The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

I'm surprised there is no discussion about the big quake on this forum- now raised from a 5.6 to a 5.8. Some like to blame fracking but I wonder about that, could that just be anti-drilling people who found a home?  The quake was huge it rattled  buildings in Dallas to Omaha, the quake was felt in Indianapolis, seems hardly something that a local fault line could produce. They say the 2011 quake was more localized than this one.

There was a loud crash-like sound 2 seconds before the quake hit. I wondered what made that crash sound, I always thought quakes made a rumbling sound. The crash sounded a bit like a trash truck dropping a dumpster on the ground but with more of a "rolling" sound to it. A woman on the news said it sounded like a truck crashed into her house. I guess the crash sound was some sort of quake  primary pressure wave, then the secondary wave hit. It was the weirdest thing. They said on the local news that you should stay inside your house during a quake, but I always understood your supposed to go outside and get away from buildings during a quake. In California they say if your caught  indoors during a quake to get under a door frame, otherwise get outside and away from structures that may fall. Cement/brick/block building are the worst places to be during a quake.

Wonder away...!  It's another one of those mysteries of life that Oklahoma in general will not likely understand or belief... kinda like climate change.

In answer to your rhetorical question, no, it isn't just the anti-drilling people.  It's realistic engineers/scientists who actually understand the cause and effect of this type seismic occurrence.  Even Mary Failin' has at least gotten some little glimmer of reality - even she thinks injection wells should be at least be scaled back, hence her calls to slow injection well use.

While some may misuse the term fracking for the disposal of wastewater in injection wells, no means to blame fracking directly for most of the earthquakes. That said the practice of deep injection wells for wastewater disposal is a proven cause of most qaukes in Oklahoma.  Most are not anti-drill however we are anti injection well for the disposal of wastewater. There is ample room in the profit margins of most wells to treat the water. Most on this forum live in Tulsa and while the shaking was the biggest in years its so common place we felt no reason to mention it. Also at 7:02 AM many people where either asleep or already driving to work so many may not have noticed it.

(Yeah I know don't feed the trolls but whatever :P )

If injection wells were banned, producers would have to finally step up and pay for other disposal methods like evaporation or processing wastewater with polymer and filters like many industries do.  It would raise the price of oil and associated derivatives, but that’s a cost consumers have to be willing to bear if it means no more serious earthquakes.

Natural seismic event.....

The quake was felt in Indianapolis, it swayed skyscrapers in Dallas. This it was a major event on a fault line- Does is not seem like something that squirting water into the ground can cause. Perhaps the quake was caused by global warming. Everything else is caused by global warming so why not quakes?

Is your earth flat?!?!

It's not "squirting" water, it goes in at a very high pressure. It's a simple matter of physics:  if you inject water under pressure it will displace either air or other solid or liquid matter.  Unlike the theory of man-made global warming, the scientific theory on injection wells causing quakes is not very controversial and is quite solid.

Yeah....sorta. I mean, the faults were already there. We just lubricated them.  Forest fires are naturally occurring as well, yet sometimes they're human inspired.

Don't be too hard on him. He has one of the finest minds of the twelfth century. It's in a jar under his bed.

The reason injection wells are needed in OK is that our O/G wells produce crap tons of salt water but, in most cases, it's not affordable to reinject at the well site... which I think is the best way to handle it.
Instead, it's picked up by tanker trucks and hauled to specific injection well sites.
And, we also take other states salt water waste.

It’s not a necessity, it’s simply the cheapest method of dealing with the salt water.  There’s desalination units and fired evaporation is always an option.  With natural gas at such low prices evaporation could make sense.

If the oil/gas cannot be produced bearing the actual cost of that production, then it should not be produced.  It's like a store saying we can't be successful in business without having free labor, so we should be allowed to pay much less, or nothing to our employees...!

And there is PLENTY of margin in the price of a barrel of oil for proper disposal of saltwater.

Depends, if you are pumping out of an old vertical well that was drilled 25-30 years ago, it’s likely quite profitable at the current prices.

If you just completed a horizontal drill and fracked it, the numbers might not be so great if you were forced to evaporate the salt water.

Then you shouldn't have speculated so recklessly, if you weren't prepared to accept the consequences.  (Not personal 'you', but the royal 'you'...people who participated.)  Why is it "personal responsibility" is such a huge catch phrase for individuals who get caught between a rock and a hard place through no fault of their own, other than wrong place/right time - but doesn't exist for corporate and private entities that make exceptionally bad business decisions and then expect recompense, acceptance, and/or forgiveness of 'sins'??

The latest 'speculative' wells were just another example of the 'jump on the bandwagon, get rich quick' scheming we see repeatedly in the industry.  Remember the 80's?  What possible justification could one have in this day and age for being a "wildcatter" ??  Spending hundreds of thousands or more on such massively speculative capitalistic voyeurism...well, there is always a bucket of suckers around who think they are gonna win the 'lottery'.  Just because they don't understand the industry, the economics, or politics of oil does not mean they should be exempt from the consequences of their ignorance.  They want us to take the same historical approach as the past that gave us thousands of abandoned oil/gas wells sites that are unlikely to ever be cleaned up (hint: OERB is enjoying the propaganda value of talking about it, but the reality is there is still a 10 year waiting list.  Even after 10 years!)  Or places like Picher.  Or Love Canal.

One of the consequences is that if you are gonna make a huge, gawd-awful mess, you should have to clean it up.  Yeah, that includes us the consumer - if we wanna drive our cars, then we are gonna have to pay a couple extra cents per gallon to fill the things up!  Tough s*** - get over it - it's the price you gotta pay to drive your Belchfire 5000!  But it starts at the well head!!

I guess it was a newly found fault line and it's large. We don't need to go into "Alarmist mode".

Nope, just a random 5.8 earthquake in the middle of Oklahoma. No big deal.

Fault line that was activated by waste water injection.

That's what I read as well. It was dormant till injection process changed the dynamics. We're way past alarmist phase. Now trying to gather facts and develop strategies that all the parties can get behind.

Sauer, its not what you know that is causing you grief around here. Its what you don't know that you don't know. Do your own research and stop relying on others who may have an agenda. You're being used.

But that actually takes effort.  So many people are allergic to that.

I am reminded of the late friend of Dobie Gillis, Maynard G. Krebs, "Work!?!"

He wants to be used.


There has been so much information made available to him (and his ilk) around here, and the world at large, that it is pure negligence that he has not followed up on any of it.  The desire is to maintain the ignorance so it can be said, "well, I didn't know..." when it comes back and firmly and incontrovertibly slaps them in the face in the future....from things like frakking/injection to climate change to the Iraq war that so many of the RWRE have now backpedaled on.  Yeah, they did know.  They were told.  The evidence was available.  They chose the intellectually dishonest route of denial, self-delusion, and lying.  In other words, the way of Faux News.


In similar fashion to how the Brady Bunch Clown Show acts toward the 2nd Amendment....


There...something for everyone!!

Let's not forget about the New Madrid fault line near Memphis, TN, it's one of the baddies, it's a biggie, it last erupted in 1815 and shook church bells in Boston, MA, it changed the flow of the Mississippi River. I guess they injected fracking water there too. Folks, quakes happen, new fault lines are still being discovered... Yep, Jump off the deep end go alarmist, the sky is falling. Reminds me of the TV weather men when a dark rain cloud passed over head they go alarmist too. We need to slow down and study the issue. I'm not convinced.

Yep, aliens did it.

Right.

They've been studying it now for years.  Starting in 2009 when the earthquakes started increasing.

Hell, even your girlfriend, Gov Failin', believes that it's not all natural.

10 billion gallons of salt-water disposal was injected into wells in Oklahoma last years.  You tell me that won't cause a problem.

There's a reason that Oklahoma is now the most earthquake-prone area in the world.

It's man-made.

Keep your head in the sand.  Last I checked, the New Madrid fault in the bootheel of Missouri had been quiet compared to what is going on in central and northern Oklahoma.

Earthquakes don't erupt. Pimples and volcanoes erupt. And, I'd rather jump off the deep end and be wrong than jump off the shallow end and break my neck. But that's just me. ;)

I’d hardly characterize the response to the quake outbreaks as anything but “alarmist”.

I think the approach has been far more than balanced on not over-reacting initially.  The science is very good supporting the facts of what is making the earth shift under Oklahoma.

Attempt to educate:

For Oklahoma's recorded history, the average number of earthquakes over 3.0 per year has been around two per year (29 for the entire region). Starting in 2009 that number shot up, to about seven hundred per year (700) (http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/21/oklahoma-goes-from-two-30-earthquakes-a-year-to-two-a-day.html), regionally there are thousands. Unfortunately, Oklahoma is the epicenter of what the USGS calls "induced earthquakes." Earthquakes are "hundreds of times more common (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/04/us/as-quakes-rattle-oklahoma-fingers-point-to-oil-and-gas-industry.html?ref=topics)" than they were a decade ago (24 in 2008 to 6,039 in 2015).

At the same time oil production and waste water injection grew by many magnitudes. In 2009 Oklahoma produced 140,000 bbl of oil, that shot up to 360,000 bbl. Oklahoma wells produce as much as 50 bbl of wastewater and almost always more than 10 bbl to each bbl of oil. And guess what technology was the favorite for disposing of all that wastewater? High pressure injection.

There's a  startling correlation (http://www.magma.geos.vt.edu/vtso/newsite/induced_quakes/induced_quakes.html) between the location of wastewater wells and the epicenter of quakes. Particularly in regions that were minimally active prior to this uptick in activity. Correlation is not necessarily causation, so you have to look at other factors: history, consistency, and what happens when you stop the alleged causing factor?

Here, the history if long and clear: strong earthquakes are not a historic norm in Oklahoma. Consistency is also clear. And when moratoriums are put in place to stop wastewater injection, the number of quakes tends to drop (http://www.wsj.com/articles/oklahoma-quakes-decline-amid-curbs-on-energy-industrys-disposal-wells-1467323816) dramatically (Arkansas managed to nearly stop the uptick with a selective moratorium (http://www.news9.com/story/31028330/9-investigates-how-arkansas-stopped-its-earthquakes)).

So it seems to pass the correlation test with flying colors, but damn it, correlation isn't causation! So who are all these fringe wackos that are linking the massive, globally unprecidented spike in earthquakes going on in Oklahoma with the oil and gas industry?

In addition to the USGS (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/induced/), we also have...

The State of Oklahoma:
https://earthquakes.ok.gov/faqs/

University of Oklahoma:
http://ogs.ou.edu/pubsscanned/openfile/OF1_2015.pdf

The Journal of Science:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/345/6195/448

Virginia Tech:
http://www.magma.geos.vt.edu/vtso/newsite/induced_quakes/induced_quakes.html

Of course, the insurance industry  (http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2016/03/28/403233.htm)has taken note also.

The oil industry itself is well aware of the link, and has actively used its muscle to limit research and, when necessary, to pull strings to make researchers, academics, and politicians hold the party line (http://www.newsweek.com/industry-pressure-kept-oklahomas-scientists-silent-earthquake-fracking-link-311307). They also refuse to release their pressure and volume data to scientists to aid the research - even if it was anonymous (that is to say, not linking the data to a particular companies well). A very smart move when you are potentially liable for destroying buildings, but if your internal advisers were telling you there was no link - you'd be a bit more open.

 
So - the State of Oklahoma, the Federal Government, academia, and industry acknowledge the causal link between waste water injection and earthquakes.  Is that enough to convince you?

We also are taking in waste water FROM OTHER STATES!

http://www.kjrh.com/news/local-news/ok-allows-various-states-to-inject-wastewater-into-arbuckle-wells

Not for him.  May want to put a disclaimer that it is for everyone else but sauer...since all he sees is that dark brown haze.


For everyone but sauer...

One of those few earthquakes we used to have occurred in Feb, 1952.  We lived over on north Nogales in a little place that is under the highway now.  The kitchen had a single light bulb hanging a few feet down from the high ceiling on it's wire.  Earthquake hit and shook the area.  The light on a wire started swaying back and forth - a couple of feet swing from the people who were there and aware (I was kinda young).  Since this stuff was so rare, Mom didn't understand what was happening (and I sure didn't either at the time) so she got her kitchen step stool and climbed up and stopped the light from swaying....it just wasn't right and she was very much a stickler for things being in their proper place!

They figured out later what it was and that the light was really ok....  The point being that these events - detectable quakes - were so rare that it took a while after the event to understand what had happened and what a proper reaction might be.  Now...everyone knows what is going on and how to deal with.  That's the difference between 3 naturally occurring events and hundreds of man-made events.

Nobody can prove with 100% certainty things like this.  Its like if 50 people fired identical guns in the air every day for a million dollars and 10 people got hit in the head with bullets every day.  Which of the 50 guns was it?  Is it something else shooting the people?  You could stop shooting 50 guns in the air every day and lose the million.  But you wouldn't want to do that because then you would be able to prove if you were at fault or not and they would stop you from making your money.  So you keep plowing along.  But now everybody around town has to lease $300 a year helmets with a 10% deductible.

There are few certainties in life but we have to work with the best information, the best analysis of that info, and the most logical conclusions. That is what is happening with earthquakes in Oklahoma. If you insist on certainty go with death and taxes.

I was told by a clerk at the shopping center at 21st & Sheridan that the center suffered a lot of EarthQuake  damage, they had to shore up the overhang. There were cracks and other damage  all along the front face of the building. That's the center that has Big Lots, Chicago Tool and Dollar tree. I was surprised to hear that.

Chicago Tool?  SMFH.  I'm guessing you mean Harbor Freight.   ::)

Prolly what it's called in Omaha, Columbus, Detroit, or Ft. Worth.

Yes, that's the store- the whole front of the shopping center was quake damaged- from Dollar Tree in the north to the last store in the south. They had to shore it all up with 4X4's. The stucco is old & cracking there is wood rot on the overhand, so the center had issues all along.

For the first 100 years of Oklahoma's history we had a mechanism to deal with this situation - joint and several liability. Where there are several parties in the wrong, but the Plaintiff cannot prove the percent of fault of each of the wrongdoers... all wrongdoers are equally on the hook for causing the damages. The injured party got paid and the wrongdoers fought amongst themselves concerning who should pay how much or who should get paid back from whom.

The theory was that the wrongdoers harmed the Plaintiff, if not all of them, one of them. They all did something that *could* have hurt the Plaintiff and someone did. The Plaintiff did no wrong and was injured.  And sometimes 5 deadbeats and one wealthy company would all be in the wrong, and the wealthy one would be left holding the bag. But if someone has to get "screwed" by the proceeding, it should  be the wrongdoers as they fight over who is to blame.

So, in your case, all 50 morons who shot their guns in the air are liable to the person that got shot. They can fight among themselves to try and prove they didn't fire the shot that hit home.

But... in 2004 form as part of "tort reform" we did away with that. Instead we had this:

http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/DeliverDocument.asp?citeid=456480

Basically, this is  one step toward making the Plaintiff prove which of the morons shooting the guns in the air actually hit him. If he can't prove which one, they all walk away laughing. UNLESS, the Plaintiff is found to be totally fault free or the wrongdoers acted recklessly. So, as of 2004, we would not have actually eliminated your "shooting in the air" scenario because the Plaintiff did nothing wrong and the wrongdoers could be shown to be reckless. So in many situations, you could still hold all the morons liable. This was sold as a compromise that protected the "big companies" when one of their slammer contractors of subsidiaries screwed up and they all pointed fingers at each other.

So clearly, that didn't cover enough basis and screw the little guy enough... so we "fixed" that issue in 2011:

http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/deliverdocument.asp?cite=23+OS+15

Ahhh, there we go. Gone is the idea that all the parties who were in the wrong could be on the hook. Gone is the idea that being utterly reckless or wanton can reignite the rule. Gone is any regard for whether or not the injured party had any part what-so-ever in the action that led to the harm. Unless you harmed the State, then the rule doesn't apply because money.

New rule: if a few people are doing something wrong and any one or more of them may have caused the damages - screw you. The injured party gets nothing and all the wrongdoers walk away laughing. So if you shoot a gun in the air and the bullet hits someone, trouble. If you had 50 friends have a party and shoot your guns in the air... its much harder to pin the civil liability on anyone (but under criminal law all the morons could go to jail, so don't try this at home... moron).

Or, lets say, dozens of companies are injecting wastewater into the ground causing earthquakes. Even after they were told specific things they should avoid. Even after they were told the practice can cause earthquakes. In some instances, even after they were told to shut the wells down. Lets pretend that the operators were all willfully ignoring the rules and acting recklessly in a manner scientists say is likely to cause massive damage to Oklahomans... well, tough crap. You can't show which one of the morons shooting their guns in the air did it.

So we all get to pay for earthquake insurance, add a little bit of trepidation to our lives, see our infrastructure crumble just a little bit faster, and add one more reason to the list of reasons for business to avoid Oklahoma. All thanks to our "business friendly" tort reform. But at least all our insurance premiums have gone way down, tons of new businesses have moved to the State, and our doctor short is over...right?

Ayep....


Glad to see you have joined the "Kool-Aid" gang here in Okrahoma!!   All these pesky educated people using their brains, thinking thoughts, .... we just don't need that kind of stuff going on 'round here...!!

People are rushing out to buy quake insurance, but word is it's a waste of money- the premiums are high, the deductible is thru the roof, and the policy does not cover much. Before you can buy it you have to wait 30 days or is it 90 days after a quake.

I got in early to avoid the rush - about 5 years ago.  Reasonable premium.  Same deductible as the rest of the house (I raised it to $500 last year).  No complaints yet.   The damage I do have from the quakes has not risen to the level of needing to be fixed on a grand scale.  I had one existing brick crack that was closed - no gap.  Now it has 1/4" gap after that latest shake.

I was lucky; I have no gaps and no new cracks (this house is old so it had some from settling anyway but nothing major and all indoors near door jambs).

I think the problems I have are more related to the lousy, "Home Creations" style building methods, materials, and designs.

My house was built in 1955 in Meadowood (just SW of Admiral and Mingo).  I drilled into a stud in the back bedroom to put up a flat screen TV mount, pulled the drill out and was surprised to smell cedar.  FWIU alot of builders back then used cedar for studs and other wood.  I know that helps me in termite resistance.

I live by the Admiral Twin Drive-In My home has a crawl space and I guess they are better than a slab foundation. No damage in my home. I'm doing some re-modeling in my house new  doors & put up paneling in the dining room, looks great. I plan to paint the bedrooms. I felt the quake and heard it, still dunno what made that loud "crashing" sound before the quake started, I was in my yard at the time it happened. Must have been some pressure wave.

(https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSF4iWAnfEIzKNCN0zjaWA1oYgkTXfEh848Fn5QSIjfB7r9TS1l)

Neither is inherently better than the other - it's all in the implementation, and a big dose of personal preference.  I have worked on quite a few 1920's vintage homes in Tulsa and it would surprise you how much really crappy stuff happened then, too, in the building industry - corners being cut is not just a modern "Home Creations" way of doing business.

That's true enough H. There were low quality builders then too. The main difference is in materials. Even bad builders were more likely to overbuild using extremely dense concrete block foundations, high quality (compared to today) lumber materials and solid hardwood floors with plank subfloors instead of plywood covered with laminate.

Todays homes are much better designed. Its like comparing vintage cars with todays Toyotas/Hondas/etc. I prefer the older homes but you have to watch out for their obsolete designs and flaws hidden behind plaster and lath.

One near 11th and Sandusky, little shotgun bungalow from the 30's, that needed foundation work.  The side was concrete block and was leaning out so far the house was only sitting on about 2" of the block.  Had to pull out about 40 ft of stem wall and replace.  When got to the bottom block, found that it was only about 3" deep in the ground - about 2 feet shallower than it should have been!  They had taken a shovel, skimmed a shallow trench a couple inches deep, put down some mortar and started laying blocks.  The whole house was like this, but only the south side was falling out.

Another one - 1921 two story in Maple Ridge - who woulda thought!   Plaster and lathe removed.  Wall stud - there were 3 or 4 that when put into position were made of 3 short pieces, with a gap between the top and bottom sections and a 'side' piece of 2 x 4 nailed to the other two pieces.  They would say that it was being resourceful to maximize the use of available lumber...  Another example of why we have actual building codes now.  The 2 x 4 were full dimension - really 2" x 4".

Earthquakes triggered by fracking, not just wastewater disposal
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/earthquakes-triggered-by-fracking/