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Comment by jqm | Hacker News Reader

They mention the retrieval method as fracking. Is this a good idea along a fault line near large population centers?

It depends. Minor quakes in Oklahoma are believed attributable to fracking but it's hardly conclusive. Oklahoma hasn't had people who could read living on it for much more than a hundred years now. There's no data base; the people who lived there before didn't leave a record.

As hard as it may be to believe, there's not that much material doing downhole. It's usually as much-ish as a middling stock tank - a few million gallons - tennish or so acre-feet.

Determining cause and effect will be a mighty task.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2013/07/01/water-f... goes to the water use, with awater always being the big item. David Blackmon is a bit of an oil industry flack, but his logic and numbers marry up to other sources well.

Given California's politics, the geology ( fault lines ) and the way prices are working out, it's probably better left alone for now. The rate of innovation in fracking is staggering. The technology will be there sooner or later. I have a friend who's roughly from the general Kern County area and its a brittle place environmentally.

This being said, the LA Times is not exactly an oil/gas friendly publication - the quotes were all from professional anti-frackers. Sadly, since the Enron fiasco, we have to watch for that sort of thing. Claiofornia also has had "oil people" and "water people" and "oil and water don't mix."

Not that there's much of a San Joaquin Valley aquifer left to ruin by fracking, but politics and the sheer cost of trying to do business in California should mean the Monterrey Shale will be held in reserve. (Personally, I think I'd rather eat California produce than have cheap gas for driving around on foraging expeditions/pantry raids.)

Great piece from Mercury News on SJV water here: http://www.mercurynews.com/drought/ci_25447586/california-dr...

Tip of the research iceberg on the obvious: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/groundwater-contam...

Just IMO, but the two canonical books for this subject are "Cadillac Desert" and "The Prize".

The "gas in the water" stories are significantly contaminated by very bad propaganda. It's possible that they are true - that they are caused by fracking - but it's not likely. The depths are pretty radically different. Pennsylvania in particular is where Drake found oil oozing to the surface, so ... who knows what's down there, close to the surface? I know I am no geologist and even a good geologist may not have good understanding of that region.

There is strong evidence that indicates that recent fracking activity(2009 and onwards) in Oklahoma is solely responsible for the earthquake activity they are seeing -> http://www.decodedscience.com/increasing-earthquake-frequenc...

To indicate anything otherwise is disingenuous.

From your link:

> Another USGS analysis shows recent earthquake rate changes are likely not due to normal fluctuations in natural seismicity rates. Instead, the most likely cause is from wastewater being injected into deep geologic formations and causing faults to fail in a process called injection-induced seismicity.

(Did I miss a stronger statement in there?)

So random fluctuations are unlikely to be the explanation and, of the remaining explanations, the most likely one is fracking. As I read your articles, it does not claim strong evidence of fracking as the sole cause.

The point is there are many people looking into this(not just Oklahoma either, Texas, Arkansas, the list goes on) and the only plausible explanation that has been put forward for this sudden increase in quake activity is the result of fracking related activities. (i.e. deep wastewater injection)

There was a recent paper by a Cornell geophysicist that showed that 4 deep injection wastewater wells was responsible for a swarm of quakes in oklahoma -> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/05/14050...

The bottom line is fracking is the new climate change. The Oil & Gas Industry is out there saying there is no evidence linking fracking activities to earthquakes and health issues when there absolutely is. They want to intentionally muddy the waters, so they can continue drilling and extracting shale oil. The burden of proof should not be whether fracking causes earthquakes and health issues, but rather that fracking does NOT cause earthquakes and health issues.

This is my understanding as well. During the drilling and analysis process, a lot of saltwater is extracted. The recent earthquakes in Oklahoma are believed to be caused by pumping this saltwater back into the ground. The pressures involved are very high.

Source: my uncle is a senior log analyst for an oil & energy company in Oklahoma, and this was his explanation to me last week.

One hair to split - saltwater isn't a result of fracking - it's a byproduct of drilling. A small point ( they're simply stages in a larger process ) but ... with fracking, material is pushed down the hole. The opposite is true of drilling.

Second, the case for increased seismic activity being caused by fracking is some where between "maybe" and "we dunno." It needs work. It will be hard because we can't observe it directly. I imagine your uncle sees ( or knows those who see ) nonlinearities in the data and fracking is just a darn good candidate for root cause.

Devil's advocate: is the expectation that fracking increases the overall amount of earthquakes, or causes more frequent smaller earthquakes? If the latter, would that be beneficial in California, to release the energy in smaller quakes and prevent/delay "the big one"?

The number and complexity of the fault lines in CA is quite amusing. For refrenece, it is illegal to build directly on top of fault lines (per code). Howevere, check out this faultline going through some famous real-estate landmarks:

http://graphics.latimes.com/hollywood-fault-flyover/

The san andreas and major faults like in the olympics are well know and more or less ~easily avoided. However, the seismology are then just are more localized, and not even CAL state has a great handle on where all its faults are.

I can say that I was born and raised in Oklahoma, and lived there until I moved to Texas in 1996. I had never heard of earthquakes happening in the state until the past 2-3 years when my mother mentioned them to me (she still lives in SW OK).

No, you're mis-reading the article. (1) They say expressly say fracking is not suited to the geographic topology in CA; and (2) They compare and contrast the monterey geology in CA to texas and ND where is it better suited. Basically, fracking is better in areas with flat-sediment-shale-beds. CA has dedformed rock strata. Similarly, much of the formation is not in heavily populated areas. They mention Kern county, for example, which is not considered a part of metro LA (it is seperated by a massive desert/mountain range).

http://gen.usc.edu/news/monterey-shale.htm

Someone mentioned Oklahoma but it's certainly not the only place:

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2014/04/ohio_ack...

There's actually a lot of news out of that area regarding fracking and earthquakes, going back a few years. The data have improved over time and we've moved past the "correlation isn't causation so come on and have another cigarette" stage. An earthquake happening right under a fracking well is considered scientifically significant.

I don't know if the drilling is on the same scale in CA but I just assume that the eventual rules for avoiding faultlines will be even more strict in a state with a history of serious earthquakes.

AFAIK we don't know enough to say, really.

If the causation can't be proven, will it matter?

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