Fracking Caused 100 Earthquakes in Just 1 Year

Fracking Operation Photo: Wikimedia Commons

By JG Vibes

Fracking is an operation that is used to extract natural gas from underneath the earth.  However, this practice has many dangers.  Many families have had their houses poisoned with gas and extraction chemicals. Now it is being confirmed that earthquakes are also happening as a result of fracking.

Wikipedia gives a more technical description of the practice:

Hydraulic fracturing is the fracturing of rock by a pressurized liquid. Some hydraulic fractures form naturally—certain veins or dikes are examples. Induced hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracturing, commonly known as fracking, is a technique in which typically water is mixed with sand and chemicals, and the mixture is injected at high pressure into a wellbore to create small fractures (typically less than 1mm), along which fluids such as gas, petroleum, uranium, and brine water may migrate to the well. The radial distance of influence of the process from the well bore is typically 150 yards. Hydraulic pressure is removed from the well, then small grains of proppant (sand or aluminium oxide) hold these fractures open once the rock achieves equilibrium.

It has long been assumed by anyone with common sense that fracking caused earthquakes, but now it is actually being admitted by the mainstream establishment.

New Scientist Reported that:

The new geophysical research, by Won-Young Kim at Columbia University in Palisades, New York, is the latest to suggest that the main risk of earthquakes associated with fracking relates to the way the water used in the operations is disposed of afterwards. In Ohio, the wastewater was injected into a deep well. This raised the pressure of water within the rock and triggered 109 small quakes between January 2011 and February 2012. The largest, on 31 December 2011, had a magnitude of 3.9.

In most cases where fracking is taking place, nearby property owners are having their homes poisoned and have absolutely no recourse to defend their property rights against this transgression.  Unfortunately, fracking is still somewhat popular publicly because people know very little about it and it is also popular politically because all of the politicians have a hand in it.