Oklahoma Earthquakes Threaten The Country

In between Oklahoma City and Tulsa, OK sits the small town of Cushing. It’s a sleepy town that embodies everything you’d think of when you think rural Oklahoma, but it also happens to be one of the largest oil and natural gas pipeline hubs in the world.

On September 3, a massive earthquake rocked north central Oklahoma. It registered at a 5.8 magnitude, the largest in the states history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Oklahoma is no stranger to earthquakes. This year it became the earthquake capitol of the nation, overtaking California for the most quakes per year. Because of that new title, Cushing is a threat to national security.

Debate still rages over how and why these earthquakes are happening. Environmentalists have long pointed to the rise of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”- the process of splitting underground rock formations using a lubricating solution to extract oil or natural gas. Others maintain the earthquakes are the result of fault lines that already exist beneath the state.

But experts along with industry leaders do point to fracking, just a different step in the process, as the cause of earthquakes. On a conference call in April, USGS officials confirmed it was the injection of wastewater produced during fracking that’s causing earthquakes. On average, 1.5 billion barrels of wastewater are injected each year into the Oklahoma bedrock. Scientists think the wastewater is putting pressure on fault lines that have been dormant for millions of years.

When it comes to the energy industry, owners and politicians say the focus should not be on fracking itself, but on the process of injecting wastewater back into the ground. Many fracking supporters say fracking isn’t even a part of the equation.

“[T]he issue is the injection wells, the produced water and putting it back underground and trying to store it. So fracking it has nothing to do with it,” Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford (R) said standing near a badly damaged building just after his state’s largest earthquake.

WHERE DOES CUSHING COME IN?

The Cushing pipeline infrastructure is seriously lacking. Aging pipelines lead to increased fear about whether Cushing can handle a quake as large as the one in early September. By the time the tremors hit the pipelines, the magnitude had dropped to just below 4.0. Last October, USGS seismologists said in a paper, a large quake could “seriously damage storage tanks and pipelines.”

The Department of Homeland Security deems the pipeline hub “critical infrastructure.” DHS describes critical infrastructure is “the water we drink, the transportation that moves us, the stores we shop in, and the communication systems we rely on to stay in touch with friends and family.”

Company representatives insist the tanks and pipeline have some built in movement to deal with tremors and the tankers are surrounded by dirt berms. They are also required by federal law to be drained every ten years and inspected.

But ten years is a long time. In just the previous two years, Oklahoma has seen an exponential increase in earthquakes. Between 1973 and 2008 the state averaged 24 quakes, by 2015 that number peaked at 1,101, according to the USGS.

The Cushing hub services hundreds of millions of gallons of oil and natural gas each day. Hundreds of millions of dollars in stock, salaries and subsidies are also tied to those commodities.

Cushing also has a second problem: an oil glut. Energy companies have blamed the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for flooding the market with oil which caused a massive drop in the price per barrel last fiscal year. At its bottom, the price per barrel reached $27 with fears of a further drop fueling speculative panic.

Because of that, millions of gallons of oil and gas are sitting in storage tanks in Cushing right now, making them easy prey for Mother Nature (urged by human activity or not) or someone wanting to grind the U.S economy to a halt.

SO WHAT’S BEING DONE?

Oklahoma has made strides in recent years to reduce its threat to the nation, but the state still lags behind other fracking states.

The Oklahoma Corporation Commission has closed or reduced wastewater injection wells at hundreds of sites around the state with results that seem to be paying off. The state has seen a reduction in the frequency of earthquakes but it’s difficult to tell if the state’s actions are the sole factor in the reduction.

One of the largest injection counties in the state, Osage County, is also solely under federal control because the land is held in a federal trust. Following the 5.8 quake, the EPA shut down 17 wells in the county.

Oklahoma has also continued to get in its own way when it comes to regulating injection wells. In 2015, Gov. Mary Fallin (R) signed a law that effectively prevented cities from banning fracking. The law allows municipalities to pass ordinances that are “reasonable” but most city officials say the term was too vague and would lead to costly legal fights taxpayers would be unwilling to tackle.

In a statement Fallin wrote, “The alternative is to pursue a patchwork of regulations that, in some cases, could arbitrarily ban energy exploration and damage the state’s largest industry, largest employers and largest taxpayers.”

But that kind of patchwork regulating has worked in other states. In Cincinnati, OH, several rural townships in Pennsylvania, and Denton, TX bans of exploratory fracking and wastewater injection have been linked to a reduction and an essential halt in seismic activity.

Alternatives to injection are slowly picking up steam. One promising method is evaporation of wastewater. The company Fairmont Brine Processing out of West Virginia has seen success, although the company can only evaporate a fraction of the wastewater being injected in Oklahoma.

“The process certainly works in the Appalachian Basin,” owner Brian Kalt said back in June. “We receive fluid from Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania; the fluid is very similar in characteristic to the fluid produced here in Oklahoma.”

Other options, such as desalinating the water to be used for agricultural irrigation or non-consumption purposes have also proved to be promising, but have lacked investment, both in interest and capital, from the larger energy corporations.

Fallin has also put together a task force of officials to examine and come up with recommendations by the year 2060. The task force has so far produced lack-luster preliminary findings.

IS THERE ANY HOPE?

USGS officials say more earthquakes will happen no matter what Oklahoma does. They liken the quakes to removing a cork from champagne bottle and then trying to put the champagne back.

The USGS Oklahoma twitter account also released an ominous tweet warning the state’s previous record holding earthquake was preceded by a 4.8 magnitude “foreshock” and went on to hope the most recent 5.8 “was not a foreshock of a similar or larger quake.” The tweet was later removed from Twitter.

But despite the semi-apocalyptic undertones of the controversy surrounding Oklahoma’s earthquakes, the state does have time to change and has already begun taking steps to mitigate the effects of injection.

The challenge now is in making sure the efforts aren’t too little, too late and solutions can be implemented before Oklahoma’s threat to the nation becomes a national catastrophe.