Mining Caused Major Earthquake

Mining significantly changed the stress field in the earth's upper crust, reactivated a major fault beneath Newcastle's coalfields, and triggered an earthquake that killed 13 people in 1989 causing billions of dollars in damage, say researchers. The effect is called "geomechanical pollution," and can be created by coal mining, constructing dams and reservoirs, and drilling for oil and gas. Dr Christian Klose, from Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, estimated the $3.5 billion damage from the Newcastle earthquake actually exceeded the total value of the coal extracted.





"Geosequestration" projects funded by the World Coal Institute for carbon capture and storage are questionable, because injecting carbon dioxide underground "alters stress in the crust," Klose also told the American Geophysical Union.

Klose identified more than 200 earthquakes caused by humans in the past 60 years - most triggered by coal mining, the construction of reservoirs, and drilling for oil and gas.

The man-made quakes aren't just tiny tremors - what's shocking about them is their size - man-made quakes can be very big.

Mining triggered the biggest quake in Australia's history, for example - causing 13 deaths and $3.5 billion in damage. And in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a trio of man-made quakes rocked an Uzbekistan gas field.

However, oil and gas industry-funded scientists claim the evidence is not conclusive to show that drilling for oil and gas triggers quakes.




Related News Links:
blog.foreignpolicy.com
www.stuff.co.nz
dsc.discovery.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Quakes trigger Quakes

Earth is Throwing a Mental


[edit on 8-1-2007 by soficrow]

As sensfan pointed out on this thread, this information "Just appeared, yes, but happened quite a while ago."

My response:

Erm.

Point being: Human activities like mining, constructing dams and reservoirs, and oil and gas drilling ALL can cause large eathquakes.

Those human activities continue today.

Ergo - their effects continue.

...We are seeing a broad range of heightened and unusual geophysical and geophysically related activity in the planet today.

One does wonder at the 'coincidentiality' of this study's release at this time.






[edit on 8-1-2007 by soficrow]

Interesting. But, I just don't get it. The deepest mines in the world (the diamond mines in South Africa) only go a mile, maybe two down and most earthquakes happen deeper than that, plus, shaft mining is so localized I can't see how it would contribute that much. Now oil and gas drilling, that I can see as they empty vast cavities in the earth miles down into the rock.

Nice find, Soficrow. This also proves a theory that I've had for several years, that quakes can be caused by drillilng for oil, etc.

If you remember the major quake 2 years ago on Christmas: I read an article from New Zealand that talked about how the oil companies were drilling as much as 25 miles below the ocean's floor, into the earth. Apparently they had no restrictions and just drilled all over the place. IIRC, it was somewhere off of Australia and had been happening alot right before the big quake. Also, as a side note, whales were beaching themselves and dying in vast numbers in that area somewhere up to 30 days before the quake.

You can't just drill swiss cheese holes in the earth and expect it will be OK. Nature abhors a vacuum and will fill it up with something.

From the source article we find

A senior seismologist at the Federal Government's research unit, Geoscience Australia, Dr Phil Cummins, said Dr Klose's research was interesting but there was still a lot of uncertainty about the exact cause of the Newcastle earthquake.

"The work seems credible but I think the conclusions are somewhat overstated," he said.


Source

Given the average depth of mines is far less then 2 or 3 miles and the fact that earth quakes occur at far greater depths (possibly 400 miles), kindly explain how something 397 miles deeper or less could be the exact cause? For the record according to wiki the deepest mine in Aus, is only 1800 meters or 1.1 Miles deep.

[sarc] Chicken little too foxy loxy the sky is falling. [sarc/] NOT



[edit on 1/9/2007 by shots]

Originally posted by shots

...kindly explain how something 397 miles deeper or less could be the exact cause?

Our planet involves the interplay of complex dynamic systems - the notion that one single cause-and-effect relationship can "explain" anything completely is based on old science, and illusion.

Also - from the last para of the OP - "oil and gas industry-funded scientists claim the evidence is not conclusive to show that drilling for oil and gas triggers quakes."


But - Speaking of complex dynamic systems - someone on another thread raised concerns about the Hugoton-Panhandle Gas Reserve. The concern is relevant here, and has to do with the geophysical stability of the North American continent - and specifically, the safety of gas drilling.

The Hugoton-Panhandle Gas Reserve

The image to the right is the official U.S. Geological Survey map of America's natural gas reserves; all of which are collectively referred to as the HUGOTON-PANHANDLE GAS RESERVE. The various colors on the map indicate the density of gas from one area to another, while the green dotted lines are the borders of the land masses.

The entire North American Continent is perched directly on top of these reserves. The largest of the reserves within the Hugoton-Panhandle Complex is the "Panhandle Reserve," which is located a few miles north of- PANTEX, .which is just outside of Amarillo, Texas. At this location this horrendous natural gas reserve is less than fifty feet below the surface of the Earth.

At only fifty feet, the roof of one chamber of the Panhandle Reserve is shallow enough to be cracked then set ablaze by almost anything falling from the sky, such as a falling star or a meteorite. This area has been referred to by local people as The Great Abyss, because it's known to be immeasurable, (which is the definition of the term abyss). Others simply refer to it as the bottomless pit.

***

18. PANHANDLE AREA NATURAL GAS

The largest individual gas reserve in the United States covers much of the Oklahoma Panhandle, extending northward from Texas through this area and into Kansas. This sprawling Hugoton-Panhandle field provides gas to comfort mankind, fire the boilers of industry and undergird the nation's economy.

Hugoton-Panhandle gas provides the world's largest source of helium, from which the U. S. government has drawn a 40-year supply stockpile, and spacecraft and other industries obtain current needs.

The Texas part of the field was discovered in 1918, based on the surface survey and recommendations of Oklahoma's "Covered Wagon Geologist", Charles N. Gould, in 1904-1905. Gas from the deep formation was discovered in southwestern Kansas in 1922. Step-out drilling northward from Texas and southward from Kansas revealed one huge tri-state field covering five million productive acres in parts of 20 counties.

***

The Hugoton Panhandle gas field, in parts of Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma, is an area of almost 8,500 sq miles and contains one of the world`s largest known gas reserves ...almost 5.5 million acres which are being drained by 10,500 wells. Production is found in Permian and Pennsylvanian granite wash and carbonate rocks in the south and in Permian dolomite and limestone in the north. The primary controlling mechanisms for the accumulations are, in the south, a compaction anticline over the buried Amarillo ridge and, in the north, a hydrodynamic trap caused by a slight reduction in permeability at the W. (updip) edge of the field. In the Kansas part, production is limited both updip and downdip by water. The field is a volumetric reservoir and has produced a total of 24.5 trillion cu ft of gas. It now is producing at the rate of 1.4 trillion cu ft a yr. Remaining reserve is estimated to be about 28 trillion cu ft.^ (72 refs.)

***

Twenty-two natural gas treatment plants in the United States currently produce helium as a major byproduct of natural gas processing. Twenty of these plants, located in the Hugoton-Panhandle Basin, produce marketable helium which is sold in the open market when profitable, while transporting the remaining unrefined helium to the Federal Helium Reserve (FHR). The FHR was created in the 1950s in the Bush salt dome, underlying the Cliffside field, located near Amarillo, Texas. Sales of unrefined helium in the United States for the most part, come from the FHR.

(PDF)

***

National Academies Press: The Impact of Selling the Federal Helium Reserve (2000). 4. Helium Supply, Present and Future

Most U.S. helium-rich natural gas is located in the Hugoton-Panhandle field in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas; the LaBarge field in the Riley Ridge area of Wyoming; and the federal facility in the Cliffside field near Amarillo, Texas (Figure 2.2). Generally, natural gas containing more than 0.3 percent helium is considered economic for helium extraction in the United States, although the economics of helium extraction often depend on the other products in a natural gas stream.

Page 42. The two most important sources of helium in the United States are the Hugoton-Panhandle field complex, which is located in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, and ExxonMobil's LaBarge field, which is located in the Riley Ridge area of southwestern Wyoming. Most production from the Hugoton-Panhandle complex is connected to or could be connected to the BLM helium pipeline and Cliffside storage facility near Amarillo, Texas. Approximately 2.8 billion scf (78 million scm) of helium was produced from this area in 1996, 2.2 billion scf (61 million scm) of which was sold and 0.6 billion scf (17 million scm) of which was stored in the Bush Dome reservoir. ExxonMobil's Shute Creek processing plant produces approximately 1.0 billion scf (28 million scm) from the LaBarge field, with the remaining 0.2 billion scf (5.5 million scm) coming from other facilities in Colorado and Utah. ExxonMobil's LaBarge gas field and Shute Creek gas processing facility in Wyoming was originally designed to process approximately 480 million scf (13.3 million scm) per day of natural gas; it entailed an investment of approximately $1.5 billion. The field and processing facility currently produce around 650 million scf (18 million scm) per day of natural gas, with an anticipated upgrade expected to increase the capacity to approximately 700 million scf (19 million scm) per day. Gas produced from the field is 66.5 percent carbon dioxide, 20.5 percent methane, 7.4 percent nitrogen, 5.0 percent hydrogen sulfide, and 0.6 percent helium. The processing facility produces carbon dioxide (for enhanced oil recovery projects), methane, elemental sulfur, and helium. At peak production, the facility could produce as much as 4 million scf (110,000 scm) per day, or 1.4 billion scf (39 million scm) per year of helium.

Gas leakage from this system might help explain the recent NY crisis.


.






[edit on 9-1-2007 by soficrow]

You are really streatching it aren't you? First you say it was because they removed the water and now change it to drilling. Make up your mind will ya

Originally posted by shots

You are really streatching it aren't you? First you say it was because they removed the water and now change it to drilling. Make up your mind will ya

You are misrepresenting and misquoting me shots. Tis a desperate strategy of a failing offense. For shame.

MY STATEMENTS:

OP: "The effect is called "geomechanical pollution," and can be created by coal mining, constructing dams and reservoirs, and drilling for oil and gas.

Our planet involves the interplay of complex dynamic systems - the notion that one single cause-and-effect relationship can "explain" anything completely is based on old science, and illusion.

And as I stated in the last para of the OP - "oil and gas industry-funded scientists claim the evidence is not conclusive to show that drilling for oil and gas triggers quakes."



There is NO doubt that human activities can trigger quakes - activities like oil and gas drilling, constructing dams and reservoirs, and coal mining.

Then, quakes trigger more quakes.


Also see: Experts study how quakes trigger quakes






[edit on 9-1-2007 by soficrow]

Its hte same in the middle east/europe plate areas, when 1 quake goes off they can make a fairly educated guess where the next will follow. There was a documentary a year or 2 ago following them through Turkey,Greece etc