Calif. coastal panel takes up offshore fracking

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Calif. coastal panel takes up offshore fracking
| August 15, 2013 | Updated: August 15, 2013 2:30am

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California regulators on Thursday were set to take up offshore fracking after revelations that the practice had quietly occurred off the coast since the late 1990s.

The California Coastal Commission added the issue at the last minute to its agenda during its monthly meeting. A recent report by The Associated Press documented at least a dozen instances of hydraulic fracturing in the Santa Barbara Channel, site of a disastrous 1969 oil spill that spurred the modern environmental movement. Federal regulators earlier this year approved a new project that has yet to begin.

The coastal panel, which is charged with protecting the shoreline and marine resources, had said it was not aware until recently that fracking had occurred.

Since the act of pumping sea water, sand and a cocktail of chemicals deep into rock formations to recover oil occurs more than three miles offshore, oversight falls to various federal agencies. But the state can step in if the work jeopardizes marine mammals or water quality.


Read more: http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Calif-coastal-panel-takes-up-offshore-fracking-4733995.php

[Hubert Flottz]

1. Fracking is causing earthquakes in PA, VA, WV, KY and Ohio.

Places where seismic activity was once minimal, have become quite active since the fracking has intensified in these states. Look at the Washington Monument damage for example. Fracking off the West Coast is about as smart as the building of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on the spot where the "EXPERTS" decided it was "safe." MMW, this is a very bad idea. The West Coast is already under the seismic gun...nothing like adding fuel to that fire.

[Igel]

2. The Mineral quake wasn't from fracking.

That's really a stretch. The epicenter was 3.7 miles down, and the fault is almost certainly very, very old.

And in 2011 there wasn't hydrofracking in Virginia, and Mineral, VA, isn't particularly close to the WVa border, much less a WVa hydrofracking site. Only rt.com tries to draw a link, and its facts are entirely irrelevant. Sort of "if fracking had occurred, then it might have been a cause." Assuming that the quake is close to a fracking site and relatively shallow. Not 3.7 miles down.


Most of the quakes caused by fracking are very, very small. The risk is that if there's stress in a fault sufficient to cause a large quake, fracking might trigger it.

On the other hand, this is precisely what seismologists tried doing a couple of decades back on the grounds that a bunch of 3.0 quakes is better than a single 6.0 quake (of course, it'll take a lot of 3.0 quakes to equal a 6.0, but that's a different matter).

The stress on a fault isn't going to go away. It builds over time, and the longer between quakes the bigger the next quake will be.

There are only two real problems. The first would be if the next quake on the fault is so far away that pre-empting it is of no interest but enough energy is already stored to be a falrly large quake if released. The second is if the small artificially-produced quakes shift enough stress to a fault or an area that's already got a lot of stored energy and is close to failing. Since they discover new faults from time to time even in exceptionally well-studied areas like So. Cal.--sometimes because they slip and the Caltech folk have to say, "Oops!"--that can't be discounted entirely as a threat. Just mostly.

[Hubert Flottz]

4. What I've been thinking about is...

the possibility of triggering a bigger quake in the New Madrid seismic zone. That thing has been silent for a long time. I remember a quake on the upper Mississippi several years back that we felt in here West Virginia and I believe it was a 3.5. That quake was in the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

[Overseas]

3. K&R. Hope they stop it now.

[Marrah_G]

5. Gee, what could go wrong?