Railroad Commission will probe quake that shook S.A.

Inspectors for the Texas Railroad Commission are investigating a 5.4 magnitude earthquake that was recorded west of Pecos near the border of Reeves and Culberson counties on Wednesday, the agency said.

The earthquake, confirmed by the U.S. Geological Survey and felt in the San Antonio area, was the largest recorded in the state since 1995 and the third-largest in Texas history, according to the USGS National Earthquake Information Center.

“It felt like a truck hit the house,” said David Shifflett, a 74-year-old farmer in Reeves County, near the quake’s epicenter. “Sounded like a real high wind came up.”

Shifflett has weathered the damage from smaller earthquakes for years. One, around 2016, left a broad bulge on his 2,000 acres, cracking pipes and ruining his gravity-run irrigation system, he said.

Last week’s quake could be felt as far away as Carlsbad, New Mexico, and El Paso, and it forced University Health, the Bexar County Hospital District, to vacate a historic downtown San Antonio hospital building after structural engineers declared it unsafe. The more than 100-year-old building was once known as the most modern hospital of its kind in the Southwest.

Most of the building’s clinical services were moved to a new building about a decade ago, but some administrative services were still housed in the historic location. Those offices have now been moved to a different space, according to a University Health statement.

The largest quake in Texas history was 5.8 magnitude recorded in 1931 southwest of Valentine.

The number of earthquakes recorded in Texas has spiked in recent years, particularly in West Texas’ Permian Basin, the most productive oil and gas region in the state. Scientific studies have linked the seismic activity to the disposal of contaminated, salty water deep underground — a common practice by oil companies at the end of the hydraulic fracturing process that can awaken dormant fault lines.

Between three and six barrels of salty, polluted water also come up to the surface with every barrel of oil during the fracking process — ancient water that was trapped underground by rock formations.

Years of pumping hundreds of millions of gallons of contaminated water per day underground in Texas has coincided with more frequent and more powerful earthquakes in the state: An analysis by The Texas Tribune found that the number of earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude and greater had doubled in 2021 from the previous year.

The vast majority of seismicity in the last two decades that’s occurred near Pecos was likely triggered by increased wastewater disposal, a 2021 study by USGS and University of Texas scientists found.

In recent years, the Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas activity in the state and issues permits for the water injection wells, has created several “seismic response areas” in West Texas, where the agency has asked companies to limit their water disposal activities and agree to an industry-led plan to reduce seismic activity.

The quake on Wednesday occurred in a response area in Culberson and Reeves counties created earlier this year.