LINK: Oil-Drilling Wastewater Seen Causing Earthquake
1 min readA northeast Ohio well used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas drilling almost certainly caused a series of 11 minor earthquakes in the Youngstown area since last spring, a seismologist investigating the quakes said Monday.
Research is continuing on seismic activity near the now-shuttered injection well at Youngstown, Ohio, but it might take a year for the wastewater-related rumblings in the earth to dissipate, said John Armbruster of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.
Brine wastewater dumped into wells comes from drilling operations, including the so-called fracking process to extract gas from underground shale, which has been a source of concern among environmental groups and some property owners. Injection wells have also been suspected of helping to cause earthquakes in Arkansas, Colorado and Oklahoma, Armbruster said.
