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Fracking Tied to Unusual Rise in Earthquakes in U.S.

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Mr. Pedantic said:
1) If the earthquakes are so minor, what's the big deal?
2) How can you prove that correlation equals causation?



Well, actually, it's petrol...produced by fractional distillation of petroleum.

Given that also, you know, petrol is liquid at room temperature...
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Actually its gasoline or petrol. Both are correct.

And almost everywhere in the world has banned fracking. The only two major countries that haven't are Canada and the US.
 
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manimal said:
I am really curious from a process perspective how different Hydraulic fracking is from disposal injection welling.
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Fracking = they take a normal gas/oil well and pump a few thousand metric shittons of water + sand + a few dozen important chemicals down and pump it up to huge pressures until the rock cracks. Then they pump most of that water back out and dump it in a disposal well, at much lower pressures. Also, when the oil/gas comes back up it will usually be pretty wet, and in the midstream process (production of raw gas/oil to usable product) this water is removed and mostly also gets put down a well (although this produced water/condensate can sometimes be sold to reclaimers)
 
Wreckem said:
Actually its gasoline or petrol. Both are correct.
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So why don't you use petrol?

1) It comes from petroleum
2) It removes confusion with natural gas
3) It's not actually a gas at room temperature

What gives?

Wreckem said:
And almost everywhere in the world has banned fracking. The only two major countries that haven't are Canada and the US.
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So? Most of the rest of the world thought thalidomide was safe to give to pregnant women.
 
Mr. Pedantic said:
So why don't you use petrol?

1) It comes from petroleum
2) It removes confusion with natural gas
3) It's not actually a gas at room temperature

What gives?



So? Most of the rest of the world thought thalidomide was safe to give to pregnant women.
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Because many things come from petroleum.

Such as kerosene(which you probably call paraffin) and diesel which you probably call petrodiesel. In the US, its kerosene, gasoline or diesel.
 
Mr. Pedantic said:
So why don't you use petrol?

1) It comes from petroleum
2) It removes confusion with natural gas
3) It's not actually a gas at room temperature

What gives?



So? Most of the rest of the world thought thalidomide was safe to give to pregnant women.
Click to expand...

Why have countries banned it? Because it has short term disastrous environmental problems. Its fucked up water tables in the US(flammable water from wells). Its caused earthquakes. Its caused massive sinkholes. While it has these short term problems, no one knows of the long term consequences of fracking.

Plus who ever thinks injecting polluted waste water deep into the ground is safe is a total moron. Not only were they allowed to inject polluted waste water into the ground, they didn't have to disclose what chemicals were in that water.
 
Wreckem said:
Because many things come from petroleum.

Such as kerosene(which you probably call paraffin) and diesel which you probably call petrodiesel. In the US, its kerosene, gasoline or diesel.
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Yeah, but petrol is arguably the most well known component of petroleum.

And we don't actually call it petroleum. We call it crude oil.
 
Wreckem said:
Why have countries banned it? Because it has disastrous environmental problems. Its fucked up water tables in the US(flammable water from wells). Its caused earthquakes. Its caused massive sinkholes. Plus who ever thinks injecting polluted waste water deep into the ground is safe is a total moron. Not only were they allowed to inject polluted waster water into the ground, they didn't have to disclose what chemicals were in that water.
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I'm curious as to how you can prove that the rise in earthquakes is caused by, not just correlated to, fracking.

The rest of that isn't really relevant to whether or not fracking causes earthquakes.
 
Mr. Pedantic said:
Why?
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Because they are the ones that study earthquakes and have determined that fracking and waste water well injection sites have caused earthquakes in the US, Japan, and Canada. Obviously, there is something else at work in conjunction with the above(something to do with the earths crust/soils/etc), since not all fracking sites/waste water injection sites create earthquakes. However, but for the fracking/waster water injection there wouldn't have been earthquakes.
 
Mr. Pedantic said:
So why don't you use petrol?

1) It comes from petroleum
2) It removes confusion with natural gas
3) It's not actually a gas at room temperature

What gives?



So? Most of the rest of the world thought thalidomide was safe to give to pregnant women.
Click to expand...

Hello sir can i get you a drink?
yes I would like a Coke
OK what kind
Pepsi please.
 
Wreckem said:
Because they are the ones that study earthquakes and have determined that fracking and waste water well injection sites have caused earthquakes in the US, Japan, and Canada. Obviously, there is something else at work in conjunction with the above(something to do with the earths crust/soils/etc), since not all fracking sites/waste water injection sites create earthquakes. However, but for the fracking/waster water injection there wouldn't have been earthquakes.
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I can't find the actual abstract, but as far as I can tell, they have three aberrant data points: 50 earthquakes in 2009, 87 in 2010 and 134 in 2011. Not exactly convincing.
 
Mr. Pedantic said:
I can't find the actual abstract, but as far as I can tell, they have three aberrant data points: 50 earthquakes in 2009, 87 in 2010 and 134 in 2011. Not exactly convincing.
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Precisely. Also, this is a classic case of news agencies.. taking everything out of context to sensationalize. What that blog actually says..

While it appears likely that the observed seismicity rate changes in the middle part of the United States in recent years are manmade, it remains to be determined if they are related to either changes in production methodologies or to the rate of oil and gas production.

We also find that there is no evidence to suggest that hydraulic fracturing itself is the cause of the increased rate of earthquakes. The fact that the disposal (injection) of wastewater produced while extracting resources has the potential to cause earthquakes has long been known. One of the earliest documented case histories with a scientific consensus of wastewater inducing earthquakes, is at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal well, near Denver. There, a large volume of wastewater was injected from 1962-1966, inducing a series of earthquakes (below magnitude 5).

We also have previously reported that the production of oil and gas (extraction) can potentially cause earthquakes when changes in the underground stresses created by the removal of large volumes of oil, gas or water are large enough.

And, of course, we know that the Earth’s crust is pervasively fractured at depth by faults. These faults can sustain high stresses without slipping because natural "tectonic" stress and the weight of the overlying rock pushes the opposing sides of the fault together, increasing the frictional resistance to fault slip. The injected wastewater in deep wells can counteract the frictional forces on faults, causing an earthquake.

Not all wastewater disposal wells induce earthquakes. Of approximately 150,000 Class II injection wells in the United States, including roughly 40,000 waste fluid disposal wells for oil and gas operations, only a tiny fraction of these disposal wells have induced earthquakes that are large enough to be of concern to the public. Information on wastewater disposal wells and the US Environmental Protection Agency's Underground Injection Control program is available online.

Earthquakes induced by fluid-injection activities are not always located close to the point of injection. In some cases, the induced earthquakes have been located as far as 6 miles from the injection well.
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rcpratt said:
Yeah, uh...not that gas.
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Really? Care to explain the first line then..you know, since oil is used to make gasoline(or petrol..wtf ever) and all.

A spate of earthquakes across the middle of the U.S. is “almost certainly” man-made, and may be caused by wastewater from oil or gas drilling injected into the ground, U.S. government scientists said in a study.

And natural GAS (as I understand it) tends to be on TOP of oil...so either way, it's a lose lose.

As we all know, gas(oline) prices are controlled by string theory, so I stand by my first statement, because I fail to see how it isn't "that gas".
 
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considering the number of wells we have, a few cases of burning tap water are worth it😀

we do need the stuff bad.
 
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