Not soon enough -- Ohio injection earthquake

Wow, I had just barely issued my eulogy for Ohio earthquakes, and down comes this M4.0!  Talk about timing!  I think they must be connected to the reservoir now, or another injection site.  If it becomes conjugate faulting, as with Arkansas, then right now they are activating the thrust portion.  I'm surprised they haven't started the strike-slip to the NE.  Maybe that's the next quake!

In other words, I would be surprised to see earthquakes line up to the NW forever.  Could be the influence of the reservoir, but after this M4, I 'predict' an M4.5 starting along the NE line.  That would make me happy, not because of the earthquake, but because, then, all would be right with the mechanics.  :)

Update

Minor brick damage, depth is now 5 km.  There were several other injection wells in the vicinity and these have been shut down.  Ohio has 170+ injection wells, and they claim they never triggered an earthquake, but we know better!  :)

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.

Ohio finally calls it a day with injection earthquakes

Article

To satirically paraphrase:  "We know it doesn't trigger earthquakes, but we can't take a chance on proving it actually does.  We've got thousands of these wells, and more are expected."

Oh well, I suppose the earthquakes will stop now, unless they have totally opened up the system, as with Arkansas.  Still Ohio is just one big injection zone, so we must expect future action.  I'll just have to place my faith in Texas and Oklahoma!