Geologist: Site injection wells away from critical infrastructure

THE STATE JOURNAL:

The well was used largely for the disposal of wastewater generated by hydraulic fracturing of horizontal gas wells, according to media reports — a use that some of West Virginia's 50 or so private and 13 commercial injection wells serve.

Geologists contact by The State Journal affirmed that underground injection of fluids can cause earthquakes.

 "If you took a brick in each hand and tried to slide them past one another, the rough surface along the boundary would represent a fault and the frictional resistance that is present," explained Marshall University geologist Ronald Martino.

 "When you build pore fluids up in faults, you decrease the resistance. The fault will slip at lower thresholds than it would naturally so you're triggering movement along the fault — it's occurring sooner and more frequently than it would if left alone under natural conditions."

 Earthquakes caused by injection have been registered as high as magnitude 5.0, according to Martino, a level he said could damage bridges and dams.

A series of eight smaller tremors in 2010 near a Chesapeake Appalachia injection well in Braxton County subsided when the company agreed, in cooperation with DEP, to scale back its injections from the permitted 2,100 pounds per square inch. Chesapeake has since been able to gradually ramp its injections back up to the permitted level without incident.