New research has found that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is "not significant" in causing earth tremors. Released Wednesday by the UK's Durham University, the results of a study of hundreds of thousands of fracking operations showed that the process only caused earth tremors that could be felt on the surface in three cases.
The research, titled Induced Seismicity and the Hydraulic Fracturing of Low Permeability Sedimentary Rocks, found that almost all of the resultant seismic activity was on such a small scale that only geoscientists would be able to detect it. It also discovered that the size and number of tremors is low compared to other manmade triggers such as mining, geothermal activity or reservoir water storage.And if you can't believe the Brits, who can you believe?
Can one quantify the amount of energy released?
"By comparison, most fracking-related events release a negligible amount of energy roughly equivalent to or even less than someone jumping off a ladder onto the floor. Of the three fracking-related quakes that could be felt, even the largest ever, in the Horn River Basin in Canada in 2011 had a magnitude of only 3.8. That is at the lower end of the range that could be felt by people. The widely-reported quake at Preese Hall near Blackpool in 2011 had a magnitude of 2.3."