By Susie
I wonder when it will become as unthinkable to cause greater harm for businesses as it is to tax them fairly:
The injection of wastewater from natural gas drilling into a disposal well probably caused a dozen earthquakes in Ohio, state officials said Friday, prompting new regulations to deal with the issue.
The findings about the probable cause of the earthquakes, which occurred in the Youngstown area between March and late December 2011, are certain to intensify an increasingly bitter debate about the safety of hydraulic fracturing within states that sit atop natural gas deposits.
Hydraulic fracturing injects sand and water laced with chemicals into the earth at high pressure to break apart shale rock formations and free natural gas trapped inside. The process, also known as fracking, creates wastewater that must be disposed of, often by injecting it into a disposal well, as companies did in Northeast Ohio.
“After investigating all available geological formation and well activity data, ODNR regulators and geologists found a number of co-occurring circumstances strongly indicating the Youngstown area earthquakes were induced,” state officials stated. “Specifically, evidence gathered by state officials suggests fluid from the Northstar 1 disposal well intersected an unmapped fault in a near-failure state of stress causing movement along that fault.”
Fracking aside, do we really need more natural gas? Natural gas is so plentiful that the price of the stuff is at a 30 year low. There must be some other reason why Big Oil is so eager to pump fracking solution into the ground in such massive quantities?
As a person who has been to school in the study of Geology and Earth Sciences and a former environmental professional, the total lack of regulation on fracking is very disturbing.
In the quest of non renewable energy sources, some seem to forget that WATER is a non renewable resource as well and is a more basic need than gas.
But, the earthquake phenomenon. That is so scary. Man made earthquakes. For energy sources. One could have nightmares about that.
I am old enough to remember when movies that had the Evil Ones seek world domination by creating man made earthquakes using huge machines in secret island hideaways were a joke. Who knew it was so easy and they would do it in plain sight?
Regulatory control being undertaken in Kasich’s Ohio? I bet the end of this process is a set of regs that give the corporate frackers civil immunity. FYI Have you checked your home insurance coverage; you will find that you are uninsured for earthquakes.