fracking

Hydraulic Fracturing Articles

1. What environmentalists get wrong when they use the California drought to attack fracking

   Apr 13, 2015 | The Washington Post

   By Chris Mooney
   
   
   With the continual worsening of California’s drought, an odd argument — in some ways as much meme as argument — has arisen. It’s the notion that in the context of the drought, it’s important to cut back on the water used in industrial hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” operations in the state.
2. Study suggests fracking could release radon from ground

   Apr 9, 2015 | USA Today

   By Liz Szabo and Doyle Rice
   
   
   Levels of cancer-causing radon gas in Pennsylvania homes have increased as the fracking industry has expanded, a new study shows. The study is a preliminary "first look" into a possible connection between fracking and radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas, says co-author Joan Casey. While the study doesn't conclusively prove that fracking releases radon from the ground, the findings are concerning, says Casey, a researcher at the University of California-Berkeley and University of California-San Francisco.
3. Bloomberg Criticizes New York Fracking Ban

   Apr 8, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal

   By Amy Harder and Erica Orden
   
   
   Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized the state’s ban on hydraulic fracturing, describing the move as “misguided” and instead touting the benefits of natural gas. “It’s a misguided policy,” Mr. Bloomberg said Wednesday in a phone interview with The Wall Street Journal. “To keep coal-fired power plants in upstate New York and not frack doesn’t make any sense at all.”
4. As Quakes Rattle Oklahoma, Fingers Point to Oil and Gas Industry

   Apr 3, 2015 | New York Times

   By By Richard A. Oppel, Jr. and Michael Wines
   
   
   Yanked without warning from a deep sleep, Jennifer Lin Cooper, whose family has lived near here for more than a half-century, could think only that the clamor enveloping her house was coming from a helicopter landing on her roof. She was wrong. A 5.0-magnitude earthquake — the first of three as strong or stronger over several days in November 2011 — had peeled the brick facade from the $117,000 home she bought the year before. Ms. Cooper, 36, could not get out until her father pried a stuck storm door off the front entrance. Repairs have so far cost $12,000 and forced her to take a second job, at night, to pay the bill. At a packed town hall meeting days later, Ms. Cooper said, state officials called the shocks, including a 5.7 tremor that was Oklahoma’s largest ever, “an act of nature, and it was nobody’s fault.” Many scientists disagree. They say those quakes, and thousands of others before and since, are mainly the work of humans, caused by wells used to bury vast amounts of wastewater from oil and gas exploration deep in the earth near fault zones. And they warn that continuing to entomb such huge quantities risks more dangerous tremors — if not here, then elsewhere in the state’s sprawling well fields.
5. Exclusive: California used 70 million gallons of water in fracking in 2014

   Apr 3, 2015 | Reuters

   By Rory Carroll
   
   
   California oil producers used 214 acre-feet of water, equivalent to nearly 70 million gallons, in the process of fracking for oil and gas in the state last year, less than previously projected, state officials told Reuters on Thursday. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, occurs when water and some chemicals are injected deep underground at high pressure to break up rock and release oil and gas into wells.

Full Text of Stories Below

Hydraulic Fracturing Articles

1. What environmentalists get wrong when they use the California drought to attack fracking

   Apr 13, 2015 | The Washington Post

   By Chris Mooney

   With the continual worsening of California’s drought, an odd argument — in some ways as much meme as argument — has arisen. It’s the notion that in the context of the drought, it’s important to cut back on the water used in industrial hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” operations in the state.

   Here’s one example of the basic idea being expressed, by Californians Against Fracking:

   But there’s one problem. Whatever you might think about fracking — and there is ample room for disagreement on this complex issue — it is pretty hard to argue that the amount of water that the oil and gas technology uses in California reaches a scale sufficient to count as a major drought contributor. Rather, in the grand context of California’s water woes, the numbers appear small indeed.

   How small?

   While it’s not clear where the 2 million gallon figure above comes from, Reuters recently reported that California oil companies used “214 acre-feet of water, equivalent to nearly 70 million gallons, in the process of fracking for oil and gas in the state last year, less than previously projected.” The story, which cited “state officials” for the figure, was widely read, and the factoid ended up in viral images like this one.

   Seventy million gallons may sound like a large number. But in the context of California’s drought, it’s not. In December, NASA noted that it would take 11 trillion gallons to end the drought.

   And in a blog post recently, Michael Campana, a hydrologist at Oregon State University, tore into those citing the 70 million number, noting that in 2010, California’s freshwater “withdrawals” amounted to “31 billion gallons per day or 11.3 trillion gallons per year” (excluding thermoelectric withdrawals, which Campana said he assumed were “not freshwater”).

   What does that mean for the fracking number? Campana writes:

   Fracking accounts for 0.00062% (or 0.0000062) of the state’s annual freshwater withdrawals. A lot of water? Not in my book. In fact, I thought there was an error – that the figure should have been 70M gallons per day. But note that locally 70 MGY could be a significant amount.

   Similarly, California Gov. Jerry Brown was recently asked by “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd, “Considering how much water, by the way, is used for fracking, isn’t that, alone, your water crisis in California, isn’t that alone enough reason to prohibit fracking, or temporarily stop it?” Brown responded, “Fracking in California has been going on for more than 50 years. It uses a fraction of the water of fracking on the East Coast, for gas, particularly. This is vertical fracking for the most part. It is different.”

   Vertical fracking means that while water is indeed being blasted underground to crack rock, it isn’t being combined with horizontal or “sideways” drilling, a relatively new technology that has enabled the unconventional oil and gas revolution by allowing for the drilling of long lateral passages beneath the ground, following a roughly 90-degree turn of the drill. Rock Zierman, chief executive of the California Independent Petroleum Association, says that most fracking in California is indeed vertical rather than horizontal, due to the state’s particular geology.

   “Hydraulic fracturing is so much different here in California,” Zierman said. “We pretty much only do vertical, single-stage hydraulic fracturing.” Therefore, Zierman thinks the 70 million gallon figure is “about right.” (For a good contrast of vertical versus horizontal fracking, see here.)

   A recent report from the California Council on Science and Technology concurred, noting,

   Generally, current hydraulic fracturing in California tends to be performed in shallower wells that are vertical as opposed to horizontal; and requires much less water per well, but uses fluids with more concentrated chemicals than hydraulic fracturing in other states. For example, in California, a hydraulic fracturing operation consumes on average 530 cubic meters (m3 ; 140,000 gallons, gal) of water per well, compared to about 16,000 m3 (4.3 million gal) per well used in horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford Formation in Texas.

   I called Californians Against Fracking to ask why the group was raising fracking in the context of the drought, given these relatively small numbers — and when there are so many bigger ways to cut water use, such as changing standards for people’s toilets and faucets or, heck, taking onagricultural uses, which consume an estimated 80 percent of California’s water supply.

   Patrick Sullivan, a spokesperson for Californians Against Fracking, responded by raising some questions about the 70 million gallon figure (saying that it is, in his words, based on “self-reported data”) and also arguing that water used for fracking is different from other uses.

   “This is water that is by and large taken out of the water cycle for good,” he said. “It’s too contaminated to use in any other way.” That, says Sullivan, makes water used in fracking different  “from water that’s used to water your lawn or brush your teeth.”

   Sullivan also pointed out concerns about water being contaminated by industrial wells used to dispose of wastewater. As the Los Angeles Timesreported last month,

   Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources officials admitted last summer that for years they inadvertently allowed oil companies to inject wastewater — from fracking and other oil production operations — into hundreds of disposal wells in protected aquifers, a violation of federal law.

   So, according to Sullivan, objections to fracking aren’t simply about the  70 or so million gallons used last year. Rather, it’s about all the different water uses of industry operations — and, especially, about the possibility of expanded fracking in California in the future, and thus, increased water use.

   But Zierman doubts that’s going to happen, at least in the short term. “Because of oil prices, we’re going to see drilling cut significantly, maybe 40 or 50 percent less drilling,” he says. “That’s going to lead to less hydraulic fracturing and less water use, both.”

   Longer term, environmentalists are also worried about fracking in the much touted Monterey Shale — but for the moment, it’s not clear how many hydrocarbon resources lie there. Estimates of recoverable resources were “dramatically lowered” recently, notes the California Council on Science and Technology, which calls the issue of how much oil can be recovered from the formation “highly uncertain.”

   So there’s much uncertainty about how much this resource will be developed, or how much that will, in turn, bring on more fracking-related water use. The California Council on Science and Technology will be releasing further, independent fracking studies on July 1.

   Undoubtedly, greens and industry will continue to tussle over the future of fracking in California — but the point for the moment is that all of this seems a side issue in the context of the drought.

   It’s okay to be against the fracking boom for many reasons — such as what it does to communities, or its potential health risks, or methane emissions. But when it comes to the drought, environmentalists have better arguments at their disposal. For instance, the drought itself can be much more easilytied to climate change than to fracking.

   Meanwhile, the California Energy Commission just moved to impose rules for the installation of far more water-efficient toilets, faucets and urinals — rules that, according to the commission, could save 105 billion gallons of water per year.

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2. Study suggests fracking could release radon from ground

   Apr 9, 2015 | USA Today

   By Liz Szabo and Doyle Rice

   Levels of cancer-causing radon gas in Pennsylvania homes have increased as the fracking industry has expanded, a new study shows.

   The study is a preliminary "first look" into a possible connection between fracking and radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas, says co-author Joan Casey. While the study doesn't conclusively prove that fracking releases radon from the ground, the findings are concerning, says Casey, a researcher at the University of California-Berkeley and University of California-San Francisco.

   Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, has spurred a boom in oil and natural-gas production. The fracking process blasts millions of gallons of water -- mixed with sand and chemicals -- deep underground to break apart shale deposits and release natural gas.

   While supporters of fracking says it's a safe source of energy, opponents are concerned that the process could contaminate local water supplies and even contribute to earth quakes.

   Authors of the new study, published today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, say they focused on Pennsylvania because it has one of highest residential radon levels in the country, and because the state has a huge, detailed database of home radon measures.

   Pennsylvania's high radon levels stem from the type of bedrock that runs through much of the state, which contains radioactive materials such as uranium and radium, which degrade into radon, an invisible gas, Casey says.

   Radon can seep into basements through cracks in a home's foundation and become trapped in homes that aren't well ventilated.

   Doctors are concerned about radon because it's the second-leading cause of lung cancer, behind only tobacco, says Janice Nolen, assistant vice president of national policy at the American Lung Association. Radon causes 21,000 lung cancer deaths a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

   Authors analyzed more than 860,000 indoor radon measurements from Pennsylvania's database, taken from Jan. 1, 1989 to Dec. 31, 2013.

   Researchers found that radon levels fluctuated from 1989 to 2004. But radon levels in the state began to rise around 2004, when fracking really took off, the study says.

   Authors also noticed that radon concentrations were 21% higher in buildings with well water than in those using municipal water. Radon can dissolve in water. So it's possible that radon enters homes through showers and faucets, then spreads into the air, says study coauthor Brian Schwartz, a professor of environmental health sciences at theJohns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

   Schwartz notes that it's possible that something other than fracking caused home radon levels to rise. For example, homes may have become more energy efficient since 2004. Although well-insulated homes save energy, they can also trap radon inside, he says.

   A top industry group was unimpressed with the study. The Marcellus Shale Coalition, Pennsylvania's leading natural gas organization, provided USA TODAY with this statement:

   "It's unfortunate, yet not unexpected, that some anti-shale activists continue to peddle profoundly flawed and unsubstantiated claims, such as this, based purely on hypothetic and perhaps pre-determined narrative-driven 'cause and effect' conclusions with the goal of generating fear," the statement read. "Thankfully, however, these suggestive scare tactics veiled as 'research' are easily refuted with readily available unbiased, fact-based data and independent scientific findings."

   Authors of today's study acknowledge that their findings conflict with those of a January study from Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection, which reported that "there is little potential for additional radon exposure to the public due to the use of natural gas extracted from geologic formations located in Pennsylvania."

   Pennsylvania officials, however, say it's difficult to compare the two studies, because they measured radon in very different ways.

   While Casey and Schwartz's paper included radon measurements from homes, the Pennsylvania state report measured radon at fracking wells, gas processing facilities, disposal sites and waste water processing facilities and other places, says thePennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's Ken Reisinger. The state report measured radon levels in the natural gas coming out of the ground, as well as in air near the fracking facilities. Radon levels weren't higher than expected, Reisinger says.

   Reisinger questioned Casey and Schwartz' conclusion that fracking may be causing radon levels to rise. That's because their report also found rising radon levels in parts of the state with no fracking.

   Casey and Schwartz say researchers should conduct more detailed studies to see if their findings can be confirmed.

   Some health experts say the link between radon and fracking is worrisome.

   "There are a tremendous number of poorly understood and potentially serious health risks associated with fracking, one of which is exposure to radioactivity," says Aaron Bernstein, a pediatrician and associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard H.T. Chan School of Public Health. "We simply do not have anything close to adequate safeguards for people's health."

   Fracking has been linked to a wide spectrum of health problems for Americans across the country, according to a December report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

   That report said Americans who live near oil and gas drilling wells are exposed to fracking-related air pollution in the form of chemicals such as benzene and formaldehyde.

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3. Bloomberg Criticizes New York Fracking Ban

   Apr 8, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal

   By Amy Harder and Erica Orden

   Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized the state’s ban on hydraulic fracturing, describing the move as “misguided” and instead touting the benefits of natural gas.

   “It’s a misguided policy,” Mr. Bloomberg said Wednesday in a phone interview with The Wall Street Journal. “To keep coal-fired power plants in upstate New York and not frack doesn’t make any sense at all.”

   In late December, after having pushed off a decision for most of his first term in office, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his administration would prohibit hydraulic fracturing statewide, making it the first state with significant potential to become a major natural-gas producer to ban fracking.

   In announcing its decision, the Democratic administration argued that potential health concerns related to the practice outweighed any economic benefits it might offer the state.

   Mr. Bloomberg, who had not commented publicly about the ban before Wednesday, said he has not spoken with Mr. Cuomo on this.

   In a statement, Tom Mailey, the director of media relations at New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, said the state’s review of fracking found “significant uncertainties” about a range of health concerns and the efficacy of regulations in protecting public health.

   “Further, with the exclusion of sensitive natural, cultural and historic resources and the increasing number of towns that have enacted bans and moratoria, the risks substantially outweigh any potential economic benefits of” fracking, Mr. Mailey said in an email. He did not specifically address what Mr. Bloomberg said.

   Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technology used after the drilling process that has unlocked vast reserves of natural gas and oil across the country but has drawn controversy for its environmental impact, especially the risk of polluting drinking-water supplies.

   Mr. Bloomberg said the economic and health benefits of natural gas, especially compared with other fossil fuels like coal, outweigh the potential health impacts, which he says could be prevented with tough regulation.

   Mr. Bloomberg also criticized Mr. Cuomo’s decision to expand non-Indian casino gaming in the state. The Cuomo administration argued for gambling’s potential to boost the fragile economies upstate and in New York’s Southern Tier region. In December the state recommended licenses for three non-Indian casino projects statewide, and it may award a fourth.

   The initial three recommendations were announced by the administration the same day it announced its decision to ban fracking, and many interpreted the timing as an attempt to offset the brunt of the fracking ban with the promise of casino revenue.

   “Our strategy in New York state seems to be to open gambling casinos so we can rip the lungs out of the poor to subsidize upstate real-estate developers,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “That doesn’t help anyone in the area. I would certainly frack.”

   Mr. Bloomberg spoke with The Wall Street Journal after announcing at a Washington, D.C., rally that he was donating $30 million to the Sierra Club’s anticoal campaign, adding to the initial $50 million he gave to the environmental organization four years ago.

   But he said he is not donating to the group’s parallel anti-natural gas campaign, which is working to eliminate natural gas along with coal as an effort to combat climate change. “Today no, because there is no viable alternative” to coal-fired electricity without gas, Mr. Bloomberg said.

   Mr. Bloomberg has donated $6 million to the Environmental Defense Fund, widely regarded as a more centrist environmental organization than the Sierra Club, to help its work fighting for tough state regulations of fracking.

   Mr. Bloomberg, who was mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, is CEO of Bloomberg L.P., a global financial-data and media company he founded, and also a climate-change envoy for the United Nations. He describes himself as an independent politician today, though he’s been a member of both the Republican and Democratic parties throughout his career.

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4. As Quakes Rattle Oklahoma, Fingers Point to Oil and Gas Industry

   Apr 3, 2015 | New York Times

   By By Richard A. Oppel, Jr. and Michael Wines

   Yanked without warning from a deep sleep, Jennifer Lin Cooper, whose family has lived near here for more than a half-century, could think only that the clamor enveloping her house was coming from a helicopter landing on her roof. She was wrong. 

   A 5.0-magnitude earthquake — the first of three as strong or stronger over several days in November 2011 — had peeled the brick facade from the $117,000 home she bought the year before. Ms. Cooper, 36, could not get out until her father pried a stuck storm door off the front entrance. Repairs have so far cost $12,000 and forced her to take a second job, at night, to pay the bill. 

   At a packed town hall meeting days later, Ms. Cooper said, state officials called the shocks, including a 5.7 tremor that was Oklahoma’s largest ever, “an act of nature, and it was nobody’s fault.”
   
   Many scientists disagree.

   They say those quakes, and thousands of others before and since, are mainly the work of humans, caused by wells used to bury vast amounts of wastewater from oil and gas exploration deep in the earth near fault zones. And they warn that continuing to entomb such huge quantities risks more dangerous tremors — if not here, then elsewhere in the state’s sprawling well fields.
   
   “As long as you keep injecting wastewater along that fault zone, according to my calculations, you’re going to continue to have earthquakes,” said Arthur F. McGarr, the chief of the induced seismicity project at the federal Earthquake Science Center in Menlo Park, Calif., who has researched the Prague quakes. “I’d be a little worried if I lived there. In fact, I’d be very worried.” 

   But in a state where oil and gas are economic pillars, elected leaders have been slow to address the problem. And while regulators have taken some protective measures, they lack the money, work force and legal authority to fully address the threats. 

   More than five years after the quakes began a sharp and steady increase, the strongest action by the Republican governor, Mary Fallin, has been to name a council to exchange information about the tremors. The group meets in secret, and has no mandate to issue recommendations. 

   The State Legislature is not considering any earthquake legislation. But both houses passed bills this year barring local officials from regulating oil and gas wells in their jurisdictions. 

   The state seismologist’s office, short-staffed, has stopped analyzing data on tremors smaller than magnitude 2.5 — even though a recent study says those quakes flag hidden seismic hazards “that might prove invaluable for avoiding a damaging earthquake.”

   The governor referred an interview request to Michael Teague, her energy and environment secretary. Mr. Teague said the governor’s earthquake council was helping coordinate the response to the shocks and that underfunded regulators and scientists had benefited from efforts to find new state and federal assistance for their work.

   “It’s not working well enough if your house is shaking, absolutely no doubt,” he said. “But it’s working very well.”

   But others say the political will is missing to confront an earthquake threat tied to Oklahoma’s dominant industry. 

   It is “a dangerous game of Russian roulette,” said Jason Murphey, the Republican state representative from earthquake-ridden Guthrie, in central Oklahoma. “If a dangerous earthquake happens and causes lots of damage and injuries,” he said, “a cloud will hang over the energy sector for a long time to come.” 

   If scientists see dangers, many Oklahomans are wary of disrupting an industry so woven into everyday life. 

   The state’s oil and gas wells gush profits to corporate owners, but also royalties to farmers and homeowners, and tax payments to the state and cities. By some accounts the industry supports as many as one in five Oklahoma jobs. It showers Oklahoma universities with millions of dollars in donations and helps make dreams like Oklahoma City’s N.B.A. franchise, reality.

   It is also a major political contributor to Ms. Fallin, legislators and all three elected members of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which oversees oil and gas production and disposal wells.

   “We always want to be invited to the prom,” said State Representative Cory Williams, a Democrat from Stillwater, the home of Oklahoma State University and one of the state’s most seismically active areas. “And we’ve decided that oil and gas is the best prom date we’ll ever get, and we don’t want oil and gas to go away.”

   Those blessings, however, are not unalloyed. 

   From 2010 to 2013, Oklahoma oil production jumped by two-thirds and gas production rose by more than one-sixth, federal figures show. The amount of wastewater buried annually rose one-fifth, to nearly 1.1 billion barrels. And Oklahoma went from three earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater to 109 — and to 585 in 2014, and to 750-plus this year, should the current pace continue. In the United States, only Alaska is shaken more. 

   The Corporation Commission lacks explicit authority to regulate earthquake risks. So it is trying to contain the risks posed by roughly 3,200 active wastewater disposal wells using laws written to control water pollution. 

   Last spring, the commission began trying to weed out quake risks by scrutinizing wells near larger quakes for operational problems and permit violations. A few dozen wells made modifications; four shut down. It is now difficult to win approval for new wells near stressed faults, active seismic areas or the epicenters of previous quakes above 4.0 magnitude. Regulators significantly expanded the areas under scrutiny last month. Yet the quakes continue.

    

   Privately, some companies are cooperating with regulators and scientists by offering proprietary information about underground faults. Publicly, the industry wants Oklahomans to beware of killing the golden goose. 

   Many in the industry were reluctant to comment for this article. But Kim Hatfield, the regulatory chairman of the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association and president of Crawley Petroleum, warned: “A reaction of panic is not useful.”

   Shutting down disposal wells and the industry they serve, he added, “will make ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ look like a cheery movie.”

    

   A Surge in Wastewater 

   The mechanics of wastewater-induced earthquakes are straightforward: Soaked with enough fluid, a layer of rock expands and gets heavier. Earthquakes can occur when the pressure from the fluid reaches a fault, either through direct contact with the soaked rock or indirectly, from the expanding rock. Seismologists have documented such quakes in Colorado, New Mexico, Arkansas, Kansas and elsewhere since the 1960s. 

   But nowhere have they approached the number and scope of Oklahoma’s quakes, which have rocked a fifth of the state. One reason, scientists suspect, is that Oklahoma’s main waste disposal site, a bed of porous limestone thousands of feet underground, lies close to the hard, highly stressed rock containing the faults that cause quakes. 

   The salty, sometimes toxic wastewater is a byproduct of extracting oil and gas, whether by hydraulic fracturing of once-unreachable shale deposits, commonly called fracking, or from conventional wells. Most is pumped out of the ground with oil or gas, then returned to the earth in a so-called disposal well, often at a different location. 

   The Corporation Commission faces a complicated task. It can order a shutdown or operational change only one well at a time, and only if a well violates its operating permit or is clearly tied to an earthquake risk. 

   But geologists say the sheer volume of waste being buried in an area with many wells — and not any single well — causes most quakes. It often is difficult or impossible to assess blame to a particular well. 

   Some other states like Arkansas and, this week, Kansas, have imposed blanket shutdowns or cutbacks on wells near active quake zones. “We don’t have the ability or the legal authority to issue a moratorium,” Dana Murphy, one of the three elected corporation commissioners, said in an interview. 

   “We do have the ability to take certain actions in emergency situations,” she continued. “But that’s emergencies when they start happening. It doesn’t talk about what happens before the emergencies occur.” 

   The 2011 quakes that damaged Ms. Cooper’s home in Prague (pronounced “prayg”) illustrate the regulators’ limited reach. 

   Acting on geologists’ suspicions after the first temblor, regulators tested and pored over operations data from three wells — two small ones and a huge one, called Wilzetta, sunk by the Tulsa-based company New Dominion in 1999. They were seeking some definitive cause of the tremor. 

   They found none. The wells still pump today, even as worried regulators wave off operators who want to sink new ones. Indeed, by December 2013, Wilzetta had nearly doubled its average monthly volume of waste compared with the months before the 2011 shocks. 

   Without convincing evidence that a well poses a seismic threat, one official said, regulators are powerless to order precautions, much less shutdowns. “Shut it in? How?” said that official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was barred from discussing specific cases.
   
   “Show me the cause. Show me the violation.”

    

   Hamstrung, regulators now may have pushed their authority to its limits. Beginning last May, the commission began tightening permits for new disposal wells, requiring seismicity tests and requiring shutdowns if quakes occurred nearby. 

   Existing wells were unaffected. But last month the agency required operators of hundreds of wells to prove they were not accidentally pumping wastewater into bedrock, which seismologists say raises earthquake risks. 

   “We are operating on the assumption that time is of the essence,” a regulatory program manager at the commission, Matt Skinner, said in an interview. 
   
   

   Scientists certainly agree. 

   Federal seismologists have for a year warned of rising earthquake risks. Last July, researchers stated in Science magazine that wastewater-induced earthquakes were approaching a fault near Oklahoma City capable of producing a magnitude 7.0 shock, though other experts call that unlikely. In January, scientists including Oklahoma’s state seismologist, Austin Holland, cited a rising quake risk and identified three faults capable of “significantly larger” earthquakes. 

   Last month, a South African geophysicist delivered the most specific warning yet: Another magnitude 5-plus quake could occur by 2016, and one fault running through Stillwater and two other cities potentially could yield up to a magnitude 6.5 shock.

   Mr. Gum's comments are chilling. If he thinks the interests of the oil and gas industry trump all others then he need to set aside a...

   While scientists worry, political leaders have been slow to recognize the threat. 

   First elected in 2010, Governor Fallin appointed the earthquake advisory council last September. “Oklahoma has always had seismic activity, but the reality is we are seeing more,” she said then. “It’s important that we study this issue and have sound science that can inform decisions.” 

   She allowed only last week that wells accidentally drilled into rock containing faults could “potentially” set off shocks. Scientists say that is only one factor at play in the quakes. 

   The governor’s 12-member earthquake advisory council, drawn from industry, government, the Legislature and academia, works as an information clearinghouse, said Mr. Teague, her energy and environment secretary and the group’s chairman. 

   “The whole idea of the group,” he said, “is what are you working on? What are the gaps that you’ve got, and is there somebody else that can fill that gap?” 

   The most glaring gaps, however, remain mostly unfilled. 

   Last month the state promised a clerk, two technical experts and $50,000 to help regulators assess wells, but a $600 million-plus budget deficit makes significant aid unlikely. The Legislature could grant the commission greater authority, but legislators say that is not an option in a state where regulation is deeply unpopular, and the oil and gas industry holds political and economic sway.

    

   Residents File Suit 

   The industry has worked on several fronts to contain concern about the quakes. 

   In October 2013, almost two years after the Prague quakes, Dr. Holland, the state seismologist, issued a news release warning that the earthquake risk in Oklahoma City, about 50 miles west of Prague, had increased. Wastewater disposal wells, he added, may be “a contributing factor.” Two weeks later, he was summoned to the office of the University of Oklahoma’s president, David L. Boren, to meet Harold G. Hamm, the chairman of Continental Resources, one of the state’s biggest oil and gas companies. Mr. Boren sits on Continental’s board, for which he has been paid more than $1.6 million in stock awards and directors’ fees since 2009, according to proxy statements. 

   Continental officials did not respond to a request for comment. Last month, after the newsletter EnergyWire reported the meeting, Mr. Boren called the session “purely informational.” 

   Dr. Holland said that Mr. Boren assured him his academic freedom as a scientist was unchallenged. Then, Dr. Holland said, Mr. Hamm told him that public discussions of disposal wells “are unnerving — they can dramatically affect the industry.” 

   Continental is seeking to shape that public discussion, arguing in newspapers, on television and to regulators that the earthquake epidemic is not man-made, but part of an unusually active period for quakes worldwide. 

   Still, in public meetings and in courtrooms, some residents have begun to demand an accounting. In August, Sandra Ladra, a Prague resident injured by a collapsing fireplace during the 2011 earthquakes, sued the Wilzetta well’s operator, New Dominion, and the Spess Oil Company, which operates the two smaller wells nearby. 

   Then, in February, came a class-action lawsuit against the two companies by Ms. Cooper, whose house in Prague was heavily damaged. Her suit seeks compensation for quake damage not only to her home, but to any homes in nine counties surrounding Prague. 

   That case has yet to be heard. But Ms. Ladra’s suit, now before the State Supreme Court, previews the industry response: The wells operate legally, and regulators should hear complaints against them. Letting juries decide their culpability in earthquakes invites financial disaster. 

   “I don’t want to belittle the public’s concern about earthquake swarms. I live here, too,” Robert G. Gum, a lawyer for New Dominion, said at an October hearing. “But it’s no more important to the people sitting in this courtroom and the people in this state than the state’s economy. It’s no more important in recognizing how important the oil and gas industry is to that economy.” 

   If juries hold the companies liable for Prague’s earthquakes, he added, “I doubt if this is the last lawsuit that will get filed. These wells will become economic and legal liability pariahs. They will be shut down.” 

   To Ms. Cooper, that message is clear. “People need to just take their losses for the greater good of the oil and gas companies — you know, do your part,” she said. 

   She does not buy it. 

   “If the truth destroys something,” she said, “then it needs to be destroyed.”

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5. Exclusive: California used 70 million gallons of water in fracking in 2014

   Apr 3, 2015 | Reuters

   By Rory Carroll

   California oil producers used 214 acre-feet of water, equivalent to nearly 70 million gallons, in the process of fracking for oil and gas in the state last year, less than previously projected, state officials told Reuters on Thursday.

   Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, occurs when water and some chemicals are injected deep underground at high pressure to break up rock and release oil and gas into wells.

   The practice has been criticized in the state, which is suffering from a drought so severe that Governor Jerry Brown announced the first-ever mandatory 25 percent statewide reduction in water use on Wednesday.

   “Hydraulic fracturing uses a relatively small amount of water – the equivalent of 514 households annually,” said Steven Bohlen, the state oil and gas supervisor.

   About 100,000 gallons of water is used on average, he said.

   Previous industry estimates said that fracking used about 100 million gallons of water in California a year.

   Bohlen said that not all of the water used for fracking is fresh water. Some portion of it is “produced” water, or water that comes to the surface during oil drilling that is not suitable for drinking or agricultural use.

   The industry brought 387,000 acre-feet of produced water to the surface last year, Bohlen said. Of that, two-thirds was put back into the aquifers from which it came or was used to produce more oil through drilling techniques including steam flooding and cyclic steam injection.

   The remaining third was put into underground injection, evaporated in surface ponds, or cleaned up for beneficial use, he said.

   About 25,000 acre-feet of produced water is used for beneficial use in the San Ardo, Cawelo, and Arvin water districts, he said.

   A law passed last year requires oil producers to report the sources of water used in all oil and gas extraction as well as where the water goes.

   The first data report is due April 31 and will be made public soon after, Bohlen said.

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