Earthquakes in Texas: How common are they? And why do they happen?

Earthquakes are becoming increasingly common in the Lone Star State, especially in West Texas.

SNYDER, Texas – At 10:38 p.m. Monday, the ground began to shake in West Texas.

The real event occurred about five miles below the surface, with a magnitude 4.9 quake west of the Scurry-Fisher county line. A few minutes later, several miles to the northwest, another quake struck — this time a magnitude 2.8. Three more followed in the same area, all within the same half hour, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

People felt the shaking — possibly from a preliminary 4.9-magnitude quake about 10 miles northwest of Hermle — across West Texas and as far away as the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, about three hours to the east.

The exact causes of the quakes won’t be determined until researchers have a chance to examine them more deeply. But they were all part of a cluster of recent quakes in the Hermle area this week, most of them in the smaller 1.0 to 2.0 magnitude range, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

More broadly, these phenomena were part of a growing trend in Texas over the past five years: Earthquakes have become increasingly common in the Lone Star State, especially in West Texas.

In 2023, there were 2,493 earthquakes with a magnitude of 2.0 or higher in Texas, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin.

These numbers were similar to those in 2022, when Texas experienced 2,601 earthquakes of at least magnitude 2.0.

But it's also more than double the amount seen in 2020, and eight times the amount recorded in 2017 — all according to the bureau, which tracks Texas earthquakes through its TexNet earthquake catalog.

Researchers have attributed this increase in earthquakes to the emergence of a form of oil drilling known as hydraulic fracturing. The process involves injecting fluid into a well to break up shale and rock to extract oil or gas reserves, the U.S. Geological Survey explains here.

Often, the USGS says, it's not hydraulic fracturing that causes earthquakes, but the disposal of the massive amounts of wastewater it produces.

The disposal of that wastewater — which is injected deep into the Earth's surface — is what researchers have identified as the “primary causal factor” for the increasing number of earthquakes in Texas, said Dr. Peter H. Hennings, principal investigator at the Bureau of Economic Geology's Center for Seismic Injection and Research.

Hennings researches earthquakes and their causes and has authored several papers detailing the recent spike in earthquakes in Texas.

The 4.9 magnitude earthquake near Hermle this week was “definitely noticeable,” Hennings said. The 4.9 reading is higher than Texas typically sees, Hennings said, although the state has seen records of more than 5.0 magnitude in recent years.

Hennings also notes that the Hermley earthquakes occurred within a new cluster of earthquakes recorded on the eastern shelf of the Midland Basin. It is just one of several clusters identified across the Midland Basin and Delaware Basin, extending into New Mexico, according to research Hennings has compiled.

In a 2023 paper published by the Geological Society of America, Hennings and co-author Michael H. Young presented data showing a sharp increase in earthquakes over the past five years.

While North Texas has seen an increase in earthquakes for about 10 years, most of the recent earthquake surge has been in the Delaware and Midland basins of West Texas, located along the Interstate 10 corridor between Odessa and El Paso.

Hennings said his research showed a clear link between hydraulic fracturing — specifically, the injection of wastewater back to the surface — and earthquakes. In a forthcoming paper, Hennings and his colleague Katie Smaye show the scale of wastewater injection, saying that about 45 billion barrels of oil have had to be dumped since 2009.

“This injection changed the pressure below the surface and caused earthquakes to propagate along pre-existing faults,” Hennings and Smey wrote.

Hennings' office also found that when fracking and injection operations stop, earthquakes tend to stop as well — although the change may not come immediately.

“Even if we stop injection, that pressure takes some time to dissipate. If we stop injection today, that doesn't mean the earthquakes will stop today… but they will stop anyway,” Hennings said.

The past decade or so of earthquake activity in Texas has given researchers a clearer picture of this trend, Hennings said.

“We’ve learned a lot by watching these processes develop in Texas,” Hennings said. “And now we see it very clearly. It’s consistent with our expectations. If injection rates increase, I expect serious earthquakes.”

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