Studies in British Columbia, Canada, have directly linked seismically induced earthquakes to hydraulic fracturing in individual wells. What do the Horn River Basin in Canada and Garvin County, Okla., have in common? As Carole King sang a few years ago, "I feel the earth move under my feet. I feel the sky tumbling down, tumbling down," and that's when the ground starts shaking. This time, though, it's not from injection wells; it is from hydraulic fracturing of individual wells. The last time I touched on this topic was in the January 2014 issue of E&P. Most of the focus was on earthquakes induced by wastewater injection wells. Since then the industry has been faced with a lot of pressure (the pun is intended) to stop using injection wells, which in turn would shut down horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing.
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