Home » Posts tagged 'oklahoma' (Page 2)
Tag Archives: oklahoma
Breaking: No Action Taken on a Proposal to Repeal Denton, Texas Fracking Ban
Denton’s city council decided not to vote on a repeal of the city’s fracking ban, after almost six hours of discussion on the topic at a public meeting last night.
The vote to repeal the ban was called for shortly after Texas Governor Greg Abbott singed HB40 into law, making Denton’s fracking ban illegal.
Oklahoma’s governor Mary Fallin signed a similar law on May 31, making bans on the fracking industry illegal there too.
The entire city council and Denton’s mayor Chris Watts expressed displeasure with HB40.
The mayor disclosed that the city’s legal counsel advised that repealing the fracking ban is necessary in order to defeat HB40. They were told there are better ways to challenge the law than by defending the fracking ban, and that, if the ban isn’t repealed, both the Texas General Land Office and the Texas Oil and Gas Association, which have sued to block the ban, could ask for a judgment under HB 40 that could result in setting a legal precedent.
“It isn’t just about Denton, anymore,” Councilman Roden told DeSmog before the meeting. ”HB40’s reach goes way behind fracking, it threatens all local ordinances industry doesn’t like. Now every city with oil and gas activity has to grapple with basic questions like, ‘How can we defend a setback greater than 100 feet?’”
Councilman Kevin Roden before the Denton City Council meeting. © 2015 Julie Dermansky
Setbacks are the distance that industry must keep its operations from homes, schools and businesses. The Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry, has not enacted setback distance requirements, so many municipalities have established their own.
Meet The Man Responsible For Oklahoma’s Earthquake Epidemic
Meet The Man Responsible For Oklahoma’s Earthquake Epidemic
As part of the US shale miracle, a far less pleasant, and talked about side-effect are the millions of gallons of wastewater: that key component of the new drilling technology that allows previously inaccessible deposits to be extracted. And, as increasingly more states are finding out, the problem isn’t pumping the water out, but finding a place to put it, no places more so than Oklahoma.
To be sure, Oklahoma benefited hugely from the shale revolution: the state’s oil production has doubled in the past five years. And now, as the Piper has finally come to collect his due, the ground is literally shaking under the feet of Oklahoma’s residents as the aftermath of the fracking “boom” has unleashed an unprecedented series of earthquakes.
The reason: instead of disposing wastewater in some regulated manner, in Oklahoma it gets injected back underground. And as wastewater disposal rates have doubled, seismic activity has exploded across Oklahoma. After averaging 1.6 earthquakes per year of magnitude 3.0 or higher, the state experienced 64 in 2011, including its largest in recorded history—a 5.7-magnitude temblor on Nov. 6, 2011, centered in Prague, 50 miles east of Oklahoma City, that buckled a highway, destroyed 14 homes, and injured two people.
Last year, Bloomberg reports, the number soared to 585 quakes, making Oklahoma the most seismically active state in the continental U.S.; it’s on pace for 900 quakes in 2015 a number one would expect from a place such as Japan, located on a continental fault line or even California (whose San Andreas faultline is about to make another B-grade movie appearance) and certainly not in America’s heartland. Swarms of quakes have rattled other states with oil and gas operations, including Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, and Texas.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Oklahoma’s Clear Link Between Earthquakes and Energy Boom
Oklahoma’s Clear Link Between Earthquakes and Energy Boom
Oklahoma officials this week said oil and gas activity was the likely cause of the stunning increase in earthquakes in the state. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Oklahoma geologist Todd Halihan talks about what has caused this growing problem and what can be done about it.
Over the last few years, Oklahoma has experienced a stunning increase in the number of earthquakes. Since 2008, quakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater have hit that state 600 times more frequently than the historic average. Despite peer-reviewed studies to the contrary, Oklahoma’s state government had continued to express skepticism about the link between this seismic boom and the increase in the amount of wastewater from oil and gas operations being injected underground.
Geologist Todd Halihan, a professor at Oklahoma State University, welcomed that announcement. Halihan, who sits on the Oklahoma Governor’s Coordinating Council on Seismic Activity, has examined the impact of injection wells on seismic activity and compared the state’s reluctance to accept the prevailing science to the Dust Bowl era, when warnings of that disaster went unheeded.
In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Halihan outlines some possible ways that the abnormal seismic activity in Oklahoma might be tamped down. But he also explains why he believes the problem has no quick or easy fixes.
Yale Environment 360: For a number of years, Oklahoma’s state government expressed official skepticism regarding the link between injection wells and induced seismicity. So what’s your reaction to the Oklahoma Geological Survey’s announcement that the rise in the number of earthquakes there is very likely attributable to injection wells?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Are Oklahoma’s Quakes Caused By Wastewater Disposal?
Are Oklahoma’s Quakes Caused By Wastewater Disposal?
No matter what other problems may or may not be linked to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the disposal of wastewater from oil and gas drilling almost certainly is primarily responsible for the recent spate of earthquakes in Oklahoma, normally a seismologically quiet state.
That’s the conclusion of a report issued April 21 by the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS), in which the state geologist Richard D. Andrews and Dr. Austen Holland, the state seismologist, said the rate of earthquakes near major oil and gas drilling operations that produce large amounts of wastewater demonstrate that the quakes “are very unlikely to represent a naturally occurring process.”
Andrews and Holland concluded that the “primary suspected source” of the quakes is not hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which water and chemicals are injected under high pressure to crack shale to free oil and gas trapped inside. It said the source is more likely the injection of wastewater from this process in disposal wells, because water used in fracking cannot be re-used.
Related: Who Is Saudi Arabia Really Targeting In Its Price War?
“The OGS considers it very likely that the majority of recent earthquakes, particularly those in central and north-central Oklahoma, are triggered by the injection of produced water in disposal wells,” the statement said. It warned that residents should prepare for “a significant earthquake.”
Oklahoma recorded 585 earthquakes with a magnitude of 3 or greater, the equivalent of the force felt in Oklahoma City at the time of the terrorist bombing in 1995. This is a significant increase from 109 earthquakes of the same magnitude in 2013. Before 2008, when fracking became a popular drilling technique in the state, there were fewer than two earthquakes in Oklahoma each year, on average.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
12 Signs That The Economy Is Really Starting To Bleed Oil Patch Jobs
12 Signs That The Economy Is Really Starting To Bleed Oil Patch Jobs
The gravy train is over for oil workers. All over North America, people that felt very secure about their jobs just a few weeks ago are now getting pink slips. There are even some people that I know personally that this has happened to. The economy is really starting to bleed oil patch jobs, and as long as the price of oil stays down at this level the job losses are going to continue. But this is what happens when a “boom” turns into a “bust”. Since 2003, drilling and extraction jobs in the United States have doubled. And these jobs typically pay very well. It is not uncommon for oil patch workers to make well over $100,000 a year, and these are precisely the types of jobs that we cannot afford to be losing. The middle class is struggling mightily as it is. And just like we witnessed in 2008, oil industry layoffs usually come before a downturn in employment for the overall economy. So if you think that it is tough to find a good job in America right now, you definitely will not like what comes next.
At one time, I encouraged those that were desperate for employment to check out states like North Dakota and Texas that were experiencing an oil boom. Unfortunately, the tremendous expansion that we witnessed is now reversing…
In states like North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas, which have reaped the benefits of a domestic oil boom, the retrenchment is beginning.
“Drilling budgets are being slashed across the board,” said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, which represents more than 500 companies working in the state’s Bakken oil patch.
Smaller budgets and less extraction activity means less jobs.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
