July TSPE Dallas Chapter Meeting

11:30 - 12:00 pm Registration and Networking
12:00 - 1:00 pm Lunch / Speakers

 

Human-Caused Earthquakes in Texas and Elsewhere: “Everything You Know Is Wrong”

 

 

Cliff Frohlich

Senior Research Scientist; Associate Director

Institute for Geophysics

University of Texas at Austin

 

Seismologists no longer question whether human activity can sometimes trigger earthquakes; observations indicate that human-caused earthquakes occur in several different situations. I discuss three examples from Texas where this probably has occurred: earthquakes in east Texas near Timpson that occur near injection disposal wells; earthquakes south of San Antonio associated with fluid extraction/petroleum production; and earthquakes near Snyder apparently triggered by CO2 injection in the Cogdell field. Yet, there appear to be almost no triggered earthquakes in the Bakken of North Dakota. What is puzzling (and the subject of ongoing research) is why human activities cause earthquakes in some locations/environments and not in other, apparently similar situations. 

About the Speaker:

Cliff Frohlich received a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University and has been employed for the last 36 years as a research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin. He has authored about 100 research papers and two books: Texas Earthquakes (coauthored with Scott Davis) and Deep Earthquakes. Since 2009 his research has focused mostly on possibly-induced earthquakes in Texas.

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