USA Today, Houston Chron, : Texas: big solid mostly flat with conservative bedrock values – but add some deep pumping and the seismograph lights up.
From USA Today and a few outlets elsewhere comes word that natural gas drilling, including salt-water injection, seems to have triggered a few tiny yet noisy earthquakes on and around Halloween in 2008. There seems to be a news angle to this beyond the specific event – some plans to sequester CO2 in deep rock have run into opposition over worries the injecting stuff down there will unleash bothersome and perhaps dangerous seisms. The data from this may be useful to sequestration conversation. Seems so to me anyway. But not, apparently, to many other reporters I can find.
USA Today‘s Dan Vergano gives it a big ride – most of its acreage going into the nifty, easy-to-grasp graphic reproduced top right.
The work is reported in the journal Leading Edge, from a team led by a Southern Methodist University seismologist. Imagine how exciting it must have been for a seismologist in Dallas to study some earthquakes so close to home.
Other stories:
- Ft. Worth Star Telegram – Mike Lee: Researchers: Earthquakes at DFW linked to injection wells ; Short story, but Lee does mention that the region has thousands of injection wells but not many quakes, and that deep injection may be vital for “clean coal” power plants.
- Dallas Morning News – Wendy Hundley: Study links gas drilling disposal well with quakes ;
- Financial Times (UK, blog) Kate MacKenzie: Hydro-fracking and earthquakes? Uh-oh ; Her primary exterior angle is not sequestration, which she does mentions, but bad news for shale gas operations generally. She also reports that the journal is not peer-reviewed.
- Wall St. Journal – Keith Johnson: Gas-Extraction Link Possible in Quakes ;
- AP – Angela K. Brown: Study: Quakes linked to post-gas drilling process ;
Grist for the Mill: SMU Press Release ;
- Charlie Petit
