Canada Just Broke a World Record for a Fracking-Triggered Earthquake

By: | January 30th, 2016

Fracking is one of the main drivers of the lower oil prices today.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of drilling a hole into the ground and directing high-pressure water, sand, and chemicals into the rock to fracture it, letting oil and gas flow to the surface.

This extreme and unsafe method of extracting fossil fuels from the ground has been linked to many earthquakes in the past. But fracking-induced earthquakes have been quite minor and have not caused any major damage.

However, Canada may have just set a fracking-induced earthquake world record.

A 4.6 magnitude earthquake struck British Columbia on August 17, 2015. After months of analyzing data from the seismometer network and hydraulic fracturing sites near the epicenter, experts recently confirmed that the earthquake was caused by fracking.

The epicenter of the quake was less than two miles away from the injection well.

Nidhi Goyal

Nidhi is a gold medalist Post Graduate in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

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