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Not again! Are earthquakes in the Delaware Basin heading for a disaster similar to the one in Oklahoma?

 


Erin Brockovich speaks during an Oklahoma earthquake town hall meeting on February 23, 2016 in… [+] Edmund, Oklahoma.

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Earthquakes are rapidly increasing in the Delaware portion of the Permian Basin that lies in southeastern New Mexico and crosses the southern border into western Texas.

This growth, which has been exponential since 2015, is reminiscent of the earthquakes in Oklahoma that peaked in 2015, and caused panic in the state. Later they turned out to be earthquakes caused by disposal wells that were dumping huge amounts of produced water – the dirty water that comes with oil or gas in production wells.

In Oklahoma, the water produced was injected deep into the earth and from there it permeated the often severely faulted basement rock. Water pressure, if encountered in a very stressful fault, can cause fault slip and earthquake. The same situation undoubtedly exists in the Delaware Basin.

For every barrel of oil produced from a well in Oklahoma, 7-20 barrels of water were produced. In the Delaware Basin, the ratio is 3-10 water/oil.

Figure 1. 235 m = 3 earthquakes in the Delaware Basin from January 1, 2009 to September 12, 2021.

USGS

235 M > 3 earthquakes in Delaware since 2009 are shown in Figure 1. The majority are in Texas, not New Mexico. These earthquakes are generally attributed to the injection of water produced by disposal wells.

Permian oil production started to grow after 2011 when new fracking technology for long horizontal wells appeared. Production stabilized for a year in 2015, but then accelerated rapidly in 2017 and 2018. More oil and gas wells means more water is dumped.

The rapid rise in producing waters in the Permian is consistent with more earthquakes associated with disposal wells, and reflects an active drilling campaign in the Delaware portion of the Permian Basin.

Figure 2. Water produced in several rocky plays. Oklahoma statewide data.

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In 2017, the Permian as a whole produced 63 billion gallons or 1.5 billion barrels per year (Fig. 2). Much of this was injected into disposal wells. This massive volume of water was about as much as Oklahoma produced in 2015 when that state recorded 890 earthquakes with a magnitude of M>3.

There are hints that Texas, located below the New Mexico border, doubles the earthquake risk because water produced from New Mexico is trucked across the border to Texas disposal wells. If earthquake risks continue to increase in the Delaware Basin, New Mexico may not be happy because the water produced has been shipped and disposed of interstate rather than recycled, which the state intends.

About 200 disposal wells located in Texas 10 miles from the New Mexico line, a water recycling company executive said, call for a link between disposal wells and increased earthquakes.

How do earthquakes compare with Oklahoma?

The big question is, do the earthquakes in Delaware reflect what happened in Oklahoma? And do state regulators need to be involved as they did in Oklahoma to mitigate earthquakes?

Let’s take a look at the earthquake time profile for Delaware, of magnitude M > 3. These earthquakes can be felt on the surface. Figure 3 shows that after moderate increases in 2015-2019, earthquakes grew more frequently in 2020 and 2021. Most earthquakes in 2021 occurred in the first group of Figure 1 – just below the New Mexico border.

This behavior is similar to the earthquake history (M>3) in Oklahoma shown in Figure 3 – five years from the lower level two years before the upper level.

The peak rate was 890/year in 2015 before declining due to regulation and well closures with lower oil prices (the drop is truncated in the figure but started in 2016).

Figure 3. M = 3 earthquakes triggered in the Delaware Basin (left panel). Earthquakes in Oklahoma… [+] (right panel).

USGS

Shifting the Oklahoma data forward by 6 years gives an “eyeball match” for data comparison in Figure 4. The right panel shows, using a logarithmic scale, that seismic numbers at both locations rise exponentially at the same rate of increase.

But earthquake numbers in Delaware are lower than in Oklahoma. This may be because less water is disposed of in Delaware, or because there are fewer fault line locations that are triggered by water disposal.

However, the same exponential rate of increase should be a concern in Delaware – because it indicates that in 2022 and 2023 earthquake numbers could rise to levels similar to 585/year and 890/year as observed in Oklahoma.

Figure 4. The left panel uses the 6-year “eyeball match” time shift for data comparison. right panel… [+] It is a log plot of the same data.

USGS

Takeaway.

Earthquakes in the Delaware Basin are grouped into two localized regions (Fig. 1), possibly where fault lines exist. Most earthquakes occurred in Texas, but the largest earthquakes, M>4, were felt in New Mexico.

In the Delaware Basin, seven M>4 earthquakes spiked in 2021 with only two more M=4 events in 2015. Six of these seven events had earthquake foci in Texas, in a group of earthquakes just below the border with New Mexico. in Figure 1.

Comparison of the data with Oklahoma (Fig. 4) shows a similar exponential increase of seismicity over time at both locations. This suggests that earthquakes in Delaware may continue to dramatically increase to higher levels as occurred in Oklahoma in 2014 and 2015 (nearly 1,000 earthquakes per year).

This is a disturbing explanation because there will be more and more M>4 earthquakes and even some dangerous M>5 earthquakes. A history of Oklahoma earthquakes is given elsewhere.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has evaluated a proposal by Holtec International to build a radioactive nuclear waste storage site amid hundreds of oil and gas wells in the New Mexico portion of the Delaware Basin. The above figures support the case that the Permian Basin may not be the best place to store nuclear waste.

earthquake relief.

Adrian Sandoval, director of the state’s Department of Petroleum Conservation, said OCD has linked earthquakes to dewatering in the New Mexico portion of the Delaware Basin.

We do not want any earthquake activity that could threaten property or people in any way. And the bigger the earthquake, the more likely it will have impacts so we want to mitigate that.”

If seismic exponential growth continues, mitigation efforts will need to be imposed in the Delaware Basin, such as:

Determine the total disposal volume for each well.

Injections are farther (less deep) than the basement, where these earthquakes occur (seismic depths range from 15,000 to 27,000 feet in the Delaware Basin).

Monitoring seismic activity and closing drainage wells in the vicinity of severe earthquakes (fault lines).

Shifting from disposal of wells to recycling produced water that can be used in fracking future wells. This will save much of the aquifer or city water that was used in the past – a football field of water up to 40 feet above the grassy area is needed to outfit a brand new borehole. Recycling is underway in the Delaware Basin but needs to be expedited.

If the exponential increase continues, this could lead to M > 5 earthquakes as recorded in Oklahoma. The largest earthquake was the Pawnee earthquake at M = 5.8 on September 3, 2016. An earthquake of this magnitude can cause extensive damage to buildings, as has occurred in other magnitude 5 earthquakes in Oklahoma.

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Sources

1/ https://Google.com/

2/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2021/09/21/not-again-are-earthquakes-in-delaware-basin-headed-for-an-oklahoma-like-disaster/

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