Area scientist: Link between fracking, quakes 'bears watching'

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November 11, 2011

By JOE MAHONEY Staff Writer The Daily Star Fri Nov 11, 2011, 02:30 AM EST

COOPERSTOWN -- Can hydraulic fracturing trigger earthquakes?

That concern has been on the minds of many scientists as the natural gas industry expands its drilling operations across the United States.

Concern over possible linkage surfaced again last weekend following a flurry of earthquakes in Oklahoma. But government scientists said those earthquakes were too big to be caused by manmade activity and noted they occurred near a well-known fault in the Earth's crust.

At the same time, government agencies have documented linkage between seismic activity and mining.

Whether hydrofracking itself can produce significant earthquakes "is something that bears watching," observed Ronald Bishop, a State University College at Oneonta chemistry professor who has given lectures in the area on the science behind cracking through shale to extract natural gas deposits.

Last week, European gas driller Cuadrilla Resources acknowledged shale gas exploration work likely triggered minor tremors near one of its drill site in northwestern England earlier in the year.

The tremors in April and May were pegged at 2.3 and 1.5 on the Richter scale.

Drawing connections between earthquakes and hydrofracking would require studying numerous seismic events, said Rowena Lohman, an earthquake expert and assistant professor in Cornell University's Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department.

"The question is: Does it speed up the clock on one that may be ready to go anyway?" Lohman said. She also noted: "It makes sense that when you take a whole bunch of material out of area that it is going to change the stress state in it."

However, the tremors in the United States that appear to be linked to gas exploration, she said, "are the size you wouldn't be able to feel."

The gas industry sees no significant risks between drilling and quakes.

John Holko, a member of the board of directors of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York, said, "As far as we're concerned, there really is no correlation" between fracking and earthquakes.

The earthquakes that have occurred near drilling sites, he said, have been "naturally occurring and do not relate to any sort of man-made activity. Everyone wants to point a finger of blame at hydraulic fracturing. But that's not the animal."

Bishop said hydrofracking could spark seismic activity through the use of the so-called slickwater that fractures the shale. "They might be actually promoting seismic activity not because of the pressures but because of the lubrication they use on these various faults."

He said there are two significant faults that traverse the northern two-thirds of Otsego County. "The drillers know where they are," he said.

As to whether hydrofracking should be allowed while research continues into possible linkage between drilling and earthquakes, Bishop said: "If we were in Europe, this would be an easy call. The government would have already shut these programs down. But we're not. We are in the type of regulatory environment where you accept some risks with every endeavor."

Bishop was also critical of the state Department of Environmental Conservation's hydrofracking permitting process, which is at the stage of soliciting public comment on draft regulations. He said the agency is using outdated geological maps that do not show all the fault lines now known to exist across New York.

"They are not working with the latest maps that are available," Bishop said. Why the DEC ignores it (the latest mapping), I don't know."

A DEC spokeswoman said she had no immediate information available on the mapping issues raised by Bishop.

To help fill the knowledge gap, the National Academy of Sciences has launched a study into the possible role of energy drilling in seismic activity, research agency spokeswoman Jennifer Walsh said.

That study is expected to wrap up by the late summer of 2012, she said.