Article 3: “Oil and Gas Production Triggers earthquakes in California”

How Oil and Gas Production Triggers Earthquakes in California. (2018, February 18). Retrieved from https://www.kqed.org/science/534704/how-oil-and-gas-production-triggers-earthquakes-in-california

New research into California’s fracking process suggest that not all occurring earthquakes have been natural, and could be related to an environmentally devastating new wave, fracking. While Oklahoma surpassed the Golden state, they are in this position thanks to a technicality-their unnatural earthquakes plagued by oilfield activity. While people had previously thought that California had natural earthquakes, new research highlights that they have been having “frack-quakes” for years. After Oklahoma suffered a 5.1 magnitude earthquake in February, hydraulic fracturing companies have been asked to cut back.

Thomas Goebel, a researcher at UC Santa Cruz, claims that California still has a lot of fracking-induced earthquakes, despite the fact that it has the same amount of wells as Oklahoma, with less earthquakes. In quake-common California nobody pays much attention to an extra shock or two. But last year, Goebel ran some statistical tests on the earthquake record, and found several earthquake clusters that coincided with high-volume wastewater pumping. The odds that these coincidences were random were less than 1 in 25. This signifies a change in how environmental agencies and the government look at fracking. While it was previously unclear that fracking created a lot of harm because California wasn’t experiencing an uptake in earthquakes, the new research shows that frack-induced quakes are likely to happen anywhere, which should drive us to take another look at the integrity and safety that the process provides.