Okla. plans more oil drilling; regulators say they have a quake plan

Two huge reserves of oil in Oklahoma are about to see a surge of increased activity in 2017, but this time, regulators say they have a plan to prevent damaging earthquakes, according to a news release by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.

Although the risk of a large earthquake striking Oklahoma has been falling, it remains more than 50 times above what it would be without oil production, according to a recent study.

And much of the decrease in risk was due to a decrease in oil prices that also decreased production.

As production rises again, so could the number of earthquakes. But state regulators say they have a plan to try to prevent more quakes.

The two areas that will see the biggest increases in production cover nearly a third of the state but don’t produce as much wastewater as the areas that have seen a massive increase in earthquakes, according to the news release.

Injections of wastewater are believed to be what led to many of the earthquakes. So less wastewater from the new formations should mean fewer earthquakes, according to the Oklahoma Geological Survey.

There is a smaller risk of earthquakes caused directly by injecting fluid in the hydraulic fracturing process itself, according to the news release. But the risk is more contained than the risk from wastewater.

So when an earthquake occurs, instead of having to regulate areas up to 15 miles away from the quake, the latest actions will be to contain oil operations that are within 1.25 miles of the earthquake.

The commission has put out the following set of procedures to respond to earthquake activity:

▪ If an earthquake of a magnitude greater than 2.5 occurs, regulators will contact hydraulic fracturing operations within 1.25 miles of the earthquake for “internal mitigation” while operation is allowed to continue.

▪ If an earthquake of a magnitude greater than 3.0 occurs, operation must cease for at least six hours while regulators and the operator discuss what to do next and then implement an agreement about how to proceed.

▪ If an earthquake of a magnitude greater than 3.5 occurs, operators within 1.25 miles must suspend operations entirely and meet with regulators to see whether they can resume activity.

This story was originally published December 20, 2016 at 6:10 PM with the headline "Okla. plans more oil drilling; regulators say they have a quake plan."