After 61 recent earthquakes, Scurry County Judge Dan Hicks declared a State of Disaster Friday morning as many in the Big Country felt the second big quake in less than six days.
Following Monday’s magnitude 4.9 earthquake, northeastern Scurry County and northwestern Fisher County have seen a series of tremors. The United States Geological Survey confirmed six earthquakes in West Texas on Friday, with the largest measuring 5.1. That quake’s epicenter was near Hermleigh, Texas, in Scurry County, about 60 miles west-northwest of Abilene. Moderate to strong shaking was reported near the epicenter, with very light-to-light damage possible. Weak shaking was reportedly felt in North Texas, where damage was unlikely.
These events have prompted questions about the role the oil and gas industry might be playing in the growing number of tremblers. While most induced earthquakes are not directly caused by hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the recent increase could be linked to the disposal of waste fluids from oil production.
Peter Hennings is a research professor at the Bureau of Economic Geology and principal investigator for the Center for Injection and Seismicity Research. He says his team has worked to understand the causes of the increase in the number of earthquakes across Texas, particularly in the Permian Basin region, “The practice of deep injection of oil field wastewater, known as saltwater disposal, has the strongest tie to the increase in the rate of earthquakes and to the strongest earthquakes that have occurred in recent years.”
Hennings explained that when fracking projects inject wastewater, a byproduct of unconventional oil and gas development, back underground it can interact with existing geologic faults. And he says that it destabilizes them and causes earthquakes. While tens of thousands of injection wells operate in the Permian Basin, only a small percentage have been directly tied to induced earthquakes.
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