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Texas city in fracking area is rocked by 11 earthquakes in 24 hours

Texas city in fracking area is rocked by 11 earthquakes in 24 hours

By on 8 Jan 2015 12:04 pmcommentsShare

On the heels of a report linking 77 earthquakes in Ohio to fracking, a Texas city in an area rife with drilling operations was hit with a wave of 11 earthquakes in 24 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. The most intense registered 3.6 on the Richter scale, well over the level at which people would feel it — the local 911 service received more than 300 calls from residents trying to figure out what was going on.

Dallas Morning News

These recent quakes bring the total number to 26 since October in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. James Joiner reports at The Daily Beast that north Texas has seen more than a hundred quakes since 2008, when fracking operations began to ramp up, a dramatic increase from years previous.

Something similar is going on in neighboring Oklahoma, where, as we mentioned yesterday, there have been 586 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater in just one year — the most of any state in the contiguous U.S. in 2014. Between 1975 and 2008, the state only got, on average, three earthquakes of this magnitude per year.

Scientists are pretty clear that Oklahoma’s booming oil and gas industry holds a hefty chunk of the blame for the uptick in seismic activity. And now some residents of Irving — where, as it happens, ExxonMobil is headquartered — are asking questions too. From the Daily Beast article:

Irving itself has more than 2,000 [fracking] sites nearby, and some of the more than 216,000 state wide “injection wells” responsible for disposing of fracking’s wastewater byproduct are in close proximity. Located thousands of feet below the ground, these wells hold millions of gallons of chemically tainted h2o, and … the pressure and liquid combination can combine to “lubricate” fault lines. And that may well be what is happening in the Barnett Shale region around, yes, Dallas and Irving.

Barnett Shale is the largest land-based gas field in Texas, with an estimated 40 trillion cubic feet of natural gas just waiting to be hammered out of the ground … It’s a nearly bottomless potential bank account for corporations with the resources to drill and grind. But, as the people of Irving are now discovering, all of this poking and prodding is not without potential consequences.

Furthermore, seismologists warn that these drilling-related quakes have a good chance of getting worse as more and more wastewater is injected into to the ground. That’s bad news for the folks in Irving, Texas (and in Oklahoma, and Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and Colorado … ).

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Texas city in fracking area is rocked by 11 earthquakes in 24 hours

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Texas city in fracking area is rocked by 11 earthquakes in 24 hours

Dallas — yes, Dallas — bans fracking in most of the city

Dallas — yes, Dallas — bans fracking in most of the city

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The growing wave of local fracking bans is sweeping into Texas, where the state’s third largest city has put a near-total kibosh on the practice.

The Dallas City Council adopted new rules on Wednesday that bar hydraulic fracturing within 1,500 feet of a home, school, church, or well. Dallas is now the largest of five Texan cities and towns that have imposed local restrictions on fracking. The city, which sits at the edge of the gas-rich Barnett Shale area, had previously imposed a safety buffer of 300 feet and banned fracking in parks and flood plains.

Because Dallas contains more than a half million homes, the new rule effectively outlaws fracking through most of the city. “[W]e might as well save a lot of paper and write a one-line ordinance that says there will be no gas drilling in the city of Dallas,” quipped a council member who voted against the new rules. “That would be a much easier ordinance to have.”

A gas company representative agreed: “You just can’t drill under these conditions,” he said. Naturally, industry folks are warning that economic woe will ravage Dallas in the wake of the vote.

The Dallas Morning News points out that drilling in the city seemed inevitable in 2007:

Six years later, the city still has no wells because of changing market conditions and disputes among drillers, the city and drilling opponents.

Drilling in the Barnett Shale has cooled off, and companies have shipped most well rigs elsewhere. But that could change if gas prices rise — an economic possibility that underscored the questions before the council.

While drillers cry foul, environmentalists are praising the council’s vote. “The ordinance that passed today was not perfect,” said Zach Trahan of the Texas Campaign for the Environment. “It has weaknesses. But it’s a huge, huge step in the right direction and we’re very pleased the mayor and council voted to approve the ordinance.”

J.R. Ewing must be rolling in his grave. But it’s not like the old days anymore — and awesome hairstyles aside, that’s a good thing:


Source
Dallas Council Passes Gas Drilling Ordinance With Restrictions, CBS
Dallas OKs gas drilling rules that are among nation’s tightest, The Dallas Morning News
Dallas City Council Approves More Restrictive Gas Drilling Ordinance, StateImpact

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Dallas — yes, Dallas — bans fracking in most of the city

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dallas — yes, Dallas — bans fracking in most of the city