Study Ties Fracking To California Earthquakes
How will this issue effect California primary voters since the Sanders and Clinton have such clearly different positions on the drilling issue?
Injecting old, used water from oil and gas drilling in California has been tied to earthquakes for the first time, according to a new study released Thursday. Wastewater injections have already been tied to earthquakes in Colorado and Oklahoma.
The study comes as fracking in California is growing in scope — and in attention. During fracking, chemical-laced, saline water is injected at high pressure thousands of meters underground, loosening deposits of oil and gas. The process, as well as other forms of so-called enhanced oil recovery, creates huge amounts of wastewater, which is often disposed of by being injected into storage wells. (It is also occasionally reused in agriculture or dumped in the ocean.)
California’s wastewater injections have already raised concerns and prompted lawsuits, after environmentalists discovered oil and gas companies have received permits from the Dept. of Conservation to inject into protected aquifers.
According to the new study, which tied a set of 2005 earthquakes near Bakersfield, Calif., to wastewater disposal, injection wells can potentially cause earthquakes several kilometers away, both in the short term and months or even years after the injections take place. The earthquakes studied in the recent report occurred roughly five miles from the injection sites. Bakersfield, in Kern County, is roughly 50 miles from the San Andreas Fault.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/02/05/3746653/california-link-earthquakes-fracking/
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