Earthquake: Coincidence or a Corporate Oil Tragedy?

[evolvenow]

Earthquake: Coincidence or a Corporate Oil Tragedy?

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=10211&fcategory_desc=Environment

December 28, 2004

By: Andrew Limburg

Independent Media TV

Material about:
Top Stories Ignored By U.S. Media

...On November 28th, one month ago, Reuters reported that during a 3 day span 169 whales and dolphins beached themselves in Tasmania, an island of the southern coast of mainland Australia and in New Zealand. The cause for these beachings is not known, but Bob Brown, a senator in the Australian parliament, said "sound bombing" or seismic tests of ocean floors to test for oil and gas had been carried out near the sites of the Tasmanian beachings recently.

According to Jim Cummings of the Acoustic Ecology Institute, Seismic surveys utilizing airguns have been taking place in mineral-rich areas of the world’s oceans since 1968. Among the areas that have experienced the most intense survey activity are the North Sea, the Beaufort Sea (off Alaska’s North Slope), and the Gulf of Mexico; areas around Australia and South America are also current hot-spots of activity.

The impulses created by the release of air from arrays of up to 24 airguns create low frequency sound waves powerful enough to penetrate up to 40km below the seafloor. The “source level" of these sound waves is generally over 200dB (and often 230dB or more), roughly comparable to a sound of at least 140-170dB in air.

According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, these 200dB – 230dB shots from the airguns are fired every 10 seconds or so, from 10 meters below the surface, 24 hours a day, for 2 week periods of time, weather permitting.

These types of tests are known to affect whales and dolphins, whose acute hearing and use of sonar is very sensitive.

On December 24th there was a magnitude 8.1 earthquake more than 500 miles southeast of Tasmania near New Zealand, with a subsequent aftershock 6.1 a little later in the morning that same day.

On December 26th, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck at the intersection of the Australian tectonic plate and the Indian tectonic plate. This is the devastating tsunami tragedy that we have all heard about in the Indian Ocean. The death toll of this horrific event has reached 120,000 souls and continues to rise.

On December 27th, 20 whales beached themselves 110 miles west of Hobart on the southern island state of Tasmania.

What is interesting about this is that the same place where the whale beachings have been taking place over the last 30 days is the same general area where the 8.1 Australian earthquake took place, and this is the same area where they are doing these seismic tests. Then 2 days after the Australian tectonic plate shifted, the 9.0 earthquake shook the coast of Indonesia.

A great deal of interest and seismic testing has been taking place in this area, as the government of Australia has given great tax breaks to encourage the oil exploration.

Two Geologists that I spoke to felt that it was highly unlikely that these seismic tests would have had enough energy to induce the Australian quake. On the other hand there is strong evidence that suggests that oil exploration activities have induced earthquakes in the past.

Again, I don't claim to be an expert. I'm writing this story to bring attention to some interesting facts, so that those who are experts can investigate this fully.

We will be following up on this story as more information is gathered.


Additional Information:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=5&u=/nm/20041224/sc_nm/quake_australia_antarctica_dc
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=2&u=/nm/20041227/sc_nm/quake_environment_dc
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=1&u=/nm/20041228/sc_nm/environment_australia_whales_dc
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=516&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20041228/ap_on_re_as/quake_tidal_waves
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=9943&fcategory_desc=Environment
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/Quakes/usslav.htm

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/Quakes/ussjal.htm

[evolvenow]

1. "Seismicity in the Oilfield," can trigger strong seismicity" -quakes...

The Great Wave
http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/eric.html
(snip)

Drilling can also cause earthquakes. An article in the spring 2000 edition of the journal Oilfield Review, titled "Seismicity in the Oilfield," informs us matter-of-factly, "If the rock mass is already under large tectonic stresses, the energy added by man's endeavors can have a destabilizing influence. Even minor actions can trigger strong seismicity" -- that is, quakes.

Sunday's earthquake came where the Australian tectonic plate and the Indian tectonic plate meet. Two days before the 9.0 earthquake that sent tsunamis through south Asia and eastern Africa, there was an 8.1 quake off the southeastern coast of Tasmania, part of Australia -- 8.1 is extremely powerful, indeed one of the biggest earthquakes in 20 years -- and this was barely reported by the Western media. This was followed by a 6.1 aftershock a little later in the day.

Was the earlier Tasmanian quake set off by the seismic testing and/or oil drilling? Earthquakes can have a 'knock effect', which almost certainly began in Australia and then set off the 9.0 in Indonesia. And what about the second major quake in two days, the one that's getting all the attention? This occurred in an extremely oil rich region of the world, and coincidentally it happened to flatten the homes of a lot of Muslims.

Meanwhile, the South Pole is also going through a lot of changes, as ice melts and the reduced weight on the polar region changes the shape of the planet -- slightly, but potentially enough to loosen up tectonic plates that might have held for a long time had there not been external influences.

So the question that we take to the jury of astrology is more than a philosophical 'what is the meaning of this?' inquiry. We have, in a sense, a criminal investigation on our hands. Were the actions of mankind involved in causing this event?
(more)

[Ediacara]

2. This website is 100% astrology

And he gives no citation for the article in Oilfield Review.

[Ediacara]

3. I found the article in Oilfield Review

Their conclusions are suspect. For the largest quakes, they state:

There was no clear relationship between the
location of the earthquake hypocenters and any
previously known active tectonic structures.
Closer investigation showed that the earthquakes
had created new faults.11 Analysis of the
fine-scale structure of the aftershock zone indicated
an initial state of tectonic activation.12 The
orientation of the fault plane, the direction of
fault-block displacement and the trend of the
aftershock zone correspond to the regional stress
field and orientation of regional-scale faults.

That simply isn't true. Central Asia is a mosaic of Paleozoic and Neoprterozoic island arcs that were flanked by the Baltica and Angara cratons; something akin to the modern Indonesian and Phillipine arcs. These island arcs were fused into a single landmass when the Baltica craton (most of NE Europe) and the Angara craton (central Siberia) started moving together collapsing the arc into a single unit.

To claim that this area was fault free is dishonest, and to insist that this must be due to oil extraction, rather than natural tectonic processes is even more dishonest.

In any case.... the article doesn't say that seismic sounding for oil can cause earthquakes, only that earthquakes may be caused by large scale extraction of hydrocarbons from a sedimentary basin. As far as I know, all the hydrocarbon reserves are on the east side of Sumatra, in the Sunda Basin, not in the Sunda Trench on the west side of the Burma Microplate, which is where the earthquake occured. This would be like saying oil extraction in Wyoming can cause an earthquake in Oregon.