Fracking may be to blame for recent earthquakes in Kansas which left scientists initially baffled.
Geologists in the area have said that the pumping of chemicals into the ground as part of the fracking process are likely to be the cause of the recent earthquakes.
Geophysicist Rick Miller believes fracking caused the quakes:
“We can say there is a strong correlation between the disposal of saltwater and the earthquakes,” he told the Lawrence Journal-World.
Russia Today reports:
The Journal-World first published their piece with Miller over the weekend, and it reported that state geologists now say for the first time that fracking is responsible for recent tremors.
On Monday – two days after the paper published its report – the Wichita Eagle reported that four small quakes occurred in the southern part of the state and through neighboring Oklahoma earlier that morning.
A separate study that was cited – published by the journal Science last summer and authored by researchers from Cornell University and the University of Colorado – determined that approximately one-fifth of all the earthquakes that have occurred recently in the central and eastern United States were caused by activity at just four fracking wells situated near the town of Jones, Oklahoma.
Like Kansas, Oklahoma saw an increase in tremors in recent years, going from one significant quake a year in 2008 to 230 as of July.
Last year, Kansas encountered more than 120 earthquakes, the Associated Press reported this week; in 2012, the state saw none.
Joe Spease, the chairman of the Kansas Sierra Club’s fracking committee, told the wire agency that state lawmakers should impose a moratorium on fracking until plans can be adopted with regards to the cocktail of chemicals routinely injected into the Earth in order to extract natural resources.
“If the government and the Kansas Corporation Commission care about the people of Kansas and the damages, they will order a moratorium,” Spease said. “If they only care about the profits of the oil and gas [industry], it will be business as usual. I hope that is not the case.”
Rex Buchanan, director of the Kansas Geological Survey, told AP that he doesn’t think fracking is necessarily to blame, but instead raised concern about the waste water used during drilling operations.
“If someone were to say these earthquakes were caused by fracking, there might be one or two, but there is no evidence for it,” Buchanan said. “The issue of saltwater disposal is completely different.”
The following video shows university researchers who have discovered pollutants in fracking water which have a devastating effect on waterways – including carcinogenic after-effects.
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