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Permalink Reply by Checkmateking on June 30, 2009 at 5:24

ridiculous

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Permalink Reply by king john on June 30, 2009 at 5:25

i have felt the earth shake during a gas well blow-out.
king john

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Permalink Reply by king john on June 30, 2009 at 6:27

thanks jim, how was your flight?

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Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on June 30, 2009 at 9:50

Well, one way you can tell they're idiots.

"powering air conditioning condensers". It's "compressors."

Sorry, but there's just no way it causes quakes unless you've got a fault that's about to let go in the next few years anyway. You're pumping a few truckloads at most of frac fluids into a space 4000 foot long, a few hundred feet wide, and10000 feet beneath the ground. It's surrounded by solid rock 10,000 feet thick. There's just not enough material and energy being moved to cause major effects at the surface.

If somehow completely fractured all the rock in the frac zone and turned it into loose sand, it has nowhere to go. The rock around it can't collapse into the hole because the material that was there before is still there, even though it's been fractured.

Even if you somehow removed all the rock from the frac zone, a hole of that size that far underground is not going to have a widespread effect at the surface.

As far as causing earthquakes, remember that a lateral is only a mile or so long. The surrounding rock can't slide along the length of the lateral because there's unbroken rock in the next section. Also a frac zone doesn't extend far vertically. The surrounding rock can't slip in a direction perpendicular to the lateral because there's unbroken rock in the way.

Fracking is like drilling a hole in something, it's not like sawing something in half. The rock strata will not split in two and cause an earthquake fault unless the rock has stress and is about to crack soon anyway.

If the rock is building up stress that's going to cause an earthquake, maybe cracking it before more stress builds up is a good idea anyway.

Sorry, but these are earthquacks, not earthquakes.

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Permalink Reply by Amy Free on June 30, 2009 at 15:20

I heard the same thing...in central texas

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