http://www.usatoday.com/money/story/2012-03-09/fracking-gas-drilling-earthquakes/53435232/1

This hits home because Youngstown and the site of this well are roughly 30 mins from my home and on several occasions we felt the earthquakes that resulted from this fracking.

It was stated as shear coincidence that from 3 months of the well going live the area had suffered dozens of quakes and tremors and stopped abruptly after they ceased execution of the injections.. For months people were wondering about this and finally there is a resolution..

I know I've spoken to many over the last year about this on vent so wanted to post this for reading if anyone cared..

Thanks!
~Icky

Queue the trolls...

20 year environmental study done to understand the effects of injected tainted salt water on local aquifers and water tables?

Nope.

Actually, yes. Geologists have studied this in several different locations and have determined beyond doubt that several places (specifically out west near/around/in Colorado) where our government was using this technique to dispose of hazardous materials into old wells fault related activity had increased significantly, but you don't hear about that when its the government doing it.

This brine is being injected several hundred or thousand feet below your local aquifer. By the time the brine rises through the strata to the relative low depth of your aquifer it will have long since lost any impurities, the same way that water seeping down into the aquifer cleanses itself by passing through the earth.

All of those "dangerous materials" that the article warns of being put in the ground, came from the ground in the first place. Obviously a salt water drilling fluid is being used to make these holes. There is nothing added to a brine drilling solution that is hazardous to the environment. This is done intentionally so that these types of fluids can be released into the ocean, without upsetting the environment, when used for deep water drilling. Any material in this mud that is radioactive, or otherwise hazardous got into the mud as cuttings from the rock that was drilled through.

As far as the fracking causing earthquakes, they've proven several times that this does happen, but bear in mind that the only reason the drilling company wants to put the mud back down in the hole is because your friendly neighborhood EPA man is the guy telling them that is how it must be disposed of. The drilling companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars finding and using mud additives that won't harm the environment so that the mud can be disposed of without all of this hoopla, only to be told that because of the contaminants drilled out of the ground in the mud, it must be pumped back in the hole.

Do you feel trolled or educated? You decide.

Psh education is trolling! Remember this is America...everyone is the best at everything because they say so!

Back under your bridge troll!! :D

Don't you have a gun rally to go too?

Nope, and I aced my geology test and lab practical this week so I know about that which I speak :)

Since this is in Kaotics wheelhouse, I think I'm going to go him on this. Here in Oklahoma after we've had a 4.8 and a 5.6 earthquake they continue to keep fracking. There's only been a few quakes since the bigger ones back in November. The biggest issue that has been talked about with fracking in Oklahoma has been the possibility of pollution of the water.

I'm not exactly an expert, but I didn't think Ohio was near any oceans? ;)

Now, without being a wise-ass... I don't know anything about the solution they use for fracking or how the depth of the drilling affects water supplies. In NY, however, we've seen/predicted issues with our water supplies because we put so much salt on the roads to keep them safe in the winter. I'm not sure if the same issue applies to fracking, but it's food for thought...

The salt on the roads can seep down into the aquifer. The salt and other things in the brine drilling fluid are inserted thousands of feet down, way way way below your aquifer. AND that's where they all came from to begin with.

Salt water drilling muds are used any time a well must go through a salt formation. This is made necessary by the fact that fresh water will absorb the salt it comes in to contact with which causes the pH to drop, pipes to corrode, and equivalent down hole pressures to do all kinds of funky things that can cause blow outs or accidental fracking. So, to avoid this, when a drilling operation gets near a salt formation (usually the salt dome that has created the geology that traps the oil) the drilling fluid is switched out to a salt water solution so that it is already saturated with salt, thus preventing dissolution of the surrounding salt into the fluid.