Texas can learn from Sooner State on quakes
Oklahoma regulators immediately suspended activity at 37 wastewater disposal wells over the weekend after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake shook north-central Oklahoma.
The quick action by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission reveals its confidence that the highpressure injection of oil and gas wastewater into the ground can cause damaging earthquakes.
While Saturday’s quake has not been conclusively linked to wastewater injections, the commission demonstrated caution by suspending operations.
“All of our actions have been based on the link that researchers have drawn between the Arbuckle disposal well operations and earthquakes in Oklahoma,” spokesman Matt Skinner said Saturday.
Texas regulators, meanwhile,
are still trying to deny there’s a link between the chemically saturated lubricant going into the ground and the sudden increase in the movement of subterranean rocks along fault lines.
“We cannot definitively say that there is or is not a direct causal relationship between disposal wells and earthquakes in Texas,” Texas Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton wrote in an op-ed last week. The commission is studying the possible link, but Sitton says it’s wrong to tie oil and gas drilling to seismic activity.
Why Texas and Oklahoma have chosen to name their oil and gas regulators with nondescriptive names will be the subject of a future column, but these two state agencies regulate the same companies doing the same activities along a common border. The three members on each commission are elected, thanks to generous campaign donations from the oil and gas industry.
So what do the Oklahomans know that the Texans don’t?
First of all, in Oklahoma they’ve hired qualified seismologists, and commissioners respect academic researchers and nonpartisan federal regulators. In Texas, conservative politicians hired one rancher to study the seismology, while commissioners reject any independent research that suggests a link between earthquakes and the petroleum industry.
Yet there is overwhelming evidence that the frequency of earthquakes in Texas has risen in tandem with the growing use of disposal wells, an activity spurred by hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells.
And here’s the funny thing. When companies stop injecting frack fluid into wells, the earthquakes in that area stop, almost immediately. You don’t need a Ph.D. to recognize that there must be a connection.
There also is an easy solution: require oil companies to clean up their fluid and recycle it. Texas would save water, and the earthquakes would stop. The only problem is that oil and gas companies don’t want to spend the extra money. They’d rather allow the earthquakes to continue because it costs them nothing when a grandmother’s fine china falls off the walls.
Since I started writing about energy two years ago, I’ve been a staunch defender of fracking wells, but I’ve also recognized the connection between disposal wells and earthquakes. Sitton and the other members of the Texas Railroad Commission need to start emulating our neighbors to the north.
Or else more temblors are on the way. Chris Tomlinson is the Chronicle’s business columnist. His commentary appears on Sundays and Wednesdays. He also posts a daily news analysis at HoustonChronicle.com/ Boardroom. chris.tomlinson@chron.com twitter.com/cltomlinson