More lessons Geysers – Times-Standard can teach us

The most important things first. The North Coast tragedy struck last week when two people on the northern pier were struck by waves. One of them was able to hold on to the rocks and survive; The other was washed away in the water and perished. Another family narrowly escaped when a wave of sneakers surrounded them near the mouth of the Mead River in late November. A 4-year-old was swept into the water but fortunately a passerby managed to catch the baby.

The unexpected waves can hit any time of the year but are especially popular from now through April. The behavior of the waves can fool anyone, especially our area visitors who are unaware that the surf behavior you see when you reach the beach or jetty can change suddenly in just a few minutes. No matter how long you’ve lived here, please talk to your family about the beach and water safety. And if you have vacation visitors, stay safely away and stress that our beautiful coastline demands respect at all times.

I promised to answer a question two weeks ago. Is earthquake activity at The Geysers – the largest geothermal field in the world, located north of Santa Rosa – similar to what has been observed in Oklahoma, Texas and other locations where fracking is occurring? Answer: Similar, yes, but some clarification is needed. I’ve written about induced earthquakes associated with hydrocarbon extraction before (see the “Not my fault” columns from May 20 and December 13, 2017). Earthquake activity began to increase about a decade ago in places like Oklahoma that were previously seismically calm. Earthquake activity corresponds to an increase in oil production, largely due to a hydraulic fracturing boom. It is a common misunderstanding to jump to the conclusion that hydraulic fracturing caused earthquakes.

There is a connection but it is secondary. Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting a high-pressure propellant solution into a horizontal wellbore to create a network of cracks in the rock formation of the reservoir. It is often used in rock formations with very low permeability. The cracks facilitate the extraction of oil and natural gas. Actual hydraulic fracturing is a temporary process and is usually only performed once or twice on a specific unit of rock. There have been few reports of very small earthquakes (magnitude 1 and smaller) directly related to the process, but the general scientific consensus is that fracking is not the main cause of increased earthquakes.

Hydraulic fracturing involves a lot of fluids and after the injection is complete, the fluids must be eliminated. Conventional drilling and oil wells also involve fluids. They differ greatly in configuration. Some of them can be easily cleaned up and reused or released into surface water. Others are nasty jams of water, drilling mud and a variety of chemicals that require careful handling. In 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency required that waste liquids could not be released into tanks or waterways. The solution was deep disposal wells (called Category II wells), usually 10,000 feet or more below the surface. In 2015, 144,000 Category 2 wells were included in the playlist, and are primarily located in Oklahoma, Texas, California and Kansas. Unlike fracking operations, the same disposal wells operate over many years.

There are challenges in studying the link between second-order wells and earthquakes. Earthquake information is available on the United States Geological Survey website (usgs.gov) and can be accessed by anyone. However, wells are on private land, and information regarding their location and date of disposal (rates and size) is usually owned. What is clear is that the vast majority of class II wells did not cause seismic activity. An interesting question is why there are a bunch of that.

This is where The Geysers can help. Studies of induced earthquakes at The Geysers and at Cooper Basin, a geothermal test site in Australia, provide data to examine the relationship between injection history and earthquakes inaccessible in the shale country. Calpine, who runs The Geysers, was open to research efforts. The history of the wells in The Geysers is easily accessible. There have been studies of not only earthquakes and injection history, but also GPS examination of surface deformation associated with injection.

What has been learned is that injection rate is the best determinant of earthquake activity and that the relationship is complex. Many processes occur simultaneously: mass extraction (steam), waste fluid injection, and tectonic forces from volcanoes and faults. Injection rate has emerged as a major factor influencing earthquake activity but it is not immediate. There are seasonal changes in the shape and spatial extent of the seismic pattern, related to seasonal changes in energy requirements and injection rates, but the pattern varies from year to year. In The Geysers, the largest earthquakes were concentrated near the two injection wells, and the surface deformation measured by GPS appears to be about a month later than the injection differences.

The bigger question from a human perspective is how the injection affects the risk of earthquakes. For the vast majority of Category II wells, it appears that no change has occurred. But for a small subset of disposal wells in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and New Mexico, the US Geological Survey estimates that Category 2 wells have increased the likelihood of an earthquake. That hazard now appears in the USGS’s most recent national seismic hazard maps, and the agency estimates that disposal wells have raised the seismic threat to levels close to California for nearly 8 million people. For geysers, the increase in seismic activity before and after injection was not nearly as large as that of Oklahoma. Larger earthquakes are not greater than they were in the 1950s and 1960s. Potential earthquakes in the San Andreas system dominate the earthquake threat in the Lake and Mendocino counties and there is no evidence that injection or geothermal energy production at The Geysers had any effect on the nearby Maacama or Healdsburg faults.

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