Did anyone feel the earthquakes in East Texas yesterday? (Cleburne: to move, discount)

[SVTRay]

Originally Posted by bluescreen73

Fair enough, but it's also idiotic to have disposal wells placed in an area with a known fault system. That's just asking for trouble, and in all likelihood these injection wells could conceivably increase the frequency of earthquakes along the fault line.

Third Earthquake in a Week Rumbles in East Texas Town of Timpson | StateImpact Texas

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

Well, here's a question for you:

If fracking is causing these earthquakes, then I wonder what caused all these earthquakes in east Texas prior to fracking?

Texas
Earthquake History

The October 22, 1882 earthquake felt, in Texas, was probably centered in Oklahoma or Arkansas; the total felt area covered about 375,000 square kilometers. At Sherman, Texas, heavy machinery vibrated, bricks were thrown from chimneys, and movable objects overturned. A May 3, 1887, earthquake in Sonora, Mexico, caused damage at Bavispe and was felt strongly in parts or Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The epicenter was in the Sierra Madre Occidental Range.

You're both right in my opinion.

First off, I have personally been on many Facing locations in West Texas and never felt a tremor. I did feel the 1990's Concho River Valley tremor but that was pre-oilfield days for me.

Texas does have fault lines and as Kathryn pointed out, has experienced Earth Quakes long before Fracing. So just because you hear/feel a quake doesn't mean it's due to Fracing. Now on the other hand, they have actually proven that deep injection wells have cause small tremors. So doing such things around fault lines can be considered risky or even wreckless. The problem with drilling injection wells is locating an area without minerals. A person drilling an injection well is only permitted to drill an injection well and not minerals for one thing. The second thing is, the menerial rights are generally owned/leased by someone else, if you struck oil for example, you wouldn't get a dime from it, maybe composition for drilling the hole. So injection well guys may not have a lot of options when drilling a well.

[TX75007]

Originally Posted by bluescreen73

I'm gonna get skewered for saying this but chances are those quakes are indirectly caused by fracking. No, not the actual fracking itself, but rather the injection of millions of gallons of used fracking solution into deep injection wells. There's pretty strong evidence that injection wells can induce earthquakes and there are several of them operating in Shelby County.

You mean the fracking they did in the 50s and 60s? That would be the only one that could effect this.

Just about every production well has been fracked long before the current horizontal/fracking practice began.

The current practice works on large relatively thin and horizontal beds of shale - and the water is trapped in that layer. No way for it to lubricate a fault.

[TX75007]

Originally Posted by bluescreen73

Fair enough, but it's also idiotic to have disposal wells placed in an area with a known fault system. That's just asking for trouble, and in all likelihood these injection wells could conceivably increase the frequency of earthquakes along the fault line.

Third Earthquake in a Week Rumbles in East Texas Town of Timpson | StateImpact Texas

LOL. Don't tell the geologists in California who drill into faults and steam chambers all the time...

Rain and subsurface water move orders of maginitude more water than injection wells.

[bluescreen73]

Originally Posted by TX75007

You mean the fracking they did in the 50s and 60s? That would be the only one that could effect this.

Just about every production well has been fracked long before the current horizontal/fracking practice began.

The current practice works on large relatively thin and horizontal beds of shale - and the water is trapped in that layer. No way for it to lubricate a fault.

I'm not talking about the actual fracking, I'm talking about the disposal of used fracking fluid in injection wells, and the USGS has data going back almost 50 years that shows a causal link between injection wells and induced seismic activity. Will science ever be able to definitively prove the link between deep injection wells and seismic activity? Probably not in our lifetime but it's just a tad bit more than coincidence that areas like Cleburne (which never recorded an earthquake prior to 2008) suddenly become seismically active around the same time injection wells come into heavy use.

[tExPatriot]

I didn't feel anything in Longview

[KathrynAragon]

Hey, my dad had a really great idea about how to "catch" an earthquake, before you really know what's going on. Place two glasses (made of glass) touching each other on the counter or a table top. The instant there's a tremor, those glasses will start clinking together.

I thought that was a pretty good idea myself. OK yes - I have two glasses sitting out on my counter touching each other.

[Two4damoney]

I remember the Northridge quake when I was still living in California. That was a doozy.
1994 Northridge earthquake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by Two4damoney

I remember the Northridge quake when I was still living in California. That was a doozy.
1994 Northridge earthquake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wow, 6.7! That's pretty scary!

When I was a kid, we lived in Japan. Earthquakes were very common, but every once in awhile one would really get your attention - like the one that threw me out of my bed in the middle of the night! We used to all run outside and stand in the yard with all our neighbors and just wait...wait...for the next tremor. Pretty nerve wracking. Here are a few that happened while I lived there:

April 1, 1968 7.5
May 16, 1968 8.2

We lived in Yokohama, so we weren't at the epicenter of either of these, but believe me, we felt them. I think it was the second one that knocked me right out of my bed in the middle of the night! It was the freakiest thing ever!

[High_Plains_Retired]

Here's the USGS Seismic Hazard map for Texas:

Texas

[tempratt]

I have a sister that lives in Rockwall and she didn't feel anything. I guess that's east Texas but not close enough to have noticed.