Virginia Tech geoscientists have found that shallow wastewater injections can drive widespread deep earthquake activity in oil and gas production fields. The team came up with the finding after studying the Delaware Basin in western Texas, one of the most productive…
Geophysicists from the Southern Methodist University in Dallas found that decades of oil production activity in Texas have destabilized localities of an area about 10 000 km2 (4 000 mi2) populated by small towns, roadways and a vast network of oil and gas pipelines…
Study by Beatrice Magnani, USGS and other SMU scientists shows recent seismicity in Fort Worth Basin occurred on faults not active for 300 million years. The study indicates reactivation of long-dormant faults as a consequence of waste fluid injection. Recent…
A rash of earthquakes in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico recorded between 2008 and 2010 was likely due to fluids pumped deep underground during oil and gas wastewater disposal, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study. The study, which took place in…
Hydraulic fracturing has enabled a domestic oil and gas boom in the U.S., but its rapid growth has raised questions about what to do with the billions of gallons of wastewater that result. Researchers now report that treating the wastewater and releasing it into…
Each year, 2 to 16 percent of hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells spill hydrocarbons, chemical-laden water, hydraulic fracturing fluids and other substances, according to a study published yesterday in Environmental Science & Technology. The analysis,…
A record number of 907 earthquakes of magnitude greater or equal to 3.0 was reported in Oklahoma during 2015. A new study investigated the relationship between seismic activity and wastewater injection in the hope of aiding the regulators in reducing a risk of…
A shallow earthquake registered by the USGS as M5.0 hit the city of Cushing, Oklahoma at 01:44 UTC on November 7, 2016. The agency is reporting a depth of 5 km (3.1 miles). Today's quake hit just two months after M5.8, the strongest earthquake in Oklahoma's…
USGS Geophysicist Daniel McNamara said that September 3, 2016 Mw5.8 Pawnee, Oklahoma earthquake was not on a fault known by the USGS. Instead, it happened on a fault perpendicular which intersected the fault. Based on aftershock patterns, this one is an unknown…
The U.S. Geological Survey has updated the official magnitude of the September 3, 2016 Pawnee, Oklahoma earthquake to Mw5.8 (from 5.6), making it Oklahoma’s largest recorded earthquake to date. "The magnitude revision is based on further in-depth analysis…
