More Links Between Drilling and Earthquakes

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.

December 3, 2012 | 11:45 AM

A new study links oil and gas drilling activity to earthquakes with more certainty. EnergyWire reports that the paper will be presented this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

USGS scientists had been equivocal about links between drilling and chronic seismic activity near Trinidad, Colo., punctuated by a magnitude-5.3 convulsion in August 2011. According to an abstract for this week’s conference, they have now concluded that most, if not all, of the quakes “have been triggered by the deep injection of wastewater related to the production of natural gas from the coal-bed methane field here.”
University of Oklahoma seismologist Katie Keranen reported earlier this year that there was “a compelling link” between injection and the magnitude-5.6 earthquake in November that injured at least two people and damaged up to 200 structures east of Oklahoma City. Next week, she will present the results of a study done with researchers from USGS and Columbia finding that it was “likely triggered by fluid injection.”

The connection between earthquakes and drilling activity have focused on wastewater disposal through underground injections. But the connection has not been embraced by state regulators.