The desperate search for a smoking gun to shut down shale development has reached a new level of lunacy. As if the combined fears of rural industrialization, rampant air and water pollution, and exposure to cancer causing chemicals were not enough, now it is earthquakes! Oh please … what next? Shale development increases the incidence of tornadoes?
At first glance the headline looks like another scary outcome associated with shale development. A research paper by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to be presented April 18th at the Seismological Society of America’s Annual Meeting links oil and gas production to increased seismicity. Alarm bells are ringing in all the usual corners.
Except that the authors, who are being interviewed this week in advance of presenting the paper, are saying something very different. They are saying that increased seismicity is caused by over use of deep injection wells. This is a decades- old, well- known phenomenon that can be avoided by curtailing injection into the offending well.*
Deep injection wells have been controlled by the EPA ever since Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974. The program is known as the Underground Injection Control (UIC) program and its history can be found here: http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/history.cfm. Deep injection is used for waste disposal by many industries, not just oil and gas, and has ben in existence for the better part of a century. An earthquake caused by injecting into one of these wells is not new, it’s not noteworthy and it’s not news.
I think the more interesting question is: why is the USGS hell-bent on stirring the pot? What does the USGS do anyway? According to their website, "The mission of the Geological Survey is to provide geologic, topographic, and hydrologic information that contributes to the wise management of the Nation's natural resources and that promotes the health, safety, and well-being of the people." Does Rodney Dangerfield work there?
Look at what happened after the USGS wrote up shale reserves. In August 2011 when USGS revised their shale reserves upwards from 2 TCF to 84 TCF, their estimate was substantially less than the figure being used by the Energy Information Agency (EIA), causing the EIA to write down their estimate of reserves. Countless shale protestors cite the USGS write up as proof that the gas isn’t there. By writing up reserves, USGS effectively wrote them down.
Now USGS is releasing a research paper confirming that deep injection wells cause earthquakes and production wells don’t. Never mind that has been known for 50-years. Shale protestors will use the paper to “prove” that recent earthquakes would not have happened without the shale development boom, and therefore future development should stop.
With the USGS on your side, you can't help but lose.
Till Next Time,
Energy Mom
*It’s critical to differentiate deep injection wells, which are disposal wells, from shale development wells, which are hydraulically fractured horizontal wells. Mixing up these two types of wells is like confusing the faucet and the drain in your sink. In this analogy the faucet is the production well and the drain is the injection well.
