{"id":58040,"date":"2021-05-26T06:33:06","date_gmt":"2021-05-26T11:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58040"},"modified":"2021-05-26T06:33:06","modified_gmt":"2021-05-26T11:33:06","slug":"change-bc-fracking-or-expect-damaging-earthquakes-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58040","title":{"rendered":"Change BC Fracking or Expect Damaging Earthquakes: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Change BC Fracking or Expect Damaging Earthquakes: Report<\/a><\/h3>\n

The new warning comes from a former senior scientist with the province\u2019s oil and gas commission.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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\u2018Induced earthquakes don\u2019t have an upper limit,\u2019 posing risk to communities nearby, concludes a hydrologist. This fracking site is outside of Fort St. John, BC.\u00a0Photo by Jeremy Sean Williams,\u00a0Wilderness Committee<\/a>.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Since 2005, British Columbia\u2019s experiment with hydraulic fracturing of gas wells has changed the geology of the province\u2019s northeast. It is now home to some of the world\u2019s largest fracking-induced earthquakes outside of China.<\/p>\n

In 2018, one magnitude 4.6 tremor tied to fracking even\u00a0rattled<\/a>\u00a0buildings in Fort St. John and stopped construction on the Site C dam. It was followed by two strong aftershocks.<\/p>\n

Now, a comprehensive new scientific study warns that stress changes caused by the technology could trigger a magnitude 5 earthquake or greater in the region, resulting in significant damage to dams, bridges, pipelines and cities if major regulatory and policy reforms aren\u2019t made soon.<\/p>\n

Allan Chapman, the author of\u00a0the paper<\/a>\u00a0served as a senior geoscientist for B.C.\u2019s Oil and Gas Commission and as its first hydrologist from 2010 to 2017. Prior to working for the commission, he directed the Ministry of Environment\u2019s River Forecast Centre, which forecast floods and droughts.<\/p>\n

Chapman, now an independent geoscientist, said that he felt compelled to write the paper because researchers have\u00a0concluded<\/a> that fracking \u201cinduced earthquakes don\u2019t have an upper limit\u201d in terms of magnitude.<\/p>\n

In addition, \u201cthere is a clear and present public safety and infrastructure risk that remains unaddressed by the regulator and the B.C. government.\u201d<\/p>\n

B.C.\u2019s Oil and Gas Commission rejected Chapman\u2019s conclusions in a statement to The Tyee, saying his study contained \u201cspeculation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recent\u00a0events<\/a>\u00a0in China\u2019s Sichuan province prove that fracking can trigger large and destructive earthquakes.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Change BC Fracking or Expect Damaging Earthquakes: Report The new warning comes from a former senior scientist with the province\u2019s oil and gas commission. \u2018Induced earthquakes don\u2019t have an upper limit,\u2019 posing risk to communities nearby, concludes a hydrologist. This fracking site is outside of Fort St. John, BC.\u00a0Photo by Jeremy Sean Williams,\u00a0Wilderness Committee. Since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[5549,94,222,331,1729,23884],"class_list":["post-58040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-andrew-nikiforuk","tag-british-columbia","tag-earthquakes","tag-fracking","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-thetyee-ca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58041,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58040\/revisions\/58041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}