Fracking Earthquakes

Posted on 03/07/2011 at 8:20 pm by JM Ashby

Posted by JM Ashby

As if more reasons were required to be skeptical of the gas-drilling technique known as “fracking,” now the practice has been linked to causing earthquakes in addition to other forms of mayhem such as flammable drinking water.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Two natural gas companies have agreed to temporarily suspend use of injection wells in central Arkansas where earthquakes keep occurring.

Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy and Clarita Operating of Little Rock told the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission on Friday that they’ve stopped operation of the wells near Greenbrier and Guy pending the panel’s next regular meeting on March 29.

The commission says there is likely a link between the wells and the earthquakes. There have been more than 800 quakes in the area in the past six months and a magnitude 4.7 quake – the strongest in Arkansas in 35 years – hit there Sunday.

What could possibly go wrong? See — Gasland

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  • claireworn80

    Mmmmmm….but fire water tastes sooooooo good, especially when the house is shaking.

  • LaceFace

    fracking is all around bad bad bad news. i read a vanity fair article called “A Gigantic Fracking Mess” a year or so ago about fracking on the Marcellus Shale up north, and ordinary people were up against a TX oil company that was drilling underneath their land without proper leases, and yes, those people’s kitchen sink water could be lit on fire, due to all the methane in their ground water, which was released by the fracking process. It makes families and animals sick, and yet it’s being advertised as the new cool thing with oil companies. Natural gas is hip! I read that the EPA was requesting to do an evaluation on the real effects of fracking, But I haven’t been able to find out whether or not the eval is actually going to happen in the near future. Houston’s mayor recently allowed companies to frack inside Houston city limits, under parks and residential areas, just for the payoff from the gas companies. Wonder if Houstonians are going to start experiencing earthquakes and fire water now? Bad bad bad news.