As usual, we as human beings need to wait for a bunch of researchers to confirm things we actually already knew. But now that it has the official stamp of scientific research and evidence, we can say with greater authority and certainty, Fracking is very very bad.

Shocker!

The study by a team of geologists from Cornell University, the University of Colorado, Columbia University and the United States Geological Survey released last week makes a direct link between high-pressure wastewater injection at four hydraulic fracturing sites southeast of Oklahoma City to a swarm of 2,547 small earthquakes near the small town of Jones.

According to the study, fracking and wastewater injection is responsible for a 22,900 percent increase in magnitude 3.0 or higher earthquakes in the state since 2008. Prior to that, Oklahoma typically saw, on average, one magnitude 3.0 earthquake per year. […]

Fracking involves injecting a potent and toxic brew of water and chemicals into a layer of oil or gas-producing shale formations underground, breaking up the rock and releasing the hydrocarbons—which are then sucked back up to the surface along with the water and chemicals. This process can generate earthquakes, but the quakes are typically small—most cannot be felt and are very rarely greater than magnitude 3.

Wastewater injection, though, is the real problem child—for a number of environmentally nasty reasons, but in this case particularly for generating larger earthquakes. The wastewater from fracking operations is separated from the valuable oil and natural gas and then injected at high pressure back into wells deep underground. Scientists say that the wastewater injection process can, in essence, pry apart rock layers and act as a lubricant on deeply-buried and otherwise stable faults, triggering potentially strong and damaging earthquakes in places that probably aren’t used to them.

This does put the oil industry under considerable pressure as their denial of any serious consequences is now irrefutably shown to be wrong. This is bigger than destroying some environmental ecosystem (although that was a good enough reason for us to stop this in the first place) – the consequences of the fracking process are now proven to be directly damaging human’s lives and homes in a pretty immediate and destructive way.

In spite of the number of jobs created by this industry, geological stability seems like a slightly higher priority, no?

More info available from Gawker.