Two earthquakes hit Johnson County

CBS News Texas Live

JOHNSON COUNTY — Two earthquakes struck Johnson County Wednesday afternoon near Mansfield.

Initial reports classify the earthquakes as magnitude 3.0 and 3.2. There were no reports of damage or injuries.

This is larger than a normal earthquake, said Jeff Ray, a CBS News meteorologist in Texas. Hydraulic fracturing is the extraction of natural gas or oil from shale and other forms of “tight” rock.

In 2015, a 4.0 magnitude earthquake occurred near Johnson County, one of the largest earthquakes ever to hit Texas, renewing the debate over hydraulic fracturing. Four well operators then agreed to temporarily shut down their wells until test results came back. The test would determine the effect of injecting wastewater into subsurface rock formations in areas that felt recent activity.

The Texas Railroad Commission found “no conclusive evidence” that wells were a factor in the 2015 earthquake.

SMU has been monitoring earthquakes in the region for many years. A 2019 study published by the University of Texas and co-authored by SMU Assistant Professor Heather Dishion linked seismic activity in West Texas with increased oil and gas development.

The paper begins with: “Since 2008, there has been a significant increase in the number of earthquakes reported in the central United States (Ellsworth, 2013). This increase is generally due to wastewater disposal or enhanced oil recovery processes that produce pressure changes under surface and reduce friction that prevents sliding along existing defects.”

The study also said that the earthquakes that occurred in North Texas were within a few kilometers of large-volume wells, “suggesting that the injected fluids caused pressure changes that propagated away from the wells and reached appropriately oriented stressed faults.”

This seismic activity stopped in this area once SMU started monitoring it, Ray said.

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