Why some fracking wells are prone to triggering earthquakes
Some of the biggest fracking-induced earthquakes in the world — including three higher than magnitude 4.0 that could be felt by humans — have taken place in the Kaybob Duvernay Formation near Fox Creek, [Alberta]. But they've happened only in certain areas and only since 2013, even though fracking began there in 2010. Why?
A study led by Ryan Schultz, a seismologist with the Alberta Energy Regulator and a geophysical research scientist at the University of Alberta, shows that the underlying geology determines whether earthquakes can be induced at all by a particular well. But if an earthquake can be induced, then the number of earthquakes increased with the amount of fluid pumped into the well, reports the study published Thursday in the journal Science [DOI: 10.1126/science.aao0159] [DX].
The authors of the study, which also involved researchers at Western University, the University of Calgary, the University of Alberta and Natural Resources Canada, came to that conclusion after analyzing drilling records for around 300 wells in the region submitted to the Alberta Energy Regulator. They found that the reason earthquakes didn't start there until 2013 was because companies didn't start drilling earthquake-prone wells until then.
So what makes a well earthquake prone? Earthquakes happen at faults, where two of the Earth's tectonic plates come together. Earthquakes occur when the two plates slip or slide relative to one another. In order to cause an earthquake, a fracking well needs to have a physical connection via the underlying rock to a fault that is oriented so that the pressure of fluid from the well can change the stress on that fault and increase the chance of it slipping.
Also at the University of Alberta.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday January 21 2018, @11:38PM (5 children)
So I predict a new technique for managing problem faults, such as those the periodically lock, then release violently:
Lubricate these with fracking by intentionally drilling into the fault, and allowing many smaller swarms of earthquakes to release pent up potential at suspected locked points, avoiding big faults later on.
I suspect you'd have to practice in some rural backwater, rather than on the San Andreas [wikipedia.org] which is too big to practice on in terms of actual size and potential risk. Maybe in Alaska or some smaller midwest faults.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @11:55PM (4 children)
Or not - Southern Commiefornia brings me down [theconversation.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @02:35AM (3 children)
They've been saying that for a lot of years.
There was a 7.9 event near Fort Tejon in 1857.
Even today, that isn't near a major population center. [googleapis.com]
(A smaller number zooms out.)
The Frisco event of 1906 was a 7.8 event.
The San Andreas Fault hasn't ruptured since then.
Are we due? More or less.
On average, that turns loose every 110 - 140 years.
.
Southern Commiefornia
Wouldn't that be nice?
Education at zero cost to the student as far as he can take that.
No corporations paying poverty wages for part-time jobs without benefits.
No bloodsucking landlords constantly jacking up rents.
No one homeless and left out in the cold. (It got down to 43 F last night. Brrrrr!)
No one dying at 30 because they don't have medical insurance.
No one going bankrupt because they got sick and the medical insurance they paid for was a scam.
Sounds awesome!
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 22 2018, @05:17PM (2 children)
Or how about, Louis Armstrong was on the right track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nGKqH26xlg/ [youtube.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @11:05PM
Alvin Lee and Ten Years After had a related idea (though their notion wouldn't necessarily involve dumping Capitalism, just lessening inequality).
I'd Love to Change the World [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2018, @12:01AM
Bleeding Heart Liberal Michael Moore did a movie where he looked around the globe and found nations doing things better than USA.[1] [google.com]
[1] If you ask the same question multiple times, Google will stop asking stupid questions. [google.com]
Germany will educate you gratis, as far as you can take that--even if you're not a German national.
All developed countries except USA have education systems with low costs.
Cuba is a wonderful example of literacy and education.
(California had gratis education until Regan became governor.)
Germany requires that, for a corporation with more than a piddling number of employees, half of the board of directors must be selected by The Workers.
France has a 35-hour workweek.
27 percent of residences in Poland are in housing cooperatives. [google.com]
The Czech Republic has a whole bunch of that too.
In every developed country except USA, nobody goes bankrupt due to medical costs.
Some countries will even treat visitors with emergencies gratis.
(People fleeing Fascist Reactionary oppression in Paraguay get the same gratis medical care as citizens do when those folks cross the border into Socialist Argentina.) [dissidentvoice.org]
N.B. The costs of USA's for-profit healthcare system are almost twice that of the nation with the 2nd most expensive system.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Funny) by requerdanos on Sunday January 21 2018, @11:59PM (9 children)
In other news,
I really do respect the research, but I am just pointing out where the result lands on the How-Surprising-Is-This meter.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Monday January 22 2018, @12:02AM (6 children)
Tell that to the oil and natural gas companies doing the fracking. "The sciense isn't settled!"
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Monday January 22 2018, @12:51AM (3 children)
I suspect the study is likely to limit drilling into faults in the future, while allowing drilling away from faults.
I'd also be interested in the economics of drilling into a fault. Is is profitable? Do those wells produce as much oil/gas as non-fault zone wells? One would tend to imagine that a fault would have released a lot of gas that would be trapped in other areas away from faults.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday January 22 2018, @01:57AM (2 children)
takyon's "science isn't settled!" point being well taken...
That would also be rather obvious, but I am getting hung up here: Of "the biggest fracking-induced earthquakes in the world," they note only "three higher than magnitude 4.0 that could be felt by humans."
"Higher than magnitude 4.0" describes the set of all real numbers greater than four, and so would include earthquakes that shatter the planet to asteroidal bits. But this seems written to suggest "three barely bigger than 4.0" such that if the guy reading the seismometer asks "Hey, can you feel that?" the other folks in earshot cock their heads a little, look and/or listen carefully, and finally say "Oh, yeah... I kinda do feel it."
And so they may be on the order of "Well, yeah, they were technically recorded but little quakes like that don't count" such that fracking happens with or without attached faults until such time that cheap wind and/or solar prices push fracking out of the cost-effectiveness game.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 22 2018, @02:07AM (1 child)
I think we will see someone argue that fracking earthquakes release energy from a plate/fault, lowering the chance of more powerful earthquake in the future. Along the lines of NASA's proposal to tap supervolcanoes for geothermal energy [soylentnews.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Adamsjas on Monday January 22 2018, @02:53AM
Its long been argued back and forth for decades that a consistent patter of little earthquakes forestalling a big one.
Modern geologists insist this theory first proposed in Richter's day is wrong, and usually provide wandering arguments about total energy to support their claim: https://www.quora.com/Do-small-earthquakes-prevent-occasional-larger-ones-from-occurring [quora.com]
Yet A dearth of observations of larger earthquakes on the world's many creeping faults suggests the modern guys are missing something pretty big. They only study large quake areas after all.
It can't be proven one way or the other because there has been no way to test the theory other than statistical guesswork.
Problem explained here back in 2007:
https://phys.org/news/2007-03-scientists-source-mysterious-tremors-emanating.html [phys.org]
I think Frojack's suggestion in his first post suggests an experiment.
You could drill, (but not frac) into an fault that you had reason to believe was locally locked. (This condition can be detected with seismographs.) You could wait a year or two, then frac those same wells, attempting to unstick that locally locked zone.
If that induces small quakes locally as well as in both directions along the fault you have some evidence that YOU may have prevented or delayed the big one by allowing the whole fault to shift just a little. Or you might get sued to bankruptcy.
Note that Frojack isn't the first to suggest this.
It was a topic for a while in 2004, where the US Army discovered pretty much the same thing that this Canadian paper proclaimed. And use of injection wells was suggested back then as a quake inducing tool.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6759689/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/can-earthquakes-be-tamed/ [nbcnews.com]
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6759689/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/can-earthquakes-be-tamed/ [nbcnews.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @02:50AM (1 child)
Add khallow to the list, the "The sciense isn't settled!" is one he makes an honor-point from using (and anything that has remotely to do with "free market and economy" are accepted as obvious in an automated, knee-jerk reaction).
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Monday January 22 2018, @06:15AM
We could always just look at my scribblings [soylentnews.org] rather than make shit up.
That's the difference between someone who says shit and someone who understands the subject and presents a reasoned argument based on that understanding.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday January 22 2018, @12:12AM
Yeah, seems like another duh moment for the human species.
Will we ever learn? Let's bring out the Surprise meter again.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Monday January 22 2018, @08:50PM
From the summary:
I am not a geo. But i work for a geo company. There are many faults out there, in numbers and description. Depending on the rock, region, total depth, etc you could be drilling through multiple faults per borehole.
The point of this research it seems to me is better knowledge of WHAT faults are a problem. It was, as you said, obvious that faults were involved, but this provides a better description of the problem faults.
Car analogy: "People with physical contact with cars are more likely to be injured by cars." Scientists: "Not everybody that touches a car is injured. Injuries are more likely when people are in physical contact with cars with faulty brakes."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by linkdude64 on Monday January 22 2018, @12:08AM
These types of articles are not intended for the educated populace.
They are unfortunate requirements in a world where lawyers, judges, and pennypinching-types will deny all reason, common sense, morality, or courtesy until something undeniable is placed in front of them, and until that time, they will run amok with everything from developmental psychology to war that best suits their financial interests.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @12:48AM (4 children)
What idiot needed a study to figure that out?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 22 2018, @02:08AM (2 children)
Albert
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @02:53AM (1 child)
albert Who?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 22 2018, @03:40AM
Alberta. Université de l'Alberta.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @07:23AM
(Score: 2) by drussell on Monday January 22 2018, @03:19AM (1 child)
I have not read any of the linked information, nor do I really know any of the background for this, but...
...sounds like something that... uh... might be expected, even with a layman's grasp of geophysics.... Duh.
The bigger question, really, is how can well can we quickly grasp onto the knowledge of how all these things work and get at least a basic understanding of how this stuff interacts. That would be incredibly useful information and is being studied but it is certainly not yet completely understood.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @03:35AM
Geophysics?
What you talking about? Everybody knows it's turtles all the way down, make no mistakes (or faults).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 22 2018, @06:23AM