A study says that oil drillers caused one hundred and thirty four earthquakes last year. Since I posted earlier on the subject of the connection between earthquakes and fracking in oil fields, I have to do an update now. An article I just read said that they did not find a connection between fracking and earthquakes. The connection is instead between making waste water wells and earthquakes.
One earthquake happened when they were making the waste water well and stopped when they ceased working on it. They felt that was pretty conclusive.
It was even more exciting to see the connection between the wells and earthquakes over a period of time, in a larger area. Here is a link to the article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/18/us-earthquakes-fracking-gas
If you hate clicking links, you can cut and paste or just type it into your browser.
Earthquakes increased to six times the number that had happened before they made the waste water wells from the oil drilling. The magnitude of earthquakes was not spectacularly high if you are used to earthquakes. They were only about magnitude 3. Most Alaskans would say something like, "Hah! You call that an earthquake? We can show you a real earthquake!"
People from more sedate places that sit still longer might, however be pretty impressed with a magnitude 3 earthquake, especially when they come in swarms. Even Alaskans might be somewhat impressed with a swarm of the suckers.
Swarms of earthquakes are not good. I see a swarm of earthquakes and it makes me uneasy that a bigger one might be on the way. The numbers they were throwing around in the report, that inspired the article I provided a link to above, were definitely excessive. They mentioned 50 earthquakes in 2009. I would not like that at all, but no, they had to have 87 in 2010. And as if that was not bad enough, they reported 134 last year.
One hundred and thirty four expletive deleted earthquakes in one year, of magnitude 3 or so is definitely overdoing things. I can not understand what is wrong with the people in Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas, letting people get away with causing 134 earthquakes in a year in their area!
They used to have a commercial about some kind of hot sauce where they were incensed that it was made in the wrong state and were going to hang the perpetrator on the spot. I hardly think they have cut down all the tall trees nearby, or can't improvise something to take care of people who cause swarms of earthquakes. That seems like more of an offense than hot sauce.
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