Talk:Induced seismicity

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Evanwilson95, Clo234, Sdhamilton, Parkerjones3. Peer reviewers: Imanrahul, LaniHack, Keyangsun, Josejimenez17.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:28, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Anyone know any examples of this phenomenon?
Don't know a lot about this subject, but I think it's important enough to have an article, and have cobbled together a bit of info from the web about it. If anyone can provide specific examples where induced seismicity has occurred, that would improve the article greatly! --Lancevortex 13:17, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Agreed, this is mighty sparse. Anyone with time on their hands should be able to flesh it out though: http://www.nyx.net/~dcypser/induceq/induceq.bib.html

Geothermal energy
I readin some sites that geothermal energy plants can produce, this induced seismicity.Agre22 (talk) 03:31, 15 March 2009 (UTC)agre22


 * yes - the following pdf (Geothermal Reinjection at the Hengill Triple Junction, SW Iceland) confirms that - I'll be adding it as a reference for the CarbFix article. EdwardLane (talk) 11:09, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

How to remove an unsourced claim from the preamble?
WTH is the protection of the preamble about "low magnitude"? And how are we supposed to edit such an article? 212.188.109.7 (talk) 22:06, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I did part of it aggressively, removing the citation-needed "and in many cases, human activity is merely the trigger for an earthquake that would have occurred naturally in any case". I suspect the reason it was originally included was because early observation of the phenomenon was in highly monitored fault-line fields, which are now confirmed to be highly responsive even to tidal forces (see recent news articles). Early geothermal (steam-drilling) projects were all in easy-access areas such as the Geysers in California and of course Iceland, which also meant areas of naturally high seismic activity.

This is not the same thing, however, as saying that induced earthquakes "would have occurred naturally in any case". No reputable literature makes that claim. For one thing, even where induced earthquakes occur along fault lines known for that magnitude of earthquake, the frequency of low-level seismic activity is often much greater than it was originally.

On the other hand, nearly all of the seismically-induced earthquakes I have heard about are under Richter 3 magnitude, mostly close to or under 1, so for now I leave "low magnitude" intact. I supported it in the new section "Geothermal energy". I leave it for someone else to confirm or reject that claim overall.

I hope all the references work now. (I am still awkward with wiki-links.) For a b c d Dyer, B. & Schanz, U. et al. (2008) (currently ref 12), the links are http://www.seismo.ethz.ch/products/publications/pdf/earthquake2007.pdf and http://dx.doi.org/dx.doi.org/10.1190/1.2954024, but I can't get it to do that. - Tenebris

Largest Events at EGS Sites Worldwide
It needs to be added that the research that produced the figures for this table is inconclusive (certainly after reading the abstract of the Cerro Prieto one). In fact, should this table be included at all? It seems to set-in-stone something that isn't certain. Thanks, TheJoff (talk) 13:47, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

In the UK
Just thought I'd add a link to some info about the induced earthquakes near blackpool. Includes this quote from the British Geological Survey, "It is well known that injection of water or other fluids during oil extraction and geothermal engineering, such as shale gas, processes can result in earthquake activity. Typically, the earthquakes are too small to be felt; however, there are a number of examples of larger earthquakes occurring." EdwardLane (talk) 10:09, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Propose adding text on National Research Council report on Induced Seismicity
Hi,

I'd like to add some text about a recent U.S. National Research Council report on Induced Seismicity. Not quite sure where in the article this should go, or if the first paragraph is needed.


 * In the past several years, some energy technologies that inject or extract fluid from the Earth, such as oil and gas extraction and geothermal energy development, have been found or suspected to cause seismic events. Some energy technologies also produce wastes that may be managed through disposal or storage by injection deep into the ground.  For example, waste water from oil and gas production and carbon dioxide from a variety of industrial processes may be managed through underground injection.


 * A 2012 report from the U.S. National Research Council examined the potential for energy technologies -- including shale gas recovery, carbon capture and storage, geothermal energy production, and conventional oil and gas development -- to cause earthquakes. The report found that only a very small fraction of injection and extraction activities among the hundreds of thousands of energy development sites in the United States have induced seismicity at levels noticeable to the public. However, although scientists understand the general mechanisms that induce seismic events, they are unable to accurately predict the magnitude or occurrence of these earthquakes due to insufficient information about the natural rock systems and a lack of validated predictive models at specific energy development sites.
 * The report noted that hydraulic fracturing has a low risk for inducing earthquakes that can be felt by people, but underground injection of wastewater produced by hydraulic fracturing and other energy technologies has a higher risk of causing such earthquakes. In addition, carbon capture and storage—a technology for storing excess carbon dioxide underground-- may have the potential for inducing seismic events, because significant volumes of fluids are injected underground over long periods of time.

Any feedback would be welcome. Best wishes, Earlgrey101 (talk) 15:39, 24 July 2012 (UTC)


 * That looks very useful. Perhaps the first paragraph could be combined with the existing short section as an introduction. Mikenorton (talk) 18:09, 24 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I've posted it, please let me know if you'd like me to make any edits. Earlgrey101 (talk) 19:48, 26 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Proposed change to last paragraph:
 * The report noted that hydraulic fracturing itself has a low risk for inducing earthquakes that can be felt by people, but underground injection of wastewater produced by oil and gas extraction, including from wells completed using hydraulic fracturing, has a higher risk of causing such earthquakes.
 * Regards, Plazak (talk) 19:15, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Mohr-Coulomb Criterion
Hi,

Could we also add the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion for faults? Most seismicity seem to be connected to this criterion due to effective stress going down as a result of the increase in pore pressure.

R — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.177.83.155 (talk) 19:45, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Injection well quakes - old news
Nearly all the dates listed in the subsection on earthquakes and wells are recent - 2009 and newer, this may mislead readers into thinking this is a newly discovered phenomonom. The link between injection wells and earthquakes has been known about for decades. The examples are also local to Oklahoma, which is not the only location such quakes have been seen to occur. That leads me to think the section is of fairly subjective content and could benefit from being changed to a more objective stance (read as: one state does not a world create, nor do a single individuals experiences cover the entire breadth of human knowlegdge - put some proper research into the subject because what's there now will lead people to wrong conclusions). 174.29.85.161 (talk) 08:37, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Proposed additions: UC Berkeley CCS class project contribution
Hello, we are a project group for UC Berkeley working on a Wikipedia editing project and we would like to add a section to this article about induced seismicity due to carbon capture and storage.

We would like to add two sentences to the end of the lead section as follows:

Induced seismicity can also be caused by the injection of carbon dioxide as the storage step of carbon capture and storage, which aims to sequester carbon dioxide captured from fossil fuel production or other sources in earth’s crust as a means of climate change mitigation. This effect has been observed in Oklahoma and Saskatchewan [9]. Though safe practices and existing technologies can be utilized to reduce the risk of induced seismicity due to injection of carbon dioxide, the risk is still significant if the storage is large in scale. The consequences of the induced seismicity could disrupt preexisting faults in the Earth’s crust as well as compromise the seal integrity of the storage locations [10].

Sources: [9] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674775516301196 “Injection of large volumes of carbon dioxide (CO2) for the purposes of greenhouse-gas emissions reduction has the potential to induce earthquakes. “ [10] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10164.short “Earthquake triggering and large-scale geologic storage of carbon dioxide”

Other proposed changes to this article we would like to make are:

Other plans and other sources: Create a section for induced seismicity due to CCS Make a comparison of risks associated with natural gas storage/hydraulic fracturing/ wastewater injection and CO2 sequestration (use examples of Castor gas project in Spain or induced seismicity in Oklahoma due to wastewater injections) Describe the importance of understanding induced seismicity due to storing CO2 because the volumes of fluids injected in the case of CCS largely exceed volumes associated with waste water injection (see Figure 1 Verdon, J.P. (2014), Significance for secure CO2 storage of earthquakes induced by fluid injection, 2014, Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 9, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/6/064022.) Describe Mohr-Coulomb failure criteria and explain how underground injection can lead to an increase in normal stress, shear stress or pore fluid pressure changes leading to failure on an existing fault plane. Verdon, J.P. and Stork, A.L. (2016), Carbon capture and storage, geomechanics and induced seismicity activity. Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. Vol. 8, Pages 928-935. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrmge.2016.06.004 Davis, S.D. and Frohlich, C. (1993), Did (or will) fluid injection cause earthquakes? - criteria for a rational assessment. Seismological Research Letters, Vol. 64, No.3-4., https://scits.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/207.full_.pdf Riffault, J., Dempsey, D., Archer, R., Kelkar, S. and Karra, S. (2011), Understanding Poroelastic Stressing and Induced Seismicity with a Stochastic/Deterministic Model: an Application to an EGS Stimulation at Paralana, South Australia, 2011. 41st Workshop on Geothermal Reservoir Engineering, Stanford University. https://pangea.stanford.edu/ERE/db/GeoConf/papers/SGW/2016/Riffault.pdf Monitoring techniques seismic monitoring arrays (Verdon, J.P. and Stork, A.L. (2016), Carbon capture and storage, geomechanics and induced seismicity activity. Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. Vol. 8, Pages 928-935. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrmge.2016.06.004) CO2 plume tracking in real time

Look more closely at this source: http://ieaghg.org/docs/General_Docs/Reports/2013-09.pdf Induced Seismicity and its implications for CO2 storage risks, 2013, IEA Environmental Projects Ltd.

Sdhamilton (talk) 18:05, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

CBE195 - Wikipedia Edit Peer Review:

From the proposed plans, a lot of the edits remain to be drafted. I would suggest going into more detail about the two cases mentioned: Induced Seismicity in Oklahoma and Saskatchewan, including data and correlations that connect the storage projects in these places to the seismic activities observed, and perhaps give background on the geological environment of these two places to explain why Oklahoma and Saskatchewan are more susceptible to induced seismicity in comparison to other storage project (e.g. Sleipner CO2 storage in Norway). I see in the proposed sections a lot of references to sources that talk about the mechanisms of induced seismicity; I'd also suggest maybe looking more into social and economic implications as well. how are people in Oklahoma and Saskatchewan affected by induced seismicity? Is property insurance higher in areas near natural gas and CO2 storage or high hydraulic fracking activity?

Keyangsun (talk) 17:04, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Merger
In my experience, the PROD produces results because it has a time limit. Other tags can lay fallow for years. What doesn't get done this week never gets done. That's my rationale. Rhadow (talk) 12:12, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

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Mining Section Expansion
I added more content to the mining section. Any advice/feedback would be appreciated. Djachambers (talk) 16:45, 29 May 2019 (UTC)