{"id":39065,"date":"2014-10-28T14:39:29","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T19:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=39065"},"modified":"2014-10-28T14:39:29","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T19:39:29","slug":"responding-to-quakes-texas-passes-disposal-well-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/10\/28\/responding-to-quakes-texas-passes-disposal-well-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Responding to Quakes, Texas Passes Disposal Well Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Texas Tribune:\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/h4>\n
\"A

Photo by Jennifer Whitney\/Texas Tribune<\/p>

A fracking fluid disposal well site near Gonzales, TX.<\/p><\/div>\n

Texas regulators\u00a0on Tuesday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0tightened rules for wells that dispose of oilfield waste, a response to the spate of earthquakes that have rattled North Texas.<\/p>\n

The three-member Texas Railroad Commission voted unanimously to adopt the rules, which require companies to submit additional information \u2013 including historic records of earthquakes in a region\u2013 when applying to drill a disposal well. The proposal also clarifies that the commission can slow or halt injections of fracking waste into a problematic well and require companies to disclose the volume and pressure of their injections more frequently.<\/p>\n

The commissioners \u2013 all Republicans \u2013 said the vote showed how well\u00a0Texans can\u00a0<\/strong>respond to issues without federal intervention.<\/p>\n

Commissioner Barry Smitherman<\/a> called the vote a \u201ctextbook example\u201d of how the commission identifies an issue and \u201cmoves quickly and proactively to address it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t need Washington,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The federal Environmental Protection Agency last month said it supported the proposed rules<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The number of disposal wells \u2014 deep resting places for liquid oil and gas waste \u2014 has surged amid Texas\u2019 drilling bonanza.\u00a0Texas has more than 3,600 active commercial disposal wells. In 2013, the Railroad Commission approved 668 permits for disposal wells, double the number of approvals\u00a0in 2009, according to state data. The trend corresponds with a surge of earthquakes in communities where such hazards were once unheard of.<\/p>\n

In the past year, about three-dozen earthquakes with a magnitude of\u00a02.0 or higher\u00a0<\/strong>have struck communities atop North Texas’ gas-rich Barnett Shale. Some quakes were strong enough to crack home walls and foundations. Most of the quakes hit months ago, though three of them \u2013 accompanied by thunderous booms \u2013 rattled the Dallas-Fort Worth area in September, waking some residents from sleep. A 2.2-magnitude quake shook an area outside of Irving earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Drilling areas in South and West Texas have also seen an uptick in quakes. That includes a\u00a03.2-magnitude tremor<\/a>\u00a0that hit Atascosa County,\u00a0just\u00a0south of San Antonio, on Sept. 10.<\/p>\n

As a\u00a0growing body of research<\/a>\u00a0links the drilling of disposal wells to earthquakes, those affected \u2014 including the\u00a0North Texas\u00a0mayors of Azle and Reno\u00a0\u2013\u00a0initially criticized<\/a>\u00a0what they described as a slow and disjointed response from the Railroad Commission.<\/p>\n

In April, the agency\u00a0hired a seismologist<\/a>\u00a0to study the issue and help shape the latest rules.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the commission\u2019s vote, the mayors said they were generally happy with the proposal, even if they had called for more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they did, I think it\u2019s acceptable,”\u00a0Alan Brundrett, the Azle mayor, said in an interview last month. “It wasn\u2019t every recommendation that we had, but it was quite a few of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brundrett, who called for more comprehensive seismicity tests before drilling, said the commission had grown more accessible in recent months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a lot better than it was. They are talking, and before they actually announced the proposed rules, the Railroad Commission called me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Texas Oil and Gas Association, the state’s biggest petroleum group, applauded the commission’s effort on earthquakes.<\/p>\n

Following the vote, Commissioner David Porter<\/a>\u00a0called the rules a work in progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe may have to amend it in the future depending on what information comes to light,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune<\/a> at http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2014\/10\/28\/responding-quakes-texas-passes-disposal-well-rules\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Texas Tribune:\u00a0 Texas regulators\u00a0on Tuesday\u00a0tightened rules for wells that dispose of oilfield waste, a response to the spate of earthquakes that have rattled North Texas. The three-member Texas Railroad Commission voted unanimously to adopt the rules, which require companies to submit additional information \u2013 including historic records of earthquakes in a region\u2013 when applying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[59],"tags":[211,104,50],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39065"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39065"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39068,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39065\/revisions\/39068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}