Quake hits oil-drilled Oklahoma area again, really a 'mystery'?

Did you feel it? New quake phenomena: Never seen, sometimes disastrous, too often deadly, always 'mysterious'

A 4.7 magnitude earthquake struck 9 km (5 miles) from Prague, 10 km from Sparks and about 71 km (44 miles) from Oklahoma City, the strongest quake to strike the state since its 5.6 magnitude quake this weekend. Although oil and gas drilling and fracking are known earthquake triggers, geologists claim they have no explanation why such intense quakes are rattling the area where there are 181 injection wells, recharging the fracking debate.

"We've been here 18 years, and it's getting to be a regular occurrence," said Jesse Richards, 50, who added, "I hope I never get used to them."

"The immediate cause of the earthquakes is one of their great uncertainties, said University of Tulsa Geosciences Chairman Bryan Tapp," reports Tulsa World News.

"Mystery intensifies," writes NY Daily News. "Scientists are puzzled by the recent seismic activity. It appeared the latest quake occurred on the Wilzetta fault, but researchers may never know for sure."

Tulsa Wold News reported Tuesday, "The third earthquake to rock Tulsa in three days proves one thing about geology: You can't predict it."

Human action that triggers earthquakes, however, can help predict earthquakes, especially when that action is oil or gas drilling, be on land or sea, according to other experts in the field, excluding oil and gas industry experts and corporate geologists who work for them.

"There are 181 injection wells in the Oklahoma county where most of the weekend earthquakes happened," said Matt Skinner, spokesman for Oklahoma Corporation Commission that oversees oil and gas production in state and intrastate transportation pipelines.

Manmade earthquakes, radiation, poisoned water, and exploding homes burned to the ground have become the all too common human rights violations by Big Oil and Gas drilling and fracking. "Fraccidents" (geoengineered accidents) have drawn Americans to unite against oil and gas industry leaders and employees responsible, as evidenced in protesters traveling from across the country to encircle the White House Sunday, telling President Barack Obama not to inflict more injury on Americans by allowing the XL Keystone Pipeline.

The Examiner published in April:

"The NY Times has reported that Halliburton and other companies have illegally injected over 32 million gallons of diesel fuel underground in 2010 by drilling for natural gas using high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, more commonly called fracking."

and,

"Dr. Malcolm Cleaveland, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Geography at University of Arkansas, Fayetteville stated in April that minerals liberated during the fracking process include heavy metals and radioactive materials." ("Manmade quakes, radiation, exploding homes: Big Energy frackers")

"But natural gas companies claim there is no proof of a connection between injection wells and earthquakes, and a study released earlier this year by an Oklahoma Geological Survey seismologist seems to back that up," NY Daily News reports.

Deborah Dupré reports studies that indicate otherwise. On March 11, 2010, Dupré reported confirmation that oil drilling triggers earthquakes, threatens human right to life, and therefore, is a grave human rights violation. Based on work of investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, Dupré reported:

"A New York Times’ report confirmed oil drilling sets off earthquakes and showed how oil drilling projects near San Francisco, USA, and Switzerland were shut down amid concerns they triggered damaging earthquakes.

"In both instances, the drilling for oil involved the fracturing of hard rocks more than two miles deep" and showed how oil drilling projects near San Francisco, USA, and Switzerland were shut down amid concerns they triggered damaging earthquakes.

"In both instances, the drilling for oil involved the fracturing of hard rocks more than two miles deep." ("LA proposed offshore oil drilling earthquake threat," Dupré, March 11, 2010)

Glenroy Blanchette has written, "According to a scientific study reported in the French magazine, Science et vie, around 200 earthquakes have been triggered by human activity. Of those 200, 10 were earthquakes above the magnitude of 5.0

"Wired Science has corroborated these findings when it stated that human action can trigger much larger quakes along natural fault lines. The pressures exerted along fault lines can shift the pattern of stresses in the earth’s crust."

USA Today has reported, "Saltwater pumped deep into the earth in a natural gas mining operation offers a 'plausible,' though not definitive, explanation for small earthquakes in Texas in 2008 and 2009, scientists say.'" (See: Dan Vergano, Texas earthquakes may be linked to wells for gas mining, USA Today)

After Madsen reported, "If oil drilling is proven as the cause, the people of the Indian Ocean, Haiti, and Chile can deliver a huge bill to the oil companies;" (Wayne Madsen, Earthquakes: the drilling angle), this writer stated, "Haiti, one of the poorest nation's on Earth is "sitting on 1.5 trillion barrels of Black Gold.'" according to Glenroy Blanchette in "Oil Drilling And Haiti's Earthquake."

Unprecedented gas drilling boom across the United States is damaging individual health, communities, and farmlands by the controversial technology, hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," a form of geo-engineering, is causing environmental disasters called fraccidents including quakes, often unseen, sometimes disastrous, and too often, deadly - and mostly reported as "mysterious."

The one thing, however, that the three interviewed Oklahoma geoscientists that have been interviewed agree is, "It doesn't make any sense to think hydraulic fracking by petroleum exploration has anything to do with the weekend's excitement - no matter what you may have read on the Internet," writes Tulsa World News.

One of those seismologists, according to NY Daily News, found most of the state's seismic activity did not "appear to be tied to the wells" although admitted more investigation is needed."

"We really don't understand the actual triggering mechanism for the quakes that occurred on the weekend," University of Tulsa Geosciences Chairman Bryan Tapp said.

"It's a real mystery," seismologist Austin Holland of the Oklahoma Geological Survey said of the recent shaking.

"Hypothetically, fracking can cause small, localized earthquakes but that there's a much simpler explanation for these events - a known fault line and a continent's worth of geopressure."

"It's just too deep. If somebody wants to believe something, they will, but it just isn't logical to believe anything going on 10,000 feet above you is coming down into the solid basement rock and causing things to move," said Oklahoma State Geologist Randy Keller.

Adding a fourth geologist naysayer adhering to the mystery quake theory, KUT News spoke with Cliff Frohlich, a seismologist and Senior Research Scientist at UT's Institute for Geophysics, who also says it is incorrect to say fracking causes earthquakes.

Holland concludes, "At this point, there's no reason to think that the earthquakes would be caused by anything other than natural shifts in the Earth's crust."

Meanwhile, right to health and safety advocates advise that, if the reader lives anywhere near fracking or oil drilling, don't drink the water -- and learn to drop, cover and hold.

Learn more by doing: See the Earth Justice interactive map to see where oil and gas industry profiteers are causing fraccidents. Each symbol on the Earth Justice fracking accident map represents a fraccident.

Follow Deborah Dupré on Twitter @DeborahDupre. Email Ms. Dupré: gdeborahdupre@gmail.com.