Blame for the surge in earthquakes in Oklahoma over the past five years is finally being placed where it belongs, on the oil and gas industry, despite the best efforts of that industry to buy off or chill efforts to expose the dangers of disposing the wastewater byproduct of oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing into the state's porous limestone foundation.
From 2010 to 2013, Oklahoma oil production jumped by two-thirds and gas production rose by more than one-sixth, according to federal figures. The amount of wastewater buried annually jumped one fifth, to nearly 1.1 billion barrels. And Oklahoma went from three earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater to 109 — and to 585 in 2014, and to 750-plus this year, should the current pace continue. In the United States, only Alaska is shaken more.The increase in earthquake activity is not directly caused by fracking, but by the disposal of the wastewater byproduct of oil drilling and fracking--a salty, often toxic miasma that is produced along with the oil and gas from wells, then theoretically removed to a "waste disposal site" where it is injected deep into the ground. With its conservative, deregulation-obsessed legislature and a poorer, rural population eager to reap the fruits from the state's dominant industry, Oklahoma has become a favored dumping ground for wastewater byproduct of fracking and drilling. The state's largest dumping site is situated over a massive bed of limestone. When the wastewater saturates the limestone, it expands into harder rock beds that contain the faults responsible for earthquakes.
“As long as you keep injecting wastewater along that fault zone, according to my calculations, you’re going to continue to have earthquakes,” said Arthur F. McGarr, the chief of the induced seismicity project at the federal Earthquake Science Center in Menlo Park, Calif., who has researched the Prague (OK)quakes. “I’d be a little worried if I lived there. In fact, I’d be very worried.”The results would appear to speak for themselves. In 2000 the state had no earthquakes. In 2014 alone it had 585 earthquakes. They do not, however, speak to the state's Governor, Republican Mary Fallin:
More than five years after the quakes began a sharp and steady increase, the strongest action by the Republican governor, Mary Fallin, has been to name a council to exchange information about the tremors. The group meets in secret, and has no mandate to issue recommendations.Like North Dakota, the state of Oklahoma is largely controlled by the oil and gas industry. Fallin is a prime recipient of the industry's political clout. Oklahoma's residents enjoy the largesse of royalties, taxes, jobs and perhaps most significantly, millions of dollars in grants and donations to its Universities.The State Legislature is considering no earthquake legislation. But both houses passed bills this year barring local officials from regulating oil and gas wells in their jurisdictions.
To his credit, Republican Oklahoma State legislator Jason Murphey points out the conflicts created by the cozy relationship between the oil industry and the scientific institutions within the state's university system. In an article published today the Guardian, Murphey points to the relationship between Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma oil tycoon and CEO of Continental Resources, one of the largest oil and gas drilling companies in the state, and the University of Oklahoma, whose President, former "Democratic" Senator David Boren (also on Continental's Board of Directors), recently went to bat for the industry by arranging a "meeting" between Hamm and the state's leading seismologist. Hamm is also one of the University's largest donors, and Boren has been paid 1.6 million in stock awards and Directors' fees from Hamm's conglomerate, Continental, since 2009.
The Oklahoma Geological Survey is Oklahoma's "go-to" agency on earthquake issues, providing the scientific analysis relied on by the state legislature and the public at large. It is affiliated with (i.e., gets major funding through) the University of Oklahoma.The lead seismologist of the Oklahoma Geological Survey is Austin Holland. Holland had gone on record early on connecting the rise in earthquake activity to the wastewater "injection" by oil and energy companies throughout the state. During his "meeting" with Hamm, Holland was treated to a "presentation" by Continental Resources which downplayed the connection between wastewater dumping and the "seismic swarms" of earthquakes enveloping the state, instead blaming it on factors such as lake water levels. After this "meeting," Holland, in effect the state's authoritative voice on the earthquakes, gradually became the industry's favorite skeptic. He is now regularly cited by the state's Petroleum Industry in their propaganda efforts to distance their wastewater dumping from Oklahoma's startling new epidemic of earthquakes.
State Representative Murphey is too politically cautious to do anything but wonder at the "pressure" that Holland must have faced from Boren and Hamm to revise his earlier conclusions. He is also too politically cautious to suggest that Holland may have felt his job or livelihood threatened or that he may simply have been influenced by some other means. Murphey has good reason to be cautious, as the climate for public discourse in Oklahoma is dominated by Continental and its surrogates:
Continental is seeking to shape that public discussion, arguing in newspapers, on television and to regulators that the earthquake epidemic is not man-made, but part of an unusually active period for quakes worldwide.Governor Fallin's rhetoric regarding the most potentially serious environmental issue to affect her state since the Dust Bowl also resembles the see-no-evil mantra of climate change denying politicians in the pocket of the oil industry:
“Oklahoma has always had seismic activity, but the reality is we are seeing more,” she said then. “It’s important that we study this issue and have sound science that can inform decisions.”Because the industry is so dominant in the state, the public is only now begin to demand an accounting through individual and class action lawsuits, and through public meetings and nascent grassroots efforts, detailed in the Times article linked above. Ultimately, no matter the efforts of the oil and gas industry or its proxies in Oklahoma's state government, it appears that Nature will have the final say:
Federal seismologists have for a year warned of rising earthquake risks. Last July, researchers stated in Science magazine that wastewater-induced earthquakes were approaching a fault near Oklahoma City capable of producing a magnitude 7.0 shock, though other experts call that unlikely. In January, scientists including Oklahoma’s state seismologist, Austin Holland, cited a rising quake risk and identified three faults capable of “significantly larger” earthquakes.As this Diary was written, Oklahoma was rocked by two separate 3.3 magnitude earthquakes.Last month, a South African geophysicist delivered the most specific warning yet: Another magnitude 5-plus quake could occur by 2016, and one fault running through Stillwater and two other cities potentially could yield up to a magnitude 6.5 shock.