Does Fracking Cause Big Earthquakes in Oklahoma, California? Obama's Dept. of Interior Says No.

Click here to read this post from Reason by Nick Gillespie. Excerpts: 

"A 2012 report from the Department of Interior using United States Geological Survey (USGS) states

USGS’s studies do not suggest that hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as “fracking,” causes the increased rate of earthquakes [of magnitude 3.0 and larger]. USGS’s scientists have found, however, that at some locations the increase in seismicity coincides with the injection of wastewater in deep disposal wells.

The translation? Fracking may well cause rumbling in and around areas when the water used in it is disposed of, but it doesn't have a connection to the increase in the sorts of earthquakes people are talking about in Oklahoma and elsewhere.

Even activists at green groups such as Clean Water Action acknowledge that fracking isn't linked to serious earthquake activity. Earlier this year after a 4.4 earthquake in Los Angeles,Mother Jones asked Andrew Grinberg of Clean Water Action about that quake's connection to fracking. "We are not saying that this quake is a result of an injection" of wastewater, Grinberg said in an article tendentiously titled "Was the Los Angeles Earthquake Caused by Fracking Techniques?""

"Consider this mini-episode, courtesy of The Los Angeles Times. The title "Study Links Oklahoma earthquake swarm with fracking operations" is a bit misleading off the bat since the study is about trying to establish a link between the two phenomena. In the first "Shareline" about the story, the paper notes "Oil and gas drilling in Oklahoma increases pressure in underground rocks, prompting recent spate of quakes." In fact, the abstract of the study the article is based on reads:

Subsurface pressure data required to unequivocally link earthquakes to injection are rarely accessible. Here we use seismicity and hydrogeological models to show that fluid migration from high-rate disposal wells in Oklahoma is potentially responsible for the largest swarm. [emphasis added]

There's a helluva lot of difference between saying something prompted earthquakes and that it's potentially responsible for them. Just sayin'. The whole point of the study (and other ongoing research) is precisely to move out of the hunch phase and into something a little more definitive."