Rising earthquakes in New Mexico likely caused by the oil industry

New Mexico oil and gas regulators and scientists are on alert after a significant increase in earthquake activity in southern New Mexico – an increase likely caused by the oil and gas industry’s injection wells in the Permian Basin.

Since 2018, the number of small earthquakes of magnitude 1 or greater in the basin has increased from about 40 to nearly 500 in 2020, and during that time earthquakes of magnitude 2 or greater from none have risen to 158, according to data from New Mexico. Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources.

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There have been 146 earthquakes as of June so far this year. Those numbers are only in New Mexico – they’re even higher across the border in the Texas part of the basin.

The vast majority of earthquakes are small and barely perceptible to people in the area in which they occur. But Dr. Mayrie Leatherland, director of the New Mexico Tech Seismological Observatory, is paying close attention because “we’ve seen that when you start seeing more of these small events, it can lead to bigger events.”

Texas has seen many of the bigger events of the past year that New Mexico have felt like. And in July a 4.0 earthquake in New Mexico shook the southeastern corner of the state, “which is something we definitely pay attention to,” says Leatherland. “It indicates that there is a danger in this area that we need to understand.”

Earthquakes can damage property if they are large enough. There are some very important properties in the area. The country’s main nuclear weapons waste storage site, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), is located half a mile underground in a salt formation in the middle of the New Mexican portion of the basin, slightly north of most earthquake activity.

“There haven’t been a lot of earthquakes very close to the chemical processing facility, but that’s a concern, and it’s something we need to monitor,” Leatherland says.

WIPP is a 10,000-year repository of highly toxic radioactive waste from making nuclear weapons — things like tools, clothing, and soil contaminated with plutonium. It is operated by private contractors for the US Department of Energy (DOE).

Several nuclear sites in the Permian Basin are surrounded by brine injection wells, which is the likely cause of increased seismic activity.

In 2014, a radioactive leak attributed to bad cat litter contaminated several workers and shut down the facility for nearly three years. And in 2016, a roof collapse shut down part of the underground facility. In response to emailed questions, a DOE spokesperson wrote that this was a “naturally occurring rockfall” in an unused part of the facility.

They continued, “The Department of Energy requires that facilities be designed to withstand viable risks from natural phenomena, including earthquakes.” “To date, there have been no increases in seismic activity at a Web site that warrant action or concerns.”

This is not the only nuclear facility in the region.

Another private company, URENCO, operates the country’s only commercial nuclear fuel enrichment plant 40 miles east of Webb, near Eunice, New Mexico, on the Texas state line. And just above the bounds of that, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission just approved a high-level waste facility next to a ten-year-old low-level waste facility, which Texas Governor Greg Abbott doesn’t like.

And more of the country’s commercial nuclear waste could be heading to this region as well. Holtec International, with support from the Nuclear Regulatory Authority, wants to build a nuclear waste storage facility for up to 100,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods 12 miles north of the Webb Station, a plan opposed by New Mexico Governor Michael Logan Grisham and others in the state. Government.

All of these nuclear sites are surrounded by brine injection wells, which is the likely cause of the increased seismicity in the basin.

* * *

Oil and gas deposits are not pure pockets of underground hydrocarbons. It comes mixed with massive amounts of brackish water, or “produced water,” as the industry calls it.

The increase in oil and gas production over the past ten years in the Permian Basin has led to a parallel increase in the amount of brine. Oil and gas wells pull up to 10 times more brine than oil or gas, though the ratio is generally closer to 4:1, says Adrian Sandoval, director of the New Mexico Department of Oil Conservation.

She points out, “You have to do something with it.” Most often, operators inject it, along with the water and chemical cocktail used to fracking new wells, into deep rock formations through various wells at separate locations, usually below the oil and gas layers.

Between 2011 and the end of 2020, the amount of brine injected underground in southeastern New Mexico increased by nearly 40%.

There is a lot of water to deal with.

Between 2011 and the end of 2020, the amount of saline injected underground in southeastern New Mexico increased nearly 40% from 656 million barrels to 916 million barrels annually.

That’s more than the water currently in the Elephant Butte Reservoir, the state’s largest reservoir, on the Rio Grande River. Sure, the tank is only 5.6% full of its capacity, but that’s due to increased aridity across New Mexico, due to climate change.

The forcing of produced water into the lower layers can cause earthquakes as the high-pressure brine pushes on underground faults, causing them to slide and slide past each other to release the increased pressure. This slip and slide translates into earthquakes.

“This is definitely the most likely cause,” Leatherland says of the recent earthquakes. She says a lot of forces play a role in creating an induced earthquake — the amount of brine, the rate at which it is injected, the depth of injection and the rock formation where it all happens.

But, “when a lot of fluid injection starts…and seismicity increases year by year, it is undeniable that these earthquakes have resulted from it.”

These conditions make earthquakes very difficult to study and predict, says Dr. Alexandros Savedis, director of the Texas Seismological Network. In addition, there is often a time lag between the injection and when the slip occurs.

Earthquakes do not always occur at the wastewater injection site. Earthquakes can occur up to 24 miles from injection wells.

“You don’t inject today, and you’ll have an earthquake tomorrow,” he says. Earthquakes generally occur at the time of the injection, or after a few days to a few weeks.

Also, earthquakes don’t always happen at the injection site – they can happen miles away. “It could be from 20 to 25 kilometres [12 to 15 miles] and longer than that,” he says. It is believed that earthquakes can occur up to 24 miles from the causative injection wells.

A DOE spokesperson wrote that there are no injection wells within 16 square miles of the facility—a radius of about 2.25 miles.

But according to records from the New Mexico Department of Petroleum Conservation, there are five injection wells within a 12-mile radius of the EPA — the distance that Seismic says earthquakes can travel — 74 within a radius similar to Holtec’s proposed site and 448 within 12 miles. . URENCO and a proposed storage facility in Texas.

These are just injection wells on the New Mexico side. There is more in Texas.

* * *

New Mexico does not have specific seismic safety guidelines for oil and gas wells. And some are not worried about the increasing earthquakes.

“We don’t study research center-induced earthquakes,” says Dr. Robert Balch, director of the Petroleum Recovery Research Center at New Mexico Tech. The center studies techniques to increase oil and natural gas production in the country and transfers that technology to industry.

“It’s mainly because it’s not so big a problem as it is in Oklahoma,” he says. This state is the nation’s picture of earthquakes induced from injection wells.

“For a long time, the existence of induced earthquakes has been controversial. Stimulated earthquakes look very much like naturally occurring earthquakes.” ~ Dr. Mary Leatherland, Director of the Seismological Observatory at New Mexico Tech

In November 2011, a 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck Prague, 45 miles east of Oklahoma City, severely damaging many homes, bringing down chimneys and collapsed a tower in a building at a local college. For years, the state government there fought the idea that earthquakes were related to the oil and gas industry. But in 2014, a report from the USGS’ National Earthquake Risk Reduction Program, published in Science, linked injection wells to this earthquake and others in Oklahoma. The earthquake swarm peaked in 2015.

“For a long time, the existence of induced earthquakes has been controversial,” says Leatherland, because “induced earthquakes look a lot like naturally occurring earthquakes.” But she says that when the injections decreased in Oklahoma, the size and number of earthquakes also decreased.

Meanwhile, in the Permian Basin, oil production and wastewater injection are increasing, and are set to increase further.

Balch says that the geology underlying the Permian Basin is very different from what is found in Oklahoma, and he believes it poses a lower risk for large earthquakes. He also says that in Oklahoma, water has been injected closer to the bedrock than in New Mexico, and this could create a greater risk of larger earthquakes.

“I guess I’m not too worried about earthquakes in the Permian,” he says, “but tomorrow if a magnitude 9.6 earthquake happens (I should change my mind, right?”)

He also only heard of one case of an earthquake that destroyed an oil and gas well.

It appears that the only seismic guidelines for oilfield or well equipment provided by the American Petroleum Institute are for offshore drilling rigs and onshore storage tanks.

“Someone told me that someone told them that a well was clogged” after the earthquake in the 1990s near Eunice, he says. There is no real evidence for this in the literature. And I imagine companies will keep this kind of thing to themselves. Someone might blame them for the earthquake, right? “

The only seismic guidance for oilfield or well equipment provided by the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s leading guide, appears to be for offshore drilling rigs and onshore storage tanks.

New Mexico also does not have seismic guidelines for operations.

Sandoval, director of the New Mexico Department of Petroleum Conservation, says her office has not seen any well problems caused by earthquakes, but she also believes there have not yet been earthquakes large enough to destroy wells.

OCD examines injection wells “as much as, if not more, as other oil and gas wells,” she says. The rules, which were in place three years ago, increased the spacing between injection wells to a mile and a half, “so that they are not spaced next to each other as some other states have done.”

She says her office has the power to shut down emergency wells, but “we haven’t had to use the power of emergency orders, at least that I know of.”

It also says operators are reusing more of the water produced in their operations, reducing the amount that is disposed of by re-injection. “And the more that happened, you know, I think the better it was overall.”

* * *

Over the past several years, the Litherland group has installed more – and more sensitive – seismographs across New Mexico to give them more accurate information on the location of the small earthquakes that were recently recorded.

“Because of the raw material processing facility, we want to be especially careful, you know,” she says. “And it’s not always easy to know what is the best thing to do.”

But she does know one thing for sure: “If we keep pumping more and more fluid into the same earthquake sites now, we can most likely expect to continue seeing earthquakes,” she says.

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