On Saturday’s “CBS: This Morning,” Time Magazine Editor-at-Large Jeffrey Kluger appeared on the program to discuss the recent surge in earthquakes in Oklahoma. The segment was called, “Scientists Blame Fracking for Oklahoma Earthquakes.”
“From 1975 to 2008, there was was precisely one quake per year with a magnitude of 3.0 or over in Oklahoma,” Kluger said. “It’s now up to 40 quakes per year, and you get all of those other – those larger numbers are a result of the smaller quakes – there were 2600 quakes under 3.5 last year alone.”
He then goes on to describe a process of “fracking” that I’ve never heard of before:
“Fracking is a process of drilling deep wells miles below the surface and then setting off powerful explosives which fracture the bedrock – hence the term ‘fracking’ – and allow access to trapped oil and gas. Now that, in and of itself, you would think would be a destabilizing process; but in order to hold those fractures open, they have to inject millions of gallons of water – of fracking fluid into the ground to hold them open.”
Let’s take a moment to stare at this in gape-mouthed terror, as the realization – that the editor-at-large of one of the biggest news magazines in the country just made this big of a factual error in defense of this article’s point on national television – sinks in.
Moving on.
Kluger describes the proliferation of wastewater disposal wells, which have been linked to earthquakes in Ohio; this is where Time Magazine believes the destabilization of the bedrock in Oklahoma comes from.
When asked if Oklahoma should follow in Ohio and Arkansas’ stead with regard to suing the natural gas industry and passing legislation against well locations, Kluger said, “I do hope that Oklahoma has had sense literally shaken into them at this point; what they need to do is relocate where these wells are so that they’re not so close to natural fractures that they destabilize these fractures.”
“Remember, anything that changes the load balance underground can make a difference. China had a biq quake in 2011 simply as a result of building a very large dam – simply because you change the pressures you put on these fractures,” he said.
The short segment concluded with Kluger holding court on what regulators should do about the spacing of well sites. Not one time did it mention anything about scientists’ opinions of fracking, earthquakes or Oklahoma.
I have so many questions. Here are a few:
- Why did this segment air?
- Who booked Jeffrey Kluger, a magazine editor, over a scientist (or shit, even a PR person) from any organization that dedicates its time to studying Oklahoma’s seismology?
- No really. Why does this segment exist?
The segment headline, while misleading, isn’t wrong, per se. In October, the United States Geological Survey did release a statement hinting that they thought hydraulic fracturing and wastewater disposal might be the cause of earthquakes in Oklahoma as they were in Ohio.
“We’ve statistically analyzed the recent earthquake rate changes and found that they do not seem to be due to typical, random fluctuations in natural seismicity rates,” USGS seismologist Bill Leith said. “These results suggest that significant changes in both the background rate of events and earthquake triggering properties needed to have occurred in order to explain the increases in seismicity. This is in contrast to what is typically observed when modeling natural earthquake swarms.”
What the segment entirely failed to mention is that the Oklahoma Geological Survey released a position paper on recent earthquakes last week. Its answer to the question of whether the recent quakes are caused by fracking or not is… complicated:
- Since 2009, the earthquake activity in Oklahoma has been approximately 40 times higher than in the previous 30 years.
- Based on reported “felt” earthquakes prior to the establishment of the OGS network, this recent level of seismicity is significantly greater than the past 100 years. However, even a 100-year timeframe is not statistically representative in geological terms for a plate interior.
- The majority of the historical and more recent earthquakes are located on or near the Nemaha Ridge, the Ouachita-Arbuckle-Wichita Mountain front, and other major geological paleo-structures. Over geological time, these structures have been a source of significant tectonic and seismic activity.
- Oklahoma has always been more seismically active than much of the mid-western United States, possibly due to these major structures.
- Consistent with the observations above, the implied fault movements (focal mechanisms) for the majority of the earthquakes appear to be consistent with regional (natural) stresses in Oklahoma.
- It has long been recognized by scientists that both fluid injection and withdrawal in the subsurface can trigger earthquakes by altering conditions on naturally occurring faults that are near failure.
- Fluid injection associated with oil and gas activities has occurred for a long time in Oklahoma. These activities include enhanced oil recovery, hydraulic fracturing, and waste water disposal. Hydraulic fracturing has occurred in Oklahoma since 1948 and more than 100,000 wells have been hydraulically fractured.
- There are currently approximately 4,000 active saltwater disposal wells in Oklahoma and about 30,000 nationally. Recognized occurrences of triggered seismicity related to saltwater disposal wells are rare. The National Research Council estimates about one in 4,000 on average nationwide (NRC Study, Table 3.4).
- About 80% of the State is within 15 kilometers (9 miles) of an Underground Injection Control (UIC) Class II water disposal or enhanced oil recovery injection well. For this reason, identifying possible induced or triggered seismicity requires more scientific evidence than simply identifying spatial correlations. It is also important to note that about 99% of the earthquakes that have occurred in Oklahoma over the past few years also lie within 9 miles of a UIC Class II well.
There’s a lot more, so the OGS has prepared a nice little tl;dr for us:
The OGS has not ruled out that some earthquakes may have a relationship to oil and gas activities such as water disposal/injection, and examining these issues remains a major focus of ongoing research. The majority of earthquakes in Oklahoma are not strong enough to be felt and it is important to note that an apparent spatial correlation does not necessarily imply a causal relationship. Additionally, fluid disposal alone is not adding enough energy into the system to materially change the natural stresses. Overall, the majority, but not all, of the recent earthquakes appear to be the result of natural stresses, since they are consistent with the regional Oklahoma natural stress field.
The OGS is increasing its resources in the area of earthquake seismology. This will provide additional capability to not only improve our monitoring and reporting of earthquakes, which is the primary responsibility of the OGS, but also to better understand key geophysical, geological and engineering concepts within the context of Oklahoma seismicity, and communicate these findings to the citizens of the state.
Additionally, NPR StateImpact has done great explanatory and spot news reporting on earthquakes and fracking, and you should go read their topic explainer here.
Finally, I was reading and writing all about knowledge problems and journalism today, and I need to rant a little bit with regard to the segment in question:
You guys. This is not how you do it. This is not how you inform your viewers about what’s going on in this state. I learned of this segment through my former journalism teacher, who has concerns about fracking and the earthquakes here. To her, you are a trusted news source, and your guest was from a trusted news source, so she had no reason to doubt you. You took advantage of her trust and fed into her confirmation biases – and that of your other millions of viewers – with a sensational headline and a guest who made gross factual errors while you were live.
I’m guilty of this as much as you are. My college career was full of me authoritatively writing articles about things I couldn’t come close to understanding in the short time I had to put stories together. But that’s just it: I made these mistakes as a student. I wasn’t hired onto a national news network. I don’t have a team of people at my disposal to do fact-checking, guest-vetting, interview-prepping.
And yet, even as a student, I asked people who did know more than the average journalist about the topics I didn’t understand. I read the source material. I tried.
This segment, and reporting like it, not only hurts environmental movements protesting against fracking, the Keystone XL pipeline and other fuel-related issues, but it hurts the public’s understanding of these issues as a whole.