Earthquake lessons.....I have been asked many many times over the - TopicsExpress



          

Earthquake lessons.....I have been asked many many times over the past few years why central Oklahoma is having so many earthquakes after being seismically dormant for so long. I wont go into the long textbook version tonight...but a couple of illustrations will help you. Many several thousands of feet below are layers of deformed and crushed rock formations..they are all under pressure from billions of pounds of rock on top, below and on all sides. Sometimes fractures occur in the rock, much like when you hit a window with a rock. Thousands of spiderweb fractures are beneath our feet. In Oklahoma ....oil and salt water have been trapped in the sands, the crushed rock along the fractures (fault lines) . In oil production...the oil and salt water are brought up to the surface. The salt water is unusable and pumped under very high pressure back into another well. The water can lubricate fault lines...and under pressure much like a hydraulic jack ...some rock can be displaced. A hydraulic jack uses a few ounces of oil to lift a 6000 pound car....it is possible. Anyway...I have supplied a central Oklahoma fault line map to show you some of the larger fault lines in our region...remember there are thousands in the state. There is many oilfields in the northern Oklahoma county, Logan county and Lincoln counties.....its not hard to visualize how this is happening...and will continue for many years if we continue to inject salt water back into the oil fields...some of these fault move up and down...some move side to side....some do both and are really unstable.....this is why those close to the epicenters in Jones/Edmond and east of there have felt vertical earth quaking as well as side to side......there It is as simple as I can put it. A lot of folks in the oil industry are denying oil is a root cause....because of the billion dollar liability in repairs for earthquake damage. Im not here to blame....just to explain why we are having them.....now you know... Alan Broerse
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 02:22:12 +0000

Trending Topics



Recently Viewed Topics




© 2015