4 ms·

is it really recommended to mess around fault lines like that? I guess we'll find out

by markyc 10y ago

exabrial 10y ago
Not sure why you're downvoted for a good question... I hate drive-by downvoters. Well, the best answer I can say is: we do it already. Every time we've drilled for fossil water (that's a thing actually), oil, gas, salt (yep, we drill for salt), typically you want to do it into a fault line, because natural resources tend to gather there after millions of years. The exact circumstances depend heavily on the geology of the area; which I can imagine, for this type of investment/project, they are studying it thoroughly. Really there's hardly ever problems sucking stuff out, it's shoving stuff back in that occasionally causes problems. 'Saltwater' (That's the leftover stuff after you extract the resources from your oil/water emulsion) disposal wells in the Midwestern USA have been implicated it lubricating ancient faults and causing minor earthquakes. (Interesting side note, the Midwestern USA was a giant ocean and has massive layers of salt deposits really far into the earth). The technology behind injection wells is actually quite fascinating... they have cement and steel casing around the production casing through an absurd about of rock until they're way past the point where the point where it has no hope of returning to the surface. However, we apparently can't make very good predictions about what they do to ancient faults, and the communication between producers is minimal because they don't want to spill their secrets. Nearly ever state has a commission that regulates the amount producers are allowed to both extract and inject, but occasionally we still have problems because the commissions lack the field flow analysis that are proprietary secrets for most producers. And no, fracking does not cause earthquakes or causes surface damage, even when the highly regarded scientific research organization CNN tells you it does. Doing so would be counterproductive to the producer anyway: they'd lose the valuable fluids they were trying to extract.
detaro 10y ago
Seems relatively tiny compared to how geologically active Iceland is anyways. If it triggers something, that something probably would have been triggered by natural causes anyways in the next decades(?) Now I wonder if active regions are safer for this, since energy is released more often (vs stable regions that might have huge energy built up over a long time). Could be total BS though.

is it really recommended to mess around fault lines like that? I guess we'll find out

by markyc 10y ago

is it really recommended to mess around fault lines like that? I guess we'll find out

Not sure why you're downvoted for a good question... I hate drive-by downvoters. Well, the best answer I can say is: we do it already. Every time we've drilled for fossil water (that's a thing actually), oil, gas, salt (yep, we drill for salt), typically you want to do it into a fault line, because natural resources tend to gather there after millions of years. The exact circumstances depend heavily on the geology of the area; which I can imagine, for this type of investment/project, they are studying it thoroughly. Really there's hardly ever problems sucking stuff out, it's shoving stuff back in that occasionally causes problems. 'Saltwater' (That's the leftover stuff after you extract the resources from your oil/water emulsion) disposal wells in the Midwestern USA have been implicated it lubricating ancient faults and causing minor earthquakes. (Interesting side note, the Midwestern USA was a giant ocean and has massive layers of salt deposits really far into the earth). The technology behind injection wells is actually quite fascinating... they have cement and steel casing around the production casing through an absurd about of rock until they're way past the point where the point where it has no hope of returning to the surface. However, we apparently can't make very good predictions about what they do to ancient faults, and the communication between producers is minimal because they don't want to spill their secrets. Nearly ever state has a commission that regulates the amount producers are allowed to both extract and inject, but occasionally we still have problems because the commissions lack the field flow analysis that are proprietary secrets for most producers. And no, fracking does not cause earthquakes or causes surface damage, even when the highly regarded scientific research organization CNN tells you it does. Doing so would be counterproductive to the producer anyway: they'd lose the valuable fluids they were trying to extract.

detaro 10y ago

Seems relatively tiny compared to how geologically active Iceland is anyways. If it triggers something, that something probably would have been triggered by natural causes anyways in the next decades(?) Now I wonder if active regions are safer for this, since energy is released more often (vs stable regions that might have huge energy built up over a long time). Could be total BS though.