Tighter rules around wastewater disposal from oil and gas wells in Oklahoma and Kansas reduced earthquake rates by a factor of four, new research finds.
The quakes are caused by the large volumes of wastewater reducing friction on faults in ancient rocks more than 8,000 feet below the surface of south-central Kansas and northern Oklahoma. Regulations that required wastewater to be injected higher than 30 meters above these rock layers were effective at calming the quakes, which peaked in 2015: That year, there were 940 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or above in the region.
That’s a massive increase over the seismicity before major oil and gas activity in the area. Between 1973 and 2007, the area saw only seven magnitude 3 or above earthquakes.
The problem started after 2007, when oil and gas producers began looking for a place to get rid of wastewater from wells in the Mississippian limestone play, where horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (i.e., fracking) were opening up new opportunities for oil and gas extraction. For every barrel of hydrocarbon extracted in this play, however, another 10 barrels of water are produced...
Producers turned to the Arbuckle group for wastewater disposal. This rock layer has high permeability...
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