Texas Drill Baby Drill Oil Field Serious Earthquake

Earthquake Facts

On Friday, February 14th, 2025, a magnitude 5.0 earthquake struck near Tosa, Texas, a highly populated town 190 miles east of El Paso (Figure 1). The earthquake was felt all the way up to Albuquerque. The earthquake depth was 6.6 km or 4.1 mile. In December 2023, the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC), which regulates the state’s oil and gas production, closed deep saltwater treatment wells in Reeves and Culberson County due to seismic activity, but hampered the M5 Quake. Not there.

Figure 1. Report of an earthquake away from the source (red star) on February 14th, 2025. Source: USGS.

How serious is the M5 earthquake?

As a rule of thumb:

M = 3 is felt on the surface of the earth. M = 4 cups fall off the shelf and cracks form in the wall. M = 5 mild structural damage, chimney falls. M = 6 serious structural damage, the house collapses. M = Seven people were trapped under the roof rub and their lives were lost. M = 8 Major disasters.

Other major earthquakes in Texas

A catalogue of lists of major earthquakes near Texas with M5 or higher. The recent earthquake in Texas over the past decade occurred on November 16th, 2022. It was 5.4 in size and collided 147 miles east of El Paso and four miles deep. The earthquake occurred in the Northern Calverson Earthquake Response Area (SRA).

This table shows four M5 earthquakes that have occurred at the North Culberson SRA since 2020, including the most recent one in February 2025. This is, as mentioned before, a very impaired area. Two other M5 earthquakes occurred near the midlands (Figure 2).

Earthquake explanation

An accepted explanation for the earthquake is the disposal of wastewater after fracking wells and producing water along with oil or gas. Injecting wastewater amounts is sufficient to induce earthquakes when drilling is intense (drill baby drill) in Oklahoma from 2009 to 2016, and now in the Permian Basin of Western Texas and New Mexico. It will become.

Wastewater builds up pressure to find a way to faults and patterns of faults, causing faults, and can cause earthquakes. In 2015, Oklahoma recorded roughly 900 earthquakes above the M3. This is six times more than California.

The biggest was the Pawnee earthquake, which was an M5.8. The damage was superficial, probably due to the softening of the Earth’s surface in that area. The entire story of the Oklahoma earthquake is summed up in interesting details.

Regulatory Authorities

The Permian Basin has seen a rapid increase in induced earthquakes since 2000, caused by an increase in wastewater treatment as production wells grow. There are over 20 deep jet wells in Culberson and Reeves counties, ranging from 11,000 to 16,000 feet deep (i.e., under the bottom of the Wolfcamp Production Zone). Deep jets often occur in basements and push the drain up into intense faults that can extend upwards, so deep words are magical words.

The Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) is the regulator of the oil and gas industry in Texas. At the Calverson Reeves SRA in the north (Figure 2), regulators take the following actions (my comments at CAPS):

December 9, 2022, revised response plan

On November 16th, 2022, a 5.4 magnitude earthquake occurred within the North Culverson Reeves Earthquake Response Area (NCR SRA). In response, RRC staff and Disposal Well operators within the SRA will expand the SRA from 2,366 to 2,601 square miles to add waste wells, and amend their response plans to further reduce injections, including earthquakes within the NCR SRA Additional actions were taken to reduce activity more quickly. volume. The operator has pledged to meet the original deep disposal volume target target of 298,000 bbl/day in three months and achieve the new target of 162,000 bbl/day by June 30, 2023. The plan has been implemented. Comment: These are rather dramatic actions, but they were unable to prevent the M5.2 earthquake that occurred in the area just 12 months later.

December 19, 2023 Action

From November 8th to December 17th, 2023, the TexNet Earthquake Monitoring Program has a size (m) of 5.2, 3.6, 4.0, 3.6, 3.8, 3.7, and 3.9 with dimensions (m) (M) of 5.2, 3.6, 4.0, and 3.6 and reported seven earthquakes in northern Calverson and Reeves counties (in order of occurrence). These are the latest events in a continuous sequence of earthquakes that have occurred in this field over the past three years. RRC staff have reported that injections into deep geological layers beneath the bases of the Wolfcamp Formation, particularly the Devonian, Sillian and Elenburger Formations, have led to recent seismic activity in the Northern Calverson-Reeves Seismic Reaction Area (NCR SRA). I decided that it would likely contribute. In response to continued seismic activity within the NCR SRA, the RRC has suspended all disposal permits for deep injection of oil and gas waste within the boundaries of the NCR SRA. This action applies to 23 deep waste wells. The suspension of permission will be effective on January 12, 2024. Comment: These are very dramatic actions, but they were unable to prevent the M5.0 earthquake that occurred in the area on February 14th, 2025, about 12 months later.

Ruptured pipeline

There was damage caused by the M5 earthquake on February 14th, 2025. That evening, the gas pipeline burst. The emergency team had put out the burst-related fire by the next morning.

However, this is not the first gas pipeline rupture. The first was 19 months ago, and the second was 7 months ago. These two are only 300 yards apart, at the North Culberson SRA (Figure 2). The second of these ruptures was July 15, 2024. Although not connected to the M5 earthquake, the Facebook video showed what appeared to be a fault line in the nearby ground.

Better regulations needed for monitoring drilling

The failure of these pipelines, and the RRC restrictions, cannot stop the M5 earthquake, is at least troublesome. And at worst, earthquakes could rise to M6, as most did in Oklahoma, pose a major threat to the population.

The attitude towards this threat is different. Oil and gas production in the Permian Basin continues to increase drill baby drill modes, increasing the likelihood of earthquakes induced by wastewater treatment. On the one hand, the threat of an M6 earthquake cannot be ignored, nor can it damage the building, despite the gas, oil pipelines or Western Texas, which is generally sparsely established. The proposed Holtec nuclear waste site in New Mexico, not far from Carlsbad, is surrounded by hundreds of oil and gas wells and may not be immune from earthquake damage. However, the Court of Appeals invalidated the NRC license provided to Holtec in March 2024.

Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry argues that regulations should balance the economy with losses to profits. Limitations on excavation or disposal measures can have serious economic consequences. This argument is weakened by the favourable nature of the Permian industry, with the well’s equivalent oil and gas revenues in 1921 at $24 billion per year.

Our experience in the UK reveals different places and different attitudes. In 2019, a company called Cuadrilla, which completed a shale-type well in Lancashire, was banned by the government from all well-site activities after an earthquake of size 2.9 was detected. Such earthquakes were deemed unpleasant or unsafe to local residents who were densely settled in the area, in contrast to sparsely settled people in the Permian Basin of West Texas.