oklohoma-earthquakes-2000-2015

What Is Induced Seismicity in Oil & Gas Exploration & What Can Be Done About It?

What is Induced Seismicity?

Induced Seismicity is just another way to say ‘man made earthquakes’ and are sometimes referred to “induced earthquakes”.  Induced Seismicity can be caused by many things humans do including:

  1. damming rivers for hydro power build a vast water weight behind the dam which was not their previously
  2. having old mine shafts collapse
  3. draining of underground water reservoirs
  4. tunneling / boring for transit systems

Induced-Seismicity-caused-by-oil-gas-explorationbut the focus of this article is Induced Seismicity caused by oil and gas exploration and production.  There are some unexpected results in the latest research that governments and citizens should be aware of.

The picture to the right is the standard graphic used by industry to explain that when we search for or produce oil and gas near existing fault lines, the added (or reduced!) pressures can cause the faults to activate resulting in earthquakes.  Nowhere has this been more pronounced than in Oklahoma over the previous decade and their citizens and governments are taking it very seriously.

What are the Main Causes of Oil & Gas Related Induced Seismicity?

The two major causes of oil and gas related Induced Seismicity are:

  1. Fracking HORIZONTAL wells
  2. Waste water disposal wells

What is Fracking?

Hydraulic Fracturing or “fracking” is simply the process of injecting materials (often including water, sand, chemicals, CO2…) into a well under very high pressure.  The idea is to crack the rock and release the oil and gas contained.

(more…)

kinder-morgan-trans-mountain-pipeline-map

Twinning the Kinder-Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline Is Now Too Big To Fail

Should the Province of Alberta buy the Trans Mountain Pipeline from Kinder-Morgan if they want to walk away from the project?  That question was posed to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley today and she responded with an emphatic ‘Yes!’.

It has become abundantly clear, whether you are for or opposed to this particular pipeline or not, that having the relatively simple twinning of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline fail to be built would signify the end of even medium scale infrastructure projects in Canada.

kinder-morgan-trans-mountain-pipeline-mapThere will always be interest groups and affected people that have some legitimate claim against a large project.  The standard for projects should not be keeping everyone happy.  The standard for infrastructure projects MUST be if they are in the national interest.  That national interest contains a giant list important factors including:

  • environmental concerns
  • affected citizens needs and wants
  • global competitiveness concerns
  • financial concerns
  • public safety

(more…)

sad-mark-zuckerberg-facebook

Facebook’s Problems Just Keep Getting Bigger

Below is a list of current serious Facebook legal issues:

  1. sad-mark-zuckerberg-facebookThe Canadian Federal Government and the Province of BC agreed to join the separate investigations into Facebook user data being sent to AggegateIQ (part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal)
  2. Facebook just admitted they did know about the Russian meddling in the 2016 US Presidential election, in 2016
  3. Facebook has temporarily walked away from a major project to use their data in Hospitals to improve patient outcomes
  4. Facebook has just shut down AggegateIQ ‘s account for improving receiving data from Cambridge Analytica
  5. Facebook apologized to a notable Myanmar group because Mark Zuckerberg’s claims of how Facebook is effectively responding to hate speech and used Myanmar as an example.  The groups involve claim that Facebook was actually quite slow to respond and that they cleaned up their own mess.
  6. Brazil fined Facebook $33M for not turning over WhatsApp data (that Facebook is almost certainly unable to turn over because the information is encrypted)
  7. The US Government is requiring Mark Zuckerberg to appear in front of the
    1. US House of Representatives Committee on April 11th
    2. US Senate Committee on April 10th

(more…)

nigerian-dirty-oil

How Killing The Canadian Oil Industry Is a Formula For Environmental Disaster

Today Bloomberg’s Michael Bellusci wrote an article explaining that Canadian oil and gas companies are in deep trouble.  Here is an excerpt:

Canada’s Energy Industry Faces ‘Extinction’ Without M&A, BMO Says

On the same day, Global News reported:

Feds to spend $280k to study why Canada’s oil and gas sector is falling behind

The federal government plans to spend up to $280,000 for a new study on Canada’s competitiveness in the oil and gas industry as investment lags and the United States offers new incentives for companies to move south…iea-world-energy-demand-change-2016-2040
Source: globalnews.ca/news/4123026/oil-and-gas-canada-falling-behind-study/

In general terms the issue is that with low oil prices, oil companies see better places in the world to put their money than Canada.  Oil & Gas “activists” will initially claim a victory here because they have had some impact on making it difficult to get Canadian Oil and Gas to both international and domestic markets.

(more…)