Seismic

Seismic operators Dawson Geophysical Co. and TGC Industries Inc. are shaking up the market after attempting once again a strategic combination to expand their onshore reach in North America.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) on Sunday recorded a small earthquake in Weathersfield Township, OH, about 12 miles northwest of Youngstown, in Trumbull County, but it remains unclear if two nearby underground injection wells are to blame.

Reflecting a growing caution in the oil/natural gas sector to temblors, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) has ordered changes in a wastewater injection site in Weld County, asserting that actions at the location are deemed to be potentially related to nearby low-level seismic activity.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) on Tuesday ordered operation of a wastewater disposal well to cease temporarily while recent seismic activity in Weld County is assessed to determine whether there is a link to the well.

More than three years after a New Year’s Eve 2011 magnitude-4.0 earthquake rattled Youngstown, OH, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) has begun installing portable seismic monitoring stations across the eastern half of the state to monitor Class II underground injection wells similar to one linked to a Youngstown quake.

Considering the amount of fracking going on in the United States, any coincident increase in related seismic activity is relatively small, an engineering professor and fracking entrepreneur told an audience at the Conference of Western Attorneys General’s Colorado Energy Summit on Wednesday.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) on Friday took an unprecedented step to establish what is believed to be the country’s first set of permitting conditions for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in horizontal wells near fault lines or areas of previous seismic activity.

Walls and driveways are cracked at homes in and around Azle, TX; sinkholes have wiped out property values; children and horses are scared, and the elderly are rousted from their beds in the middle of the night — all by a swarm of more than 30 earthquakes since early November that the afflicted blame on drilling waste injection wells in the region.

The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) said it plans to hire an in-house seismologist, presumably to study the seismic events that have occurred in the Barnett Shale in North Texas and the Eagle Ford Shale in the southern part of the state.