A Chesapeake Energy natural gas well site.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Ralph Wilson
The controversial oil and gas drilling technique of hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, triggered 400 small earthquakes in Ohio over a three-month period in 2013, according to new peer-reviewed research published Tuesday.
Conducted by seismologists Paul Friberg, Ilya Dricker, and Glenda Besana-Ostman, the research reveals a previously undiscovered fault line approximately two miles below three horizontal gas wells near the town of Uhrichsville, Ohio. In one instance, the researchers say they detected 190 tiny earthquakes below one of those wells during a 39-hour period starting just after that well was fracked.
The earthquakes were too small to be felt in all cases, but Friberg said they were stronger than he initially expected.
“Hydraulic fracturing has the potential to trigger earthquakes, and in this case, small ones that could not be felt,” he said in a statement, “however the earthquakes were three orders of magnitude larger than normally expected.”
The technique of fracking works, essentially, by […]
