2014 Oklahoma Earthquake Discussion

[TheTravellers]

Here are excerpts from the newsok story, and yeah, sticking your head in the sand will not make it go away. Pathetic...

Edmond earthquake town hall leaves attendees unsatisfied | News OK (emphasis mine below)

"Oklahoma Geological Survey seismologist Austin Holland said there is no way to know what has caused the unprecedented increase in earthquakes in Oklahoma"

"Holland said stopping the use of injection wells, which pump water deep underground, would not be recommended from a scientific standpoint because that would rob researchers of valuation data that could help them figure out how to prevent earthquakes."

So is Holland also on the payroll of the energy companies?

[venture]

If they want an independent and honest opinion, they are going to need to find geologists and seismologists that have no connection to either the oil & gas interests or the environmentalists that would be in the opposition. Which means in most cases going out of state or country to find someone.

[Bunty]

I didn't feel it, but another earthquake well over 3.0 at 3.9 near Langston this morning as of 10:09 am. Three More Earthquakes Recorded Near Langston - News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports |

[Martin]

i moved a bunch of off-topic political posts to a new thread in the politics forum. go argue there.

this thread is just to discuss the earthquakes themselves and shouldn't get into politics. thanks! -M

[Of Sound Mind]

i moved a bunch of off-topic political posts to a new thread in the politics forum. go argue there.

this thread is just to discuss the earthquakes themselves and shouldn't get into politics. thanks! -M

Thank you.

[Questor]

So I am frustrated at the message OGS puts out there compared to USGS. If you go to the USGS website, you'll see buried on it somewhere is a discussion that they have had proof since the 1970s that waste water injection sites can cause seismic activity. You can also find articles that state they haven proven beyond reasonable doubt that Oklahoma's largest earthquake ever was directly caused by an injection well that was operating too close to a fault line.

Every time I see the same dude trotted out by OGS to talk to the media, he talks in terms of this quake being hard to link to that injection site. I get that, and I know what he's saying, but I find what he's saying misleading. Maybe he has said it, and I haven't heard it, but I don't recall hearing any acknowledgement from OGS that these waste sites can cause seismic activity. We are well beyond some theoretical science here. We know these wells can cause tremors. It would be nice to hear OGS acknowledge that. I feel like they're ignoring that very significant data point by constantly shifting the discussion to "well, I don't know about this specific well and it's correlation to that specific quake...." It smacks of half-truths.

[RadicalModerate]

Here are excerpts from the newsok story, and yeah, sticking your head in the sand will not make it go away. Pathetic...

Edmond earthquake town hall leaves attendees unsatisfied | News OK
"Holland said stopping the use of injection wells, which pump water deep underground, would not be recommended from a scientific standpoint because that would rob researchers of valuation data that could help them figure out how to prevent earthquakes."

So is Holland also on the payroll of the energy companies?

We should have already learned--from the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics (or whomever/whatever)--the dangers of "assumptions". Although "Correlation Does Not Equal Causation" I think your hypothesis is a pretty fair and accurate assumption. But I've been wrong, before, more times than I can count.

Still . . . I do recall, quite accurately, that when the folks at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, up around Northglen, Colorado, quit lubricating the fault by injecting waste products into it the spate of earthquakes abated nearly immediately . . .

[ctchandler]

Well, another minor "house shaker" at 11:30 am today. Probably in the low 2's.
C. T.

[ctchandler]

OGS says 3.0 and the epicenter was 1.0 miles from my home.
C. T.

[Bunty]

We should have already learned--from the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics (or whomever/whatever)--the dangers of "assumptions". Although "Correlation Does Not Equal Causation"

Are we really having much luck trying to establish correlation? In looking at the image at the top of the page, there are a lot of faults in far north central Oklahoma. This is another area where a lot of earthquakes have been coming from. But I haven't come across any info to establish that there has been an upsurge in oil field activity there for the last several years.

[Bunty]

The 46 minute audio to the earthquake town hall presentation minus the question and answer session can be heard here:http://stillwaterweather.com/earthquaketownhall.m3u

[LocoAko]

I may cross post this to the politics section, but a new study just published in the journal Science links specific wastewater injection sites to the unprecedented increases in earthquake activity.

BBC News - Wastewater from energy extraction 'triggers US quake surge'

Link to abstract: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/ea...cience.1255802

While not the 100% complete smoking gun, findings like this are pretty damn.... damning.

Although thousands of disposal wells operate aseismically, four of the highest-rate wells are capable of inducing 20% of 2008-2013 central US seismicity.

Four of the biggest of these wells in Oklahoma have been pumping around 4 million barrels of water a month to a depth of 3.5km beneath the surface.

To determine the impact of this water, the scientists developed a model that could calculate the way the underground wave of pressure from these wells spread out.

By comparing this to seismic data from the Jones cluster, it was concluded that the injection of wastewater is "likely responsible" for the swarm.

[Questor]

Hopefully it's not political to post articles from Scientific American, USGS, Science, and Cornell lol:

http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/features/u...e-earthquakes/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ma-earthquakes

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article...s#.U7cFeee9KK0

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/34...4-6615284243da

[ABryant]

Another earthquake....12:13 NW OKC

[JayhawkTransplant]

Thank you for posting that--I'm sitting on the sofa with my laptop, doing some work, and it felt like someone large bumped into my sofa. It was a very quick jolt, and not much of a rumble like I've experienced with previous ones.

[rezman]

Wife said she just felt it. She said the couch shook. I had just got up from he couch to let the dog in and didn't feel or hear a thing.

[Bunty]

It was definitely felt and heard in Stillwater with one good sized jolt, believed stronger than usual, stronger than 3.0. Thank God, it only lasted a second, or two. It was enough for the Stillwater Emergency Management Agency to comment on Facebook, "That was a pretty big earthquake, details to follow as soon as we get them."

[JayhawkTransplant]

USGS says it was a 4.3, 8 miles east of Guthrie. There was a 3.2 epicentered around there this morning at 6:30.

[turnpup]

Felt it in NW OKC. Small jolt/rocking motion. The dog came upstairs right after it happened. She's never done that before.

[Dennis Heaton]

Another earthquake....12:13 NW OKC

I checked my clock at the time we felt the jolt on Hefner and Roxboro...12:12 PM on July 12. Too bad this wasn't 12/12/12. That would have been freeeeeaky!

[LocoAko]

Didn't feel anything here in central OKC. I'm pretty sure it'll take a 5.0+ for me to feel even a slight jostle lol.

[boscorama]

It was a big one at my house. I wasn't home but when I arrived around 1 pm the usual stuff was displaced, which happens only with the strongest quakes. Epi was supposedly about a mile north of my place. There were subsequent rumblings throughout the afternoon.

[ljbab728]

I'm in NW OKC and didn't notice a thing.

[Bunty]

Saturday, 7/12, was quite an active day, perhaps to an unusual extent, for quakes in the Langston-Guthrie area. At least 7 of them happened over the magnitude of 2.0.

[Bunty]

I'm in NW OKC and didn't notice a thing.

You likely won't notice them if you have noise going on like the TV or radio. The sudden, brief thundering, rumbling crash sound they make usually startles me more than the jolt or two they make. The quakes under 3.0 usually don't travel very far.