Earthquake shakes South Texas
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LARGEST QUAKE IN TEXAS
The largest earthquake recorded in Texas was on Aug. 16, 1931, near Valentine in west Texas. It was measured at magnitude 5.8.
Pete Boening was in the office of his Peggy, Texas farm machine shop when a 4.6 magnitude earthquake hit Thursday morning.
"It shook pretty good. I could feel it," Boening said. "We've had two or three the last 10 or 15 years. This one seems like it might have been a little stronger."
Boening said there was no noticeable damage.
Co-worker Alfred Krueger said he was heading out the door of his house when the quake hit.
"I shook real bad for a couple of seconds," Krueger said. "I realized what it was right away."
Peggy is an unincorporated community in southeastern Atascosa County and was near the epicenter of the earthquake. A 4.3 earthquake was reported in the same area in 1993.
Thursday's tremors were felt throughout South Texas.
"We were in a meeting in the temporary county courthouse, and the building shook," said Karnes County Judge Barbara Najvar Shaw. "We thought a car hit the building."
Geophysicist Amy Vaughan of the United States Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., confirmed the quake.
"It looks like there was a seismic episode this morning at 7:24 a.m.," Vaughan said.
The epicenter was 37 miles northwest of Beeville.
No damage was reported in connection with the earthquake, said Rachel Jordan-Shuss, assistant public information officer for the Texas Department of Emergency Management.
Earthquake researcher Cliff Frohlich at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics said earthquakes in that area of South Texas are not unusual and it is too early to know if activity related to oil and gas production was a contributing factor.
"There has been oil and gas production there since the 1970s, and there have been earthquakes there since the '70s," Frohlich said.
"It wouldn't be a surprise if there was a connection because of the fracking that is under way there, but it's the disposal wells that are most associated with earthquakes and not the production process itself."
"But whether it has anything to do with Thursday's earthquake is simply unknown at this point," he said.
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Though the fracturing itself uses tremendous pressure, it's also allowed to come back up the hole and "vent", for lack of a better term. Likewise, what starts out around 3000psi eventually dwindles down to almost nothing, effectively depressurizing the subsurface.
Disposal wells inject under pressure but it's not allowed to come back up. Some drillers I've spoken with say that it's dissolving salt domes and other fabric on a large and widespread basis.
Over 200 earthquakes have recently occurred in Arkansas but when four disposal wells were ordered to be shut down, the quakes subsided. One may draw his own conclusions as to why.
Recycling flowback could effectively end the need for disposal wells. Fountain Quail just set up shop in Kenedy and also in Arkansas in response to the disposal wells being shut down there. About 20% of the water used in fracking comes back up to the surface, so if it takes 5 million gallons to frack, then one million should return to surface and may be recycled instead of being shot down a hole and lost forever.
October 22, 2011 at 8:06 a.m.Nice article concerned...UT has a huge geology program...in fact one of the best. SMU's not bad as well. I do love the word fracking though...must be the sci-fi geek in me (BSG)
October 21, 2011 at 11:20 a.m.Oh wait, that's today! Hummmmmmmm
October 21, 2011 at 8:14 a.m.What facts are you basing that on Gary? Harold Camping? If that is the case, its all over tomorrow.
October 21, 2011 at 8:03 a.m.The amount of earthquakes will increase & there magnitude, count on it.
October 20, 2011 at 9:42 p.m.Here's a thought:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/commun...
October 20, 2011 at 4:36 p.m.I suggest our Governor/Scientist do a study on why our 6000 year old planet is falling apart. Maybe if he speaks to the oil men they will play nice and not allow any heathen drilling rigs to defile our Garden of Eden.
October 20, 2011 at 4:09 p.m.Some geologists have suggested a link between fracking and/or oil exploration and (small?) earthquakes. No one believes that earthquakes didn't exist before man began drilling for oil.
October 20, 2011 at 3:14 p.m.well looks like we are pretty safe on the rain front....LOL....of course pretty sure not the same type of oil. Actually 100 percent sure.
October 20, 2011 at 2:49 p.m.Fact is JLord - God is an oil man -
October 20, 2011 at 2:30 p.m.1 Kings 17:14 NIV - For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: "The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the Lord gives rain on the land."
Wow this is a jacked up way at looking at science. Earthquakes are caused by oil exploration....someone call up the geologist! We must re-educate them now! Fault lines that have been here since the beginning of time was caused by drilling in prehistoric times....HOLY SMOKES! God was an oilman!
October 20, 2011 at 2:04 p.m.Story, my husband says that too. He says that we are sucking the oil out of the machine, so it's going to grind and over-heat more. (something like that)
October 20, 2011 at 2 p.m.I thought is was the end of the world brought on by obama???
October 20, 2011 at 1:42 p.m.Go here http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/qed/ and look at the recent earthquake activity. It is a week behind, but it shows that about ever three hours, somewhere on the planet, there is a recordable earthquake. On October 13th, there was one in Arkansas, and many hours later, one in Oklahoma.
The earth is alive and ever changing!
October 20, 2011 at 1:36 p.m.I'm not suggesting that we should stop doing what we are doing. I am suggesting that what ever impact we have , and we do have an impact, it is a cost of doing business and we need to accept that.
October 20, 2011 at 1:28 p.m.It is Bush's fault. I thought everyone knew that.
October 20, 2011 at 1:14 p.m.Storyteller - are you saying that earthquakes in our area are solely caused by O&G exploration and production? It has nothing to do with ... lets say ... fault lines that have run through Texas for centuries? Are you not aware that the pristine Texas Hill Country is the result of seismic activity, thus forever changing the topographical characteristics of our great state forever?
October 20, 2011 at 12:20 p.m.I knew the oilfield would get the credit for this. If you look it up, you will find that there have been earthquakes happening here for well over the past twenty years. Our earth is alive and well and ever changing.
October 20, 2011 at 12:16 p.m.Yeah Storyteller, lets just get MORE energy dependent on foreign oil....YAY! Anyways, nothing has come out stating it is the shale, there are fault lines in the gulf coast.
October 20, 2011 at 11:18 a.m.I am afraid that the more holes we poke into he ground, the more high pressure fluids we pump into the bedrock, the more incidents like this we'll have. But hey, we have to keep things in perspective. We're making money. That's what counts. Right?
October 20, 2011 at 10:08 a.m.