By BJ Austin, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-890078.mp3
Dallas, TX – Geologists at SMU and UT connect the dots between earthquakes and gas drilling injection wells. KERA's BJ Austin reports.
SMU geologist Brian Stump says the series of small earthquakes in Irving and the Mid-cities just south of DFW Airport have a "plausible" connection to the a gas drilling disposal well.
Stump: It's not the drilling of the wells, or the hydro-fracking of the layers in which the gas is stored. But it's the wastewater disposal that may be related.
Stumps says several things point to that. The small quakes were centered near a fault line, and their epicenters were at the same depth as a nearby high pressure injection well. He says the quakes began shortly after drillers started injecting the wastewater in the fall of 2008, and ended when the injection was completed about six months later. Stump says this doesn't point to problems throughout the Barnett Shale.
Stump: You know there are several hundred of these injector sites in the Fort Worth basin, and this is only one instance of this kind of activity.
But, Stump says they're still studying data from 11 small earthquakes in the Cleburne area to see if there is a link to natural gas drilling.