San Ardu earthquakes linked to oil operations – Monterey Herald

SAN ARDO – For decades, the oil operators in the Salinas Valley have been blasting water deep underground. Now, scientists believe the activity may have triggered the earthquakes.

A recent study links seismic activity around the San Ardu oil field with the use of “wastewater injection”. When oil companies pull crude oil from the ground, it is accompanied by large amounts of water. Then this wastewater is pumped through wells thousands of feet deep into the ground.

The research is not the first to link earthquakes to wastewater injection. Over a thousand miles in the urgent state, the link is well accepted. In 2016, the largest earthquake in Oklahoma history, measuring 5.8 degrees, struck near Pawnee City, damaging structures 300 miles away and prompting the Pawnee nation to declare a state of emergency. Scientists believe that this earthquake and thousands of others in Oklahoma were caused by sewage injection.

But in a statement to the “Herald” newspaper, the Western State Petroleum Association said it would be inappropriate to compare seismic activity in California with what is happening in states such as Oklahoma, due to differences in geology and oilfield activity.

In response to the association’s claim, the study’s lead author, Thomas Goeble, said, “The errors don’t care if they’re in Oklahoma or California. The physics of earthquakes and the stimulus are the same everywhere.”

studying

Goebel, a professor of seismology at the University of Memphis, and Manusher Sherzai, a professor of geophysics at Virginia Tech, took a closer look at more than 40 years of sewage injection data and 1,735 localized earthquakes.

What they found was that earthquakes in San Ardo tended to occur near sewage disposal wells and that changes in wastewater injection rates were masked by changes in earthquake activity, with a delay of 13 to 17 months.

As Goebel describes it: “The rise and fall of earthquake rates followed ups and downs in injection rates.”

A similar late response has been described by studies of injection connection to earthquake in Oklahoma.

A recent study links seismic activity around the San Ardu oil field with the use of wastewater injection. (Nick Ogasa – Special for The Herald)

Prior to 2008, the urgent country was relatively calm in terms of seismic activity. But over the past decade, oil operations have greatly increased their use of wastewater injection. In the same time period, the state experienced an explosion of earthquakes.

According to the United States Geological Survey, the majority of earthquakes in Oklahoma are caused by sewage injection into the ground.

How does that happen

Wastewater and fracturing fluids can trigger or “trigger” earthquakes because they are forced underground at very high pressures. They work their way through pores and fractures in the rock, which are themselves already under tremendous tectonic pressure.

Like the surface of the air hockey table, which releases air under the disc to reduce friction and help it slide smoothly, pumping high-pressure fluids into underground faults and fractures makes it easier to slip and cause earthquakes.

But as reported by the US Geological Survey, wastewater injection is much more likely than fracking to cause earthquakes. This is because compared to fracking operations, wastewater disposal wells pump more fluids for longer periods of time.

For their analysis, Goebel and Shirzaei purchased earthquake data from the earthquake data center in Northern California, and wastewater injection data from the California Department of Geo-Energy Administration. All oil operators are required by law to report wastewater injection data to CalGEM.

Goebel and Shirzaei also looked at satellite images and found that the valley floor is rising, in some areas by more than half an inch per year. According to Goebel, this is evidence that the underground pressures are unbalanced, forcing the Earth to expand.

California’s oil operations are usually associated with sinking the Earth, noted Joern Kavin, a geophysicist from the US Geological Survey. “Here, you actually see inflation, so there’s a lot of waste water being injected.”

Assault on San Andreas

The State Western Oil Association, which has represented oil operations in California for more than a century, has criticized Goebel and Shirzaei’s conclusions, stating that earthquakes are common and normal in California. The association also noted that the boundary of the San Andreas Plate, a tectonically active feature, lies about 22 miles east of the San Ardu oil field.

But Caffeine, who was not involved in the research, said it would be strange if the San Andreas fault had caused so many earthquakes over the distance the oilfield was located.

In their study, Goebel and Shirzaei showed that sewage injection rates and earthquakes are strongly correlated, and this correlation included earthquakes up to 15 miles from the oil field. When they tried to analyze earthquakes along the San Andreas River in their accounts, the relationship weakened.

The researchers also noted that earthquakes appeared to be gathering near the oil field, with fewer earthquakes in the area between San Ardu and San Andreas.

According to Goebel, these observations support the conclusion that wastewater injection causes earthquakes in the San Ardu region.

Z gauge and oilfield prohibitions

The San Ardo oil field was last highlighted in 2016, when 56% of Monterey County voters passed the Z measure, which banned fracturing and wastewater injection and the development of new oil and gas wells in the province.

But after a lawsuit was filed by the oil companies, much of the Measure Z was revoked – only the ban on hydraulic fracturing was maintained today, pumping wastewater into the ground is still legal.

An appeal for reinstatement of the “z” review procedure is awaited in the Court of Appeal. Its supporters hope to restore the ban on wastewater injection and the development of new oil and gas wells.

“It was very outrageous for a judge to cancel people voting,” says Andy Hsia-Coron, co-founder of Protect Monterey County, the popular organization behind Measure Z. “There is a lot of precedent for curtailing these types of activities.”

In fact, this precedent can be found in the immediate vicinity.

In 2014, neighboring San Benito County made history by passing the state’s first hydraulic fracturing ban. The pioneering initiative, called “Action J”, has also banned other “high-intensity” oil operations in the governorate, such as sewage injection.

But with no court date set to retake Measure Z, it appears the wastewater will continue to flow into the ground.

On the future of earthquakes in the San Ardu oil field, Goebel said: “Expectations are that what happened over the past forty years, the same will be true for the future if the injection continues.”

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