Oklahoma is the state that springs to mind whenever earthquakes and oil are mentioned in the same sentence, but a fresh report from the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas has revealed that the shale oil industry’s activity in the Lone Star State has led to changes in seismic activity. The report found that while between 1975 and 2008 the average number of quakes above a magnitude of 3 was one or two, between 2008 and 2016 it increased to 12 to 15 a year. The TAMEST task force that authored the report noted that this increase has been linked not to fracking itself, however, but to wastewater disposal wells, which is in line with findings from other studies. As to whether contaminated water from these disposal wells could seep through into subsoil aquifers that may supply drinking water, the report found that this is highly unlikely, […]