant, found that the reactors are vulnerable to larger earthquakes than previously assumed and need upgrades to withstand the potential tremors. And the regulators suggested that the operators at all 104 commercial reactors review their facilities’ vulnerabilities to earthquake damage.

The industry and regulators say the reactors are safe as is for now, but an Associated Press report showed that NRC experts were still concerned:

After the March earthquake in Japan that caused the biggest nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, NRC staffers fretted in emails that the agency’s understanding of earthquake risk for existing reactors was out of date.

In a March 15 email, for example, an NRC earthquake expert questioned releasing data to the public showing how strong an earthquake each plant was designed to withstand.

The seismologist, Annie Kammerer, acknowledged that recent science showed stronger quakes could happen. “Frankly, it is not a good story for us,” she wrote to agency colleagues.

The upgrades needed for the North Anna plant and others like it are unclear, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will need to take action to ensure the reactors highlighted in the review are protected. Or, as Peter Sinclair wrote after the Virginia earthquake, the U.S. could turn its attention to other forms of energy because, “As of now, no reports of shutdowns, oil spills, or radioactive leaks at any wind turbines.”