TPT July 2015

Global Marketplace

In another instance, from the 1960s, according to a study reviewed in the journal Science at the time, many scientists concluded that injection of chemical-waste fluid in the Denver Basin triggered seismic activity. › For an example farther afield, Messrs Lin, Schleuss and Lauder called attention to the desert town of Gazli in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, where earthquakes were once rare occurrences. Like Oklahoma, this region was some distance from the boundaries of the giant tectonic plates whose crashes create the huge quakes well known in California. Then, in 1976, two big earthquakes hit the Gazli area. And a magnitude 7 quake struck in 1984, killing one person and injuring more than 100. As noted by the Los Angeles Times , “Scientists writing in the bulletin of the Seismological Society of America at the time suggested that the quake could have been induced by human activity at the gas field.” Some 150 million Americans are at risk from earthquakes and the economic toll of quake damage is roughly $4.5 billion a year “Nearly half of all Americans – 150 million people – are threatened by possibly damaging shaking from earthquakes.” Rong-Gong Lin II, one of the three the Los Angeles Times reporters mentioned in the previous item, was quoting scientists at a meeting of the Seismological Society of America to present the results of another study. Contributors include attachés of the US Geological Survey (USGS). (“Nearly Half of Americans Threatened by Earthquakes, Study Finds,” 22 April). That figure – 150 million people, from all 50 states and Puerto Rico – represents a jump from 1994, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency estimated that 75 million Americans in 39 states were at risk from earthquakes. The sharp increase in exposure to quake damage is largely traceable to population increases in areas prone to earthquakes, particularly California, said William Leith, a study co-author and senior science advisor for earthquake and geologic hazards at USGH. A dollar value can be put on the threat. Authorities calculate the average financial loss to earthquakes in the contiguous 48 states (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) to be roughly $4.5 billion a year, mainly in California, Oregon and Washington state. “Earthquakes remain an important threat to our economy,” Kishor Jaiswal, a research contractor for the USGS, said in a statement. Security expert: the petrochemical sector of the Middle East, in particular, should be on alert against cyber assaults Andrew Wadsworth, head of process control security at the defence technology company Lockheed Martin (Bethesda, Maryland), is concerned that the nations of the GCC – the

Oil and gas The idea that injecting water deep into the ground can trigger earthquakes, talked about for decades, moves beyond speculation Seismic activity in Texas near the Dallas-Fort Worth area has increased substantially recently. Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Ohio have all experienced more frequent quakes in the last year. But Oklahoma is by far the worst-hit state, according to a study released on 23 April by the US Geological Survey (USGS). Oklahoma in 2014 had more earthquakes of magnitude 3 or higher than California, further evidence of a huge increase recorded in recent years. For the first time the USGS has published results of a mapping of areas in the eastern and central United States hit by earthquakes thought to be triggered by human activity. The areas highlighted on its map “are located near deep fluid injection wells or other industrial activities capable of inducing earthquakes,” the study authors said. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mark Petersen, chief of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Project, said the pattern of increased quakes is troubling. He told Rong- Gong Lin II, Jon Schleuss and Thomas Suh Lauder, “These earthquakes are occurring at a higher rate than ever before, and pose a much greater risk and threat to people living nearby.” The reporters wrote that the release of the map “comes as officials are coming to terms with the idea” that wastewater disposal following oil and gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is causing more earthquakes. The wastewater generated by this method – which involves shooting a high-pressure mix of water, sand, and chemicals deep underground – is often forced underground as well, and can trigger earthquakes along faults that haven’t shifted in a very long time. (“Man-made Earthquakes Increasing in Central and Eastern US, Study Finds,” 23 April) Another entity, the Oklahoma Geological Survey, said on 21 April that the sharp rise in quakes in the state is “very unlikely to represent a naturally occurring process,” since they occur in the same area that saw a huge jump in wastewater disposal over the last several years. The seismicity rate in 2013 was 70 times greater than the background seismicity rate observed in Oklahoma prior to 2008, state officials said. L arger and more frequent quakes To put the increase in both size and frequency of human- induced earthquakes – and their threat to public safety – into perspective, the Times cited a magnitude 5.6 earthquake believed to have been caused by wastewater injection that hit near Prague, Oklahoma, in 2011, injuring two people and destroying 14 houses. That same year, a 5.3 earthquake struck a remote part of Colorado, near the town of Trinidad close to the New Mexico border, which the USGS said was also triggered by wastewater injection.

70

www.read-tpt.com

J uly 2015