The 5.6 magnitude quake that hit nine miles northwest of Pawnee Saturday morning was the largest in the state’s history, damaging buildings and prompting Governor Mary Fallin to issue a state of emergency for Pawnee County., according to Tulsa World.
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Pawnee County Emergency Management Director Mark Randell said no buildings collapsed in the town of 2,200 about nine miles southeast of the epicenter, and there were no injuries, either.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin tweeted that crews are checking bridges and structures for damage in the Pawnee area. Please visit the original post to view it. “This quake, and hundreds of others like it over the last few years, are the direct result of the underground disposal of fracking wastewater”.
The U.S. Geological Survey, in a March report on “induced earthquakes”, said as many as 7.9 million people in parts of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas now face the same quake risks as those in California.
Historically, the state saw just two magnitude 3 earthquakes or higher per year prior to 2009, though that number surged to more than 900 in 2015 after domestic production of oil and gas increased along with the amount of wastewater.
Oil industry and government officials deny that hydraulic fracking is causing the quakes. Osage County wells are under federal jurisdiction and the OCC has contacted the Environmental Protection Agency, according to Fallin’s office. East of the Rocky Mountains, where the earth’s crust is older and more stable, earthquakes can be felt a farther distance from their epicenter compared to west of the Rockies, where the younger crust and active faults absorb the energy of earthquakes. The commission has previously asked producers to reduce wastewater disposal volumes.
This is certainly nothing like a magnitude 7 natural disaster in heavily populated coastal California, but it’s significant for a state still getting used to the possibility of seismic activity-a state where buildings and infrastructure have not been designed with seismic activity in mind. Saturday’s quake is just the fourth of 5.0 magnitude or greater in Oklahoma’s history, according to a Tulsa World report.
No injuries or damages have been reported in Texoma.
“All of our actions have been based on the link that researchers have drawn between the Arbuckle disposal well operations and earthquakes in Oklahoma”, spokesman Matt Skinner said Saturday.
“We are finding a lot of rural houses north, northwest of Pawnee that are seeing extensive damage”, Sheriff Mike Waters of Pawnee County said Saturday. But the OGS report said fracking is responsible for only a small percentage of the total volume of wastewater injected into disposal wells.
Seismic activity is also on the rise in certain energy-intensive states after a relatively stable period of about 30 years, according to the USGS report.
Masterson isn’t the only who thinks oil drilling is behind the increase in Oklahoma earthquakes.
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No damage was reported in the Norman and Moore area. “The central USA doesn’t tend to get a lot of five-plus earthquakes”. “We don’t know specifically whether this (quake) was caused by that”.
