Earthquakes in oil & gas producing areas seem to be getting the media's attention (not sure if that has real value) and I've seen the debate in other threads on this forum. This seems to be a divided issue, so let's use this thread to share all - media propaganda, information, and science you can find for us to debate here.
My opinion is that there are likely limited instances where tectonics can be affected by oil & gas activities, but it is not likely on a large scale or wide spread. I grew up in an area that has produced gas for almost 100 years and has been actively fracked for 30. There's no inordinate amount of seismic activity, so my experience says this is a limited problem if it's a problem at all.
Since all of this started with Josh Fox's Gasland movie, here are a couple links that explain just how smart that guy really was:
Josh Fox can't get his numbers straight as thoroughly captured here.
Josh Fox doesn't understand, or purposefully misrepresents, the fracking process as captured here.
A quick video called TruthLand discounts Fox's most spectacular spectacle, igniting water, among other things [you can watch the full video on their website].
Now back to earthquakes;
Here is the USGS study that links fracking & disposal wells (injection wells) to earthquakes
"The USGS authors said they do not know why oil and gas activity might cause an increase in earthquakes"
"Scientists have linked these disposal wells to earthquakes since as early as the 1960s."
Reuters, the same news outlet that has caused all the havoc for Chesapeake Energy, confirms what the USGS has stated, that injection wells have the potential to cause seismic activity. Nowhere did they say it does cause seismic activity. Further, a Stanford scientist quoted in the Tulsa World explains that injection wells can be managed in such a way that earthquake risk is mitigated.
Nowhere in either report is fracking listed as a cause of earthquakes
From my standpoint, earthquakes are caused by the release of built-up stress within rocks along geologic faults or by the movement of magma in volcanic areas. Many of these "earthquakes" are not along faulted structures, so I'm not sure their reasoning when trying to blame oil & gas activity along non-faulted structural areas. Lastly, even though the headlines read "fracking causes earthquakes" I don't see it within the studies. The studies only list "disposal injection wells", which have nothing to do with production nor fracking.
Good article in the "Oil & Gas Journal" on 6/15/12 regarding this topic. You can google in the website and google "earthquakes" in the box at the top, this should pull up the article titled......."Study concludes hydraulic fracturing poses low earthquake risk"........
Little Quakes have probably always been there, for hundreds of millions of years - just recently that we 'notice' them . . . . . with our high-tech computers and sensitive electronic sensors (to 'alert' us) . . . . all just a bunch of news-media hype. . .
"Frohlich’s research focused on seismic data from the Barnett Shale region of Texas spanning nearly two years, from November 2009 to September 2011. He concluded that the most reliably pinpointed earthquakes occurring during that time were in eight groups, all located within two miles of one or more injection wells.
That’s a change from earlier studies that associated two earthquake groups in the area with specific injection wells. Frohlich’s new data suggests it is more common for injection wells to trigger earthquakes.
But his data also show disparities. In some cases where drillers rapidly disposed of wastewater underground there were temblors nearby. But in other cases with similar circumstances, there were no resulting quakes. Some areas of the Barnett Shale with many injection wells also had relatively few quakes.
Frohlich speculated the difference may be that wastewater injected in some wells reaches existing faults."