5.6 Fracking Earthquake Hits Oklahoma

Driven by profit at the expense of prudence, oil and gas operations around the world are jeopardizing the planet's ecosystem in some very far-reaching ways that could reach thousands of years in their impact. Last night's record-setting earthquake is the latest hit. How much will we let these criminals get away with?

by Paul Noel
for Pure Energy Systems News

Well it has happened. In Oklahoma near Guthrie we just had a 5.6 earthquake with major damage in the area, and is being called the biggest ever to hit the state since record-keeping began. (Link | 2)

This is not a natural earthquake. This is due to fracking operations going on in the area. Sorry for the folks making excuses for the oil and gas operations. This one is theirs at 5 km (3.1miles, 16,500 Feet). Its depth is square in the region affected by their drilling. It may in fact be exactly at their drill depth.

On November 5, 2011 at 2:12 AM CDT (07:12:45.4 UTC) an magnitude 4.7 earthquake occurred in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. This turned out to be a foreshock to a much larger earthquake. The mainshock occurred at 10:53 PM CDT (11-6 03:53:10 UTC). The earthquakes occurred about 6 miles northwest of Prague and 5.2 miles southeast of Sparks. These earthquakes occurred very close to where a magnitude 4.3 earthquake occurred on February 27, 2010. From the location of the earthquake and the focal mechanism it is most likely that this earthquake occurred on the Wilzetta fault also known as the Seminole uplift. We are currently working to locate the numerous aftershocks will continue to update information as we can. (Oklahoma Geological Survey)

There are several points here
(1) This is massive. The force here is equivalent to about 100 million tons of TNT detonation.
(2) This earthquake has the potential for very real damage to things like hydroelectric pools.
(3) This may in fact be below the fracking operations somewhat but it is well within the zone that is affected by the ground shifts associated with these operations.
(4) While some of the energy here may be natural in origin, this is a man caused event.
(5) The pattern here is wrong for natural earthquakes. We have seen a steady rise in earthquake intensity in the area over the past few months and this is atypical of any natural pattern.
(6) Anyone who believes those ads about fracking being below impermeable barrier rock are ignorant fools. This quake has fractured these barriers for probably 50 miles around the area.
(7) This damage is about to increase dramatically in the next year. We may see earthquakes in the USA in the scale of 7 or 8 on the Richter scale from such man caused disasters and they will do extreme damage due to their shallow locations.

Now for those who don't understand what fracking does:

Fracking is short for "Hydraulic Fracturing" of the rock.

A very large well is drilled to depths typically between 5,000 and 20,000 feet deep depending upon 3-D sound imaging technology reports on the area. These reports tell exactly where the target rocks are.

This well is then directionally drilled out in what in some cases may be a single direction and in other cases may actually be multiple drillings of many directions so that the drill bit extends laterally in the rock layers for up to one mile around the well location. This well is then cemented and cased so that massive amounts of material can be pumped down into the ground to fracture the beds.

Nowadays these companies are pushing the technology even further to fracture numerous wells in the same area at the same time.

The basic function here is that the material you push down spreads out in the cracks between the layers of the rock and literally jacks up the entire region for up to a mile or more around the well. In the Guthrie location, where this quake was, they were jacking at multiple locations attempting to cause the whole region to lift at the same time over many square miles. Obviously it had very serious consequences.

This is only one of the consequences that can occur from such drilling. All drilling of this nature causes land subsidence. At Oak Hills Naval Oil Reserve, the hill there was lowered by 73 feet until the oil companies working the deposit pumped back in salt water to restore some of its elevation. In Mexico nearly the entire state of Campache is supported on a bubble of nitrogen which if it breached would sink the area beneath the sea. Same reason: land subsidence. In Texas, near Houston, they had to stop many oil removal operations due to salt intrusion as they sank the coast of Texas. This was many years ago. This has been seen everywhere such extraction operations have happened.

Fracking is a more efficient method of removal of the oil from the land. The efficiency here is stunningly greater than anything we have known. Oilfields are seeing as much as 100 times the amount of oil or natural gas evolution than the fields produced from standard wells. This will correspond to massive land subsidence.

The US Army Corps of Engineers is considering the effects that this will have. They know very well that dams will break and that large areas of the USA may become depressed and flood from this effect. Do not imagine these areas to be small. The areas of these oil fields in many cases cover areas many miles across and many miles long. We may well see some of the largest man made lakes on the continent formed by such actions.

This brings up a serious point regards oil. Nobody has been willing to do a full life cycle cost analysis of the use of oil. Oil may be cheap as a fuel if you don't consider loss of land, and events like we have just seen in Oklahoma. Who will compensate the people there whose houses, buildings and such are damaged? How about the State of Oklahoma who has damaged highways? This I assure you is merely a sampler of things to come out of fracking. This earthquake has done many millions in damage and the totals may hit billions. Much of the damage will not be obvious for some time.

I am not, believe it or not, against fracking. However; it is entirely clear that this process must be highly regulated and the withdrawals of oil must be regulated very strongly as well. This is in the interest of all involved. The oilmen are about to crash their market and do serious economic damage to a lot of people as they do it. This isn't in their interest. The damage done to the land must be accounted for and the process must be slowed down and handled carefully. The destruction here is getting too big to handle.

There is a gold rush going on in the oil industry right now. They are absolutely mad for the black gold. The oil men are not being reasonable. They are about to do damage to our continent on a scale unimaginable to everyone including them. This damage, once done, will not be recovered possibly in thousands of years. This is most irresponsible.

I am aware that some ignorant fools will try to excuse this off. I am absolutely certain that some "professional" or "expert" opinions will arise that try to argue this is not a man caused earthquake. This wasn't some latent fault action, and everyone knows it in the area. It happened as a direct result of the Oil and Natural Gas drilling in the area. The location is entirely wrong for natural causes. This is like the earthquakes at Patronius and at Atmore associated with Gas drilling in or near Alabama.

This is like the string of over 3,000 earthquakes that happened last year northwest of Little Rock, AR, which were ascribed by the Arkansas GS experts to the Gas Fracking there.