Earthquake Shakes Ohio Confidence in Drilling

Hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking to reach deep pockets of natural gas seems to be the culprit behind a small earthquake that shook Youngstown, Ohio on Saturday. By Monday, state lawmakers had imposed a two-week ban on drilling while the latest quake is investigated.

Since the epicenter of the 4.0 quake is less than one-tenth of a mile from an injection drilling site, many feel confident that the drilling practice is to blame.

Breaking rock with chemicals, sand and water pressure is a common practice used to access big pockets of natural gas trapped inside large underground geological formations. But that practice comes with a slew of environmental concerns.

Secondary wells drilled to dispose of the water/chemical mix called injection wells could be triggering the earthquakes, which have grown from rare in the area to monthly events.

A spokesman for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources says that the frack water being sunk in the Youngstown area isn’t just from Ohio. Over half of the waste water comes from nearby Pennsylvania, where the majority of the Marcellus Shale is located.

Deputy Director Andy Ware of ODNR says, “While we couldn’t say for sure that there’s a direct causation between the injection well and the earthquakes, we thought it better to be overly cautious.”

After a small earthquake in Youngstown on Christmas Eve, regulators asked drilling companies to stop injecting frack water into the ground. And after the New Year’s Eve quake, they decided to stop all drilling within a five-mile radius until the quake can be investigated.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Pennsylvania started shipping its frack water over the Ohio state lines, increasing the Ohio frack water burden by 400 percent since March 2011. Pennsylvania has permitted 7 injection drill sites while Ohio has 194.

Until April of last year Pennsylvania had been disposing of its drill waste “water” at treatment plants. But the treatment process didn’t remove all the chemicals and they escape into the groundwater. Now, much of that frack water is trucked over the Ohio state line and injected into the ground.

A city official of Hubbard Township, a mile from the Ohio-Pennsylvania border says, “It’s too toxic to discharge into the ground in Pennsylvania, but it’s OK to discharge into the ground in Ohio.”

And now it seems that practice may be causing earthquakes in an area that was seismically stable.

Michael C. Hansen, state geologist and coordinator of the Ohio Seismic Network says there is “little doubt” the quakes are related to injection well operations.

Geologists have long suspected that injecting liquids into underground rock formations can trigger earthquakes along fault lines because the liquids allow rock to flow more easily past each other. When rocks slide, the earth quakes.