{"id":35277,"date":"2023-03-14T10:18:41","date_gmt":"2023-03-14T16:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/natural-gas-production-likely-cause-of-southern-colorado-earthquakes-experts-say\/"},"modified":"2023-03-14T16:18:41","modified_gmt":"2023-03-14T16:18:41","slug":"natural-gas-production-likely-cause-of-southern-colorado-earthquakes-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/natural-gas-production-likely-cause-of-southern-colorado-earthquakes-experts-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural gas production likely cause of southern Colorado earthquakes, experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A view of the area near Burro Canyon west of Trinidad where a series of earthquakes was felt around March 9. (Google Maps)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

One of the largest earthquakes to hit Colorado in decades rattled homes and businesses near Trinidad on the night of March 9, one of a series of six small quakes that were detected in western Las Animas County, not far from the Colorado-New Mexico border.<\/p>\n

The area known as the Raton Basin has seen a significant increase in seismic activity since 2001, a surge that scientists attributed to nearby natural gas production and its associated waste injection wells, which pump tens of millions of gallons of water produced each year as a byproduct of gas extraction back into Earth\u2019s crust.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s highly likely that these earthquakes were induced by the wastewater disposal operations in the area,\u201d said Justin Rubinstein, a research geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.<\/p>\n

Rubinstein was the lead author of a 2014 USGS study that found that wastewater injection was \u201cresponsible for inducing the majority of\u201d Raton Basin seismicity over the preceding 13 years. Other studies, including several from researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, have reached similar conclusions, and \u201cinduced seismicity\u201d from injection wells and other oil and gas operations has been observed in other states such as Oklahoma and Kansas.<\/p>\n

Only a single earthquake with a magnitude of 4 or greater was recorded in the Raton Basin between 1972 and July 2001, the USGS study noted, compared with 12 recorded between August 2001 and 2013. Large volumes of produced water began to be injected in the area in 1999.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the state agency that regulates drilling and injection wells, adopted its first-ever rules to evaluate the risk of induced seismicity as part of a broader overhaul of drilling regulations approved in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cCOGCC is aware of the seismic events that recently took place in the Raton Basin,\u201d an agency spokesperson said in a statement. \u201cIn accordance with COGCC\u2019s risk-based seismic hazard mitigation approach as it pertains to injection wells, COGGC has discussed applicable strategies with the relevant operators, and will continue to take appropriate steps as needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the late 1990s, parts of the Raton Basin in both Colorado and New Mexico have been significant producers<\/a> of coal bed methane, a kind of natural gas found in coal deposits. Extracting coal bed methane often requires pumping large volumes of dirty, salty water out of the ground as a byproduct, then returning it even deeper underground via injection wells.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese fluids, they propagate to a preexisting fault in the area,\u201d Rubinstein said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s easier for that fault to slip. A good analogy is an air hockey table \u2013 the puck doesn\u2019t move very easily when the air is off, (but) the air turns on and the puck moves very easily. That is exactly what is happening in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n

Modeling \u2018stress fields\u2019<\/div>\n

Colorado has a long history<\/a> with induced seismicity, beginning with liquid waste injections undertaken at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal chemical weapons plant in 1962. A series of earthquakes triggered by those injections included a magnitude 4.8 that caused over $1 million damages in Denver.<\/p>\n

Kyren Bogolub, a seismologist with the Colorado Geological Survey, said it\u2019s not always possible to definitively attribute an individual earthquake to wastewater injection, but scientists are making strides in understanding how to mitigate risks in the long run.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are researchers that do modeling that looks at the stress field underneath the subsurface, and they\u2019ll say, given what we know about the geology and the stress field in this area, \u2018How is that going to change if we start injecting this many gallons of water per month?\u2019\u201d Bogolub said. \u201cIs that change in the stress field enough to cause earthquakes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does depend a lot on the area,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s plenty of areas where we inject gallons and gallons and gallons of water and don\u2019t cause any earthquakes at all. And there are other areas where you just inject a little bit and you trigger magnitude 4s. \u2026 It\u2019s really important to study these things on a very local level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Have a plan<\/div>\n

While the COGCC noted that USGS earthquake data indicated that last week\u2019s earthquake \u201coccurred much deeper in the Earth\u2019s crust than any injection activity in the area,\u201d Rubinstein said the depths recorded are consistent with plenty of other induced quakes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at earthquakes that are a mile, two miles, five miles deep,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is totally within the realm of reasonability that a fluid injection could be causing these.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s most powerful seismic event in the last 50 years was a 5.3 magnitude<\/a> earthquake in the Raton Basin southwest of Trinidad in 2011, and USGS research found \u201cclear evidence\u201d that the event was caused by fluid injection. No injuries were reported, but residents in Trinidad and other Las Animas County towns reported damages estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

The largest quake known to have been induced by fluid injection was a magnitude 5.8<\/a> event in Oklahoma in 2016. Rubinstein said that while it\u2019s difficult to predict the Raton Basin\u2019s seismic future, Coloradans living in the area would be wise to plan ahead for the possibility of more damaging events.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in this area need to start thinking about how they\u2019re going to respond in the case of a damaging earthquake,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s having an earthquake kit, having a plan of how you\u2019re going to reconnect with your loved ones, et cetera.\u201d<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Basin\u2019s surge in seismic activity since 2001 follows drilling of wastewater injection wells<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1030,221,28,1613,477],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-35277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-environment","tag-gas-and-oil","tag-headlines","tag-natural-disasters","tag-natural-gas"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35277"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=35277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}