There’s a big difference, though, between most seismologists agreeing on what is happening and a legal finding that a particular disposal well operator is at fault. Drilling companies aren’t just going to step up and admit the connection, several lawyers said, because that would open them up to a slew of lawsuits.
Proving a direct link between a particular well and someone’s home would be “very difficult and would be very expensive to prove. So that’s not going to happen often,” said John McFarland, an oil and gas attorney from Austin.
Difficult, but not impossible. Five residents of the town of Greenbrier in western Arkansas sued Chesapeake Energy for damages to their homes from more than a thousand quakes that were determined to have been caused by disposal wells in 2012. The families settled for an undisclosed amount in 2013 — and agreed as part of the settlement not to publicly discuss the case. Similar cases against Chesapeake and BHP Billiton, an international oil, gas, and mineral producing company, are making their way through the Arkansas court system.
In the Greenbrier settlement, Chesapeake agreed to shut down four disposal wells in Faulkner County. Though Chesapeake paid off the homeowners, the company accepted no responsibility, continuing to maintain that the injection wells had no connection to the earthquakes.
In North Texas, Chesapeake, a major player in the Barnett Shale until recently, voluntarily shut down two of its injection wells in 2009 — one near the south end of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, the other in Cleburne — after a series of quakes hit those areas.
The airport well was considered particularly dangerous because the quakes cracked the surface near the airport, and University of Texas researchers found a possible connection between the well and a fault line. Airport officials worried that a quake directly on airport property could damage the surface of runways or taxiways, leading to disaster.
At the time, Chesapeake spokespersons made it clear that the energy giant did not believe there was any connection between the wells and the seismic activity, saying they were shutting them down as a precaution. Chesapeake did not respond to phone calls for this article.
A spokesman for Devon Energy, another major player in the Barnett Shale, said his company had “not weighed in on the topic.” He suggested contacting the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council, which is funded by the industry.
On its website, the “education” council asserts that “hydraulic fracturing as presently implemented for shale gas recovery does not pose a high risk for inducing felt seismic events.”
The quote comes from a 2012 paper produced by the Natural Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. But the peer-reviewed paper deals much more with the connection between injection wells and earthquakes than with fracking and quakes. No one at the council returned calls or e-mails seeking comment.
“Most scientists see a trend in these earthquakes coming on the heels of injection wells, but not everyone totally agrees,” explained Dr. George L. Choy, a geophysicist who has been with the USGS for 27 years. “Certainly in the Central U.S., we’ve seen the correlation between the expansion of the deployment of wells [and] an increase in seismic activity. That’s a trend. But when you look at a specific area, when you are talking about a specific house, you’ve got to have exacting data.”
That data, he said, is often not available. “Many disposal wells don’t keep records of how much they pumped … and at what pressure and when they pumped it.” Some states are now setting standards on the data collection for wastewater wells, he said.
In Texas, the Railroad Commission several months ago began requiring applicants for injection well licenses to provide USGS maps showing all recorded seismic events within 9 kilometers of the proposed well location. A second new rule would permit the commission to modify, suspend, or shut down an injection well “if injection is likely to be determined to be causing seismic activity.”
Choy said geologic and geophysical information is also needed to show a connection between specific wells and quake activity. The surveys needed to map the fault lines are very expensive, he said. “Now if an oil company thought they were going to work an area rich in natural gas, they might take that survey and share the data with us. Or they might not.”
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Greedheads are going to be greed-heads. Liars are liars. Repug Peckerwoods can be expected to remain Repug Peckerwoods. What’s new here?
Benny: You’re right. But we still do it because we learn about the issues first here in Fort Worth, and that is what gets out–along with the other nearby writers and activists–to New York and what they use as a basis for not allowing fracking. And it gets to Romania and England and Denmark and Germany—so you’re right, it’s not new that greed is greed, but the fault line issue is new enough and important enough to alert both our readers and others who have a stake in the game but didn’t know this issue existed.
Mr. Gorman, you’re absolutely right. I agree 100% with your reasoning and regret my wise-crack. My hat is off to you, Sir, and to Fort Worth Weekly. I am much more than certain that, may God forbid, if Fort Worth somehow lost the Weekly, we could never recover. You are very clearly an endearing piece of the Weekly and the Weekly is an outstanding accomplishment. May ya’ll live long and prosper. God bless you.
Hey Peter, I just snapped. Lynda Stokes, the Mayor over in Reno is my neighbor and customer at my fire-cracker stand out in Briar Tx., on the County Line. I can chunk a rock and hit her. I’m in big trouble now because I don’t know of a single soul in Reno, Briar, Parker County or Wise County who vote Democrat. I expect I’m sunk.
Thank you for your article. This is a topic that should be front page news on every paper! Please keep us posted. Natural gas an it’s horrific impact on our environment cannot be understated, we’re just oblivious to what our future holds. We need to wake up!
Not sure which injection well Ms. Wallace is referring to as being “re-opened.” There are no injection wells near the epicenter of the Irving/Dallas Earthquakes. But there are two unconventional wells that are in the immediate area of the earthquake zone. And prior to the implementation of the 2011 Fracking Disclosure Bill, there were no rules for operators to disclose the amount of water used for fracking operations. Unknown amounts of water were used to frack these two wells in 2008 and 2009. Sure do wish Ms. Wallace would tell us who told her that an injection well “re-opened.”