{"id":24606,"date":"2015-07-28T15:18:18","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T20:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=24606"},"modified":"2015-07-28T15:20:28","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T20:20:28","slug":"oil-companies-shut-down-wells-near-earthquake-swarm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2015\/07\/28\/oil-companies-shut-down-wells-near-earthquake-swarm\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil Companies Shut Down Wells Near Earthquake Swarm"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_24609\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-24609\" alt=\"A disposal well in northwestern Oklahoma.\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/07\/20150519-eagle-plug-back213_WEB-300x199.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">A disposal well in northwestern Oklahoma.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>After a swarm of earthquakes recorded near the town of Crescent, which peaked with a 4.5-magnitude temblor on Monday,\u00a0state <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/2184005-occ-media-advisory-crescent-earthquakes.html\">regulators asked a pair of oil companies<\/a> to limit activity at three nearby disposal wells.<\/p><p>Monday&#8217;s quake caused light damage. Multiple people <a href=\"http:\/\/earthquake.usgs.gov\/earthquakes\/eventpage\/us200030gd#impact_dyfi\">reported feeling it in Arkansas<\/a>, more than 400 miles away<\/p><p>Oklahoma City\u2019s Devon Energy Production and Arkansas-based Stephens Energy Group agreed to shut down the two wells nearest the shaking. Stephens also agreed to cut by half the amount of waste fluid pumped into a third well, says Corporation Commission spokesperson Matt Skinner.<!--more--><\/p><p>\u201cAfter being informed of the conditions and our concerns, before we even talked about a directive or a technical meeting, all the operators simply volunteered to do whatever is necessary,\u201d he said.<\/p><p>All three wells were in active use and appeared to be injecting waste fluid into the Arbuckle, a zone near an underground formation linked to earthquake activity, Skinner says.<\/p><p>The Corporation Commission recently <a href=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2015\/07\/17\/state-authorities-broaden-disposal-well-regulations-in-earthquake-prone-regions\/\">broadened<\/a> its scrutiny of disposal wells, which scientists say are likely <a href=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/topic\/earthquakes-2\/\">fueling most of Oklahoma\u2019s earthquakes<\/a>. That crackdown is likely to continue and expand further.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a swarm of earthquakes recorded near the town of Crescent, which peaked with a 4.5-magnitude temblor on Monday,\u00a0state regulators asked a pair of oil companies to limit activity at three nearby disposal wells.Monday&#8217;s quake caused light damage. Multiple people reported feeling it in Arkansas, more than 400 miles awayOklahoma City\u2019s Devon Energy Production and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":24609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[490],"tags":[390,489,500,238],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24606"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24614,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24606\/revisions\/24614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}