WATCHDOG EARTH

Could a Kentucky fracking boom bring quakes?

James Bruggers
Louisville Courier Journal

With Kentucky making a bid for its own fracking boom, the U.S. Geological Survey this week came out with a new study showing the federal agency's scientists are more convinced than ever that drilling waste disposal is causing lots of earthquakes in the central and eastern United States.

Oklahoma has in recent years become the earthquake capitol of the United States - not California.

Go figure.

And scientists are doing just that.

The USGS study comes as the Kentucky Geological Survey has been casting a wider net to study any potential induced-earthquakes from oil and gas drilling in eastern Kentucky. So far, the KGS says, there have been no known induced earthquakes attributed to oil and gas drilling -- yet, anyway.

Getting back to that new USGS report: It outlines a preliminary set of models to forecast how hazardous ground shaking could be in the areas where sharp increases in seismicity have been recorded. USGS scientists also identified and mapped 17 areas within eight states with increased rates of induced seismicity. "Since 2000, several of these areas have experienced high levels of seismicity, with substantial increases since 2009 that continue today," USGS said, calling it the first comprehensive assessment of the hazard levels associated with induced earthquakes in these areas.

USGS mainly attributed new quakes to the injection of wastewater deep underground. So it's not so much the fracking itself, the injection of water, sand and chemicals pumped into rock formations to free up the oil and gas, but the subsequent injection of that wastewater for disposal, according to USGS.

"The picture is very clear" that wastewater injection can cause faults to move, said USGS geophysicist William Ellsworth in an Associated Press story on the report.

USGS is exploring how to incorporate injection-induced earthquakes into U.S. seismic hazard maps, which sounds like a good thing.

Mark Petersen, chief of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Modeling Project, said: "These earthquakes are occurring at a higher rate than ever before and pose a much greater risk to people living nearby. The USGS is developing methods that overcome the challenges in assessing seismic hazards in these regions in order to support decisions that help keep communities safe from ground shaking."

As for Kentucky, a recently published KGS Fact Sheet on induced seismicity concluded there have been no known cases of earthquakes induced by fracking or wastewater injection in Kentucky being either felt by people or detected by the state's seismic motion network. According to KGS: "This is likely a result of the low volumes of fluids used in either hydraulic- or nitrogen-based stimulations historically conducted in Kentucky, and a lack of seismic monitoring stations in the immediate vicinity of the injection activities."

But that could change with the development of the Rogersville Shale, which would entail high-volume hydraulic stimulation. KGS acknowledged.

Meanwhile, the State Journal in Frankfort reports that Kentucky's oil and gas commission has granted a permit for the first horizontal deep well fracking operation last week in Rogersville Shale:

The commission granted a drilling permit to Horizontal Technology Energy Company of Pennsylvania that will set up an oil and natural gas drilling operation in Johnson County. Based off of a recommendation by hearing officer Gordon Slone, the company will drill at a target depth of 11,200 feet and has been approved for a vertical depth of 15,000 feet.

At an earlier meeting, the commission had blocked citizens from asking questions about the permit. Then later, Kentucky regulators promised three public meetings on oil and gas drilling, without detailing the time and places of those meetings except to say they would be in Hazard, Somerset, and Madisonville.

It's a good bet that the question of earthquake risk for Kentucky will come up at those meetings, especially given the latest report from the USGS, and the KGS's proactive monitoring effort.

I have previously reported that the whole fracking debate is rather new to Kentucky, which has not typically had the deep, horizontal kind of fracking using mixtures of chemicals in water to free up oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids from certain types of geology -- a practice that has produced an economic boon and environmental battles elsewhere. But it's been getting a lot of attention across Central Kentucky as recent months as companies begin to test the Rogersville Shale formation.

I also previously reported that Kentucky's oil and gas industry supports the conversion of the Tennessee Gas pipeline from natural gas to natural gas liquids as vital infrastructure, should Kentucky get a big new oil and gas play.

The Kentucky Oil and Gas Association's executive director, Andrew McNeill, referred to the new test well into the Rogersville Shale formation across Eastern Kentucky in explaining that support.

"What is the potential? We don't know yet," he said. But if companies hit it big, oil and gas producers in Kentucky will need a way to get their natural gas liquids to market, too, and could tie into the repurposed pipeline, he said.

"Our producers see a lot of benefit," McNeill added.