How Fracking Causes Earthquakes, But Not the One in Virginia

• 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.

Soon after the 5.9 earthquake struck Mineral, Va. on Tuesday the internet was buzzing with speculation that fracking could have caused the rare east coast quake. It turns out that injecting large amounts of fluid deep into the earth can result in “micro-quakes.”
Geologist James Coleman, who works for the U.S. Geological Survey, says fracking can create quakes, but not those as large as the one in Virginia.
“It’s pretty clear that in some areas, underground injection of wastewater causes relatively small earthquakes, smaller than what we had here in Virginia, but disturbing to some people,” said Coleman.
Fracking has been linked by some geologists to small earthquakes in Arkansas, Colorado, and England. But an industry official assured Coleman on Tuesday that Mineral, Va. has not been the site of any fracking.
Recent quakes in Colorado have prompted some scientists to start looking into the connection between earthquakes and fracking.

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