Saturday, December 31, 2011

OK lights up for injection earthquakes


As we say good-bye to Ohio, we are lucky to have OK to light up the map with festive red lights.  At this point I would have wanted some really good instrumentation right on top of those big deep quakes to the east.  For if they were seismic couplets (identical twins) we would have had hard proof for fluid effects, since these things have always been associated with injection.

I consider OK and Virginia to be identical mechanisms, but OK is probably injecting at 10 times the rate of VA (which is fed from a dam).  Thus, OK will be ahead of VA in growth.  They are activating the deeper regions, so there is a question of when they will break the record for an injection-triggered earthquake (if you don't include China's M8).  I foresee some more action at depth (and to the sides) before that happens.


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