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Earthquake Hits Near Site of Earlier Quake
Posted: Feb 6, 2012 1:38 PM by Janine Reyes - jreyes@kristv.com
Updated: Feb 6, 2012 6:59 PM
CORPUS CHRSITI - A weekend earthquake felt by some near Beeville struck within 2 miles of a larger quake that hit the area back in October.
That has some asking what's the relation and if hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas, also known as fracking, is to blame?
Mark Besenen is an assistant professor at the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, he's reviewing the data. "This is the October one and this is the February 4th one," he said, showing us two very close points on his map. He tells us the two recent quakes, located very close to each other, are definitely rare events, but they're not exactly hard to believe.
On October 20th, the surrounding area recorded a 4.8 magnitude earthquake. Some felt it all the way in to Corpus Christi.
Saturday, fewer people felt a much smaller quake 38 miles northwest of Beeville. Its at almost the same exact spot. "Having an aftershock or similar event a couple months away is not unheard of," explained Besenen.
Still, it is data worth documenting and studying. Another interesting factor is Eagle Ford Shale's wells run right through the area. At these locations, fracking is done to get to oil and natural gas.
"All of the wells and permits associated with the Eagle Ford, you can see this band running through here, so these things are, there's no question, right smack dab in the center of it," Besenen said, "this process of hydraulic fracturing or injecting fluids deep into the ground, that's also been known in many cases to trigger small seismic events or small earthquakes."
Researchers at A&M Corpus Christi say that in other areas, such as Ohio, Denver, even Oklahoma, they have linked fracking to some earthquake activity. But here, that's just not the case, there's not enough evidence and for now, they'll just have to wait and watch.
"With only two events, it would be inappropriate to try to make any link at this point," Besenen said.
The fortunate part in this case is even though the larger of the two quakes did have people shaking, it did not cause major damage. "There was no significant damage, maybe a couple things knocked over," said Besenen.
The October quake had about 500 times the energy that this most recent one did. The first was a 4.8, this weekend's registered at 3.0.
Scientists say the depth of the quake could be matched closely to the depth of the fracking process, but there's no way of telling for sure, because the estimated depth could be off by about 2 miles.
They will continue to monitor any seismic activity and if a pattern develops, they will know more definitively if there is a link.
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