New Man-made Earthquakes Prediction Software

Published on by in Technology

New Man-made Earthquakes Prediction Software

Fault Slip Potential (FSP) tool will enable oil and gas companies to calculate the probability of causing an earthquake due to injecting water during fracking.

K5P2Q0U.jpgStanford scientists have made a new software which helps energy companies calculate and predict the possibility of causing a man-made earthquake.

Hydraulic fracturing, fracking, is the process of pumping millions of liters of pressurized water, sand an chemicals underground in order to release the gas by fracturing the rocks.

After this, the well is commonly flushed with water under pressure. A certain amount of the injected liquid is recovered.

In addition to increasing seismic activity, fracking has environmental impacts such as risk of surface and groundwater contamination.
(Read EPA’s Study on pollution from fracking here )

Oil and gas companies produce huge amounts of brackish water in the process of hydraulic fracturing. This water needs to be disposed and is injected back into the ground.

This can increase the pressure of groundwater in tiny spaces inside rocks (pore pressure), which causes increased seismic activity and may trigger earthquakes.

“Faults are everywhere in the Earth’s crust, so you can’t avoid them. Fortunately, the majority of them are not active and pose no hazard to the public,” said Mark Zoback, professor at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy at Environmental Sciences.

The tool identifies the problematic faults so that the energy companies can avoid them.

FSP determines which faults are risky based on 3 parameters:

The tool is being tested in Oklahoma where, since 2009, there has been an increase in the number of man-made earthquakes due to fracking.

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