Injection Wells and Induced Seismicity in Historical Perspective

Abstract

Over the last decade, seismologists have demonstrated a troubling corollary of the extraordinary shale boom: the disposal of liquid waste from fracking operations and other fossil fuel production has caused significant and troubling earthquakes across usually quiet parts of middle America. This recent scientific work prompts historical questions.
Have earlier efforts to produce fossil fuels also produced earthquakes? Were some of the small earthquakes near oil and gas production zones over the past century possibly induced by human activity, rather than natural?
We will look for evidence of possible induced seismicity early in oilfield history, focusing on central Oklahoma and two locations in California (the southern central valley and the Los Angeles Basin). We will look for potential evidence of mid-twentieth century induced seismicity near locations of earlier, pre-shale-boom waste disposal via injection wells in northeastern Ohio. In this early-stage work, we hope to find what evidence is available for investigations of possible early induced seismicity related to pumping oil out of the earth, or pumping wastewater back into it.  

Presentations

• The Earthquake swarms of Eastern Maine and nearby New Brunswick, Eastern Section of the Seismological Association of America, October 2022.
• Center for Collective Impact in Earthquake Science (C-CIES): Building Inclusive Excellence, Diversity, Equity, and Community into Earthquake Science, American Geophysical Union conference, December 2022.
• Center for Collective Impact in Earthquake Science (C-CIES): Building Inclusive Excellence, Diversity, Equity, and Community into Earthquake Science, Seismological Society of America annual conference, April 2023.
  

Additional Grants

• “Shaky Ground: The Untold History of the Greatest Earthquake Surge in Modern History,” National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant, Funding Opportunity Number 20221130-RZ, PI Conevery Bolton Valencius, with collaborator Anna Kuchment, for final work on book project, submitted Nov 2022 and approved July 2023: $124,000. 
  •  Per Conevery, the approach to collaborative scholarship developed in SIGECS helped inform her recent successful application for major NEH funding
• “Neponset River History,” a 2023 SI-RITEA B grant from the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, Boston College ($40,000)
  

Additional Accomplishments 

• Drs. Valencius and Ebel are consulting personnel for an NSF-funded project on collective impact in earthquake science, titled “Center for Collective Impact in Earthquake Science (C-CIES): Building Inclusive Excellence, Diversity, Equity, and Community into Earthquake Science.” The grant is a pilot program funded as a Track 1 planning grant by National Science Foundation’s Centers for Innovation and Community Engagement in Solid Earth Geohazards program. PI: Aaron Velasco, Professor of Geological Science at University of Texas El Paso, funded July 2022. (NSF Grant 2225395)
• Valencius is approaching completion of a co-authored book manuscript on induced earthquakes and contemporary energy infrastructure. Injection wells are a key aspect of this modern American seismicity, and understanding gained through the SI-GECS grant is informing this NEH-funded book project.
• (further, not exactly an accomplishment but a significant consequence of the SI-GECS grant: our grant partner Jonathan Krones left BC this summer for Brandeis, to head a new engineering program there. This is a loss for our Boston College community – but the in-depth exchanges we had as a result of SI-GECS funding mean that we now have strong connections with a potential collaborator at a neighboring institution with a growing program.)