State Geologists Say U.S.G.S Link Between Earthquakes and Fracking Unproven

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

April 16, 2012 | 1:46 PM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Youngstown, Ohio's Northstar 1 well has been tied to 12 earthquakes.

Last week we reported on a new U.S.G.S study to be published soon, which links fracking waste water disposal wells to a rash of earthquakes in the Mid-West. But Mike Soraghan from EnergyWire, spoke to geologists from two prominent fracking states, Oklahoma and Colorado, who take issue with the report.

The top geologists in Oklahoma and Colorado say scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey were too quick to conclude that disposal of oil and gas waste is linked to a rise in the number of earthquakes in the middle of the country.
“It’s unfortunate that they’ve jumped to this conclusion,” said Colorado state geologist Vince Matthews. “There really needs to be a good scientific understanding.”
Colorado and Oklahoma both had significant earthquakes last year. They also figure prominently in the findings of Bill Ellsworth and fellow USGS scientists that a rash of midcontinent earthquakes in the past 11 years or so is man-made and that the earthquakes appear to be linked to such oil and gas activity.

The U.S.G.S report did not link fracking itself to earthquakes, rather the use of deep injection wells to dispose of the waste water. The wells are used to shoot the frack water at high pressure deep into the earth. It’s mostly brine, but can also contain toxic chemicals.
In the EnergyWire report, the state geologists did not deny that earthquakes could be caused by deep injection wells, only that the data is not full proof.

But Keller said his office got so many inquiries after the USGS study hit the news last month that he put out a “position statement” on man-made earthquakes.
“It is unlikely that all of the earthquakes can be attributed to human activities,” the position statement says. “We consider a rush to judgment about earthquakes being triggered to be harmful to state, public and industry interests.”
Keller also noted that activists who oppose drilling and hydraulic fracturing had seized on such findings.

For more on the connection between Pennsylvania’s frack water, and Ohio’s man made earthquakes, check out Scott Detrow’s piece on Ohio’s deep injection wells.