Fracking - Dealing with the Waste Water Disposal Issue

Tulsa, OK resident Steve Antry is the founder and CEO of Eagle Resources Group, a crude oil and natural gas company engaged in the exploration, acquisition, development, and production of energy sources. Earlier, Eagle was involved in a program that pioneered horizontally drilling the Mississippi Lime Formation in Northwestern Oklahoma.

Similarly, other energy suppliers have found innovative ways to harvest resources with advanced completion techniques such as fracking. Developed as a way to unlock tight shales and other rock types (limestones and other carbonates) that are deep below the earth’s surface, fracking involves injecting high-pressure liquid that creates small fissures in the tight rocks. The purpose is to stimulate oil or natural gas production and this method can provide natural gas and oil producers with copious amounts of energy. But this practice creates, in many cases, a tremendous amount of produced saltwater from the targeted formations. This water is usually disposed of by reinjecting it back into lower porous rock formations. When the Oklahoma Corporation Commission shut down some specific saltwater wells across the state, the number of earthquakes decreased. In 2018, the state only experienced 154, in 2017, the number was 272, and in 2016 the number was 639. Every year since the Commission began reducing the number of saltwater disposal wells, the incidences of earthquakes has decreased.

The state has a history of earthquakes, but according to the United States Geological Survey, only between one and two percent of the earthquakes that happened were directly linked to fracking with the rest being connected with wastewater disposal, which has been corrected by industry self-policing as well as Oklahoma Corporation Commission oversight.