![]() ![]() What was the strongest quake in Oklahoma today? In the past 24 hours, Oklahoma, USA had 4 quakes up to magnitude 1.9. How many quakes were there in Oklahoma today? 1.9 earthquake - 14 mi north of Ardmore, Carter County, Oklahoma, USA, on Wednesday, at 4:41 pm (GMT -5). The last earthquake in Oklahoma occurred 2 hours and 6 minutes ago: Minor mag. ( Source: USGS) When was the latest earthquake in Oklahoma? In Oklahoma over 90% of the wastewater that is injected comes as a byproduct of oil extraction process and not waste frack fluid. ![]() According to USGS scientists, the vast majority of the recent quakes in Oklahoma were caused by the industrial practice known as "wastewater disposal".ĭuring wastewater disposal fluid waste from oil and gas production is pumped deep underground at depths far below ground water or drinking water aquifers. Although it does play a role, the process of fracking seems not to be the main culprit. Most of the earthquakes in Oklahoma are caused, directly or indirectly, by oil and gas exploration. USGS published a statistics showing that during 2014-17, Oklahoma surpassed California in the number of quake of magnitude 3 and higher. (image: USGS)īeginning in 2009, seismic activity in Oklahoma has been seeing a surge in seismicity. California earthquake counts are shown as a blue bar and Oklahoma earthquake counts are shown as a red bar. The study has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.Bar graph showing the number of M3+ Earthquakes in Oklahoma vs California from 1990 to 2019. "When one looks closely enough at the recent plague of earthquakes, they are on faults, and shallow enough to be plausibly affected by fluid injection (from the fracking process)," Vidale said. "The work is fundamentally sound and done by several of the top people in the field," said earthquake expert John Vidale, a seismologist from the University of Washington, who was not involved in the study. In 2011, one even reached magnitude-5.4 in strength near Prague, Okla. "Many faults are reactivating, with as many as 17 magnitude-4 earthquakes in 2014," McNamara said. These reawakened faults in central Oklahoma could produce quakes as powerful as magnitude-5 and 6 earthquakes. Since late 2009, the rate of magnitude-3 or larger earthquakes in north-central Oklahoma has been nearly 300 times higher than in previous decades. It will mark the first time the state's earthquake hazard maps will include suspected human-induced earthquakes. The study findings will be used to develop a new earthquake-hazard map for Oklahoma that the geological survey is planning to issue later this year. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., and lead author of the new study. "By identifying the faults, we are providing some guidance about where major earthquakes can happen," said Dan McNamara, a research geophysicist with the U.S. ![]() Fracking is a method of extracting natural gas and oil from rock that lies deep underground. Though not the central point of this study, previous research has identified wastewater disposal from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, as a likely cause of the more than 3,600 small earthquakes that rattled central Oklahoma from 2009 through 2014. The faults could trigger much higher-magnitude and more destructive quakes than most of the smaller ones that have plagued the state in recent years, according to the new research. Long-dormant, 300-million-year-old fault lines across Oklahoma are being "reawakened" by recent small earthquakes that have been previously linked to the fracking process, scientists reported in a new study out this week. They've been asleep since before the dinosaurs roamed Earth and now we're waking them up. ![]()
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