Bloomberg's Barnett on Fracking Backlash in Oklahoma (Audio)

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in a row. Visit Mars Panneth dot com. I'm Charlie Pellett and that's a Bloomberg business flash. You're listening to Taking Style with Kathleen and Pim Box on Bloomberg Radio. The U S Geological Survey is examining whether the five point six magnitude earthquake that shook Oklahoma on Saturday was also tied for the strongest trembler ever recorded in the state, whether that earthquake was triggered by the underground disposal of wastewater from oil and gas production. Here to tell us

more is Rob Barnett. He is Senior Energy policy analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, providing unique and real time research and context for a variety of industries, and all of the markets and government factors that affect businesses are terminal. Customers can access this function by typing b I go, Rob Barnett. Thank you for being with us. The us GS going

to examine this earthquake and these tremblers tell us. So what we know so far about the relationship between disposal of wastewater from oil and gas production and these kinds of natural or unnatural events. Well, the state's regulator, the

Oklahoma Commissions Corporation, is already taking action. They're not waiting on the u s G as So, in the wake of the earthquake ake, which was a five point six magnitude on the Richter scale on Saturday, they issued an order requiring thirty seven wells to stop disposal or injection of this waste water. So, when you frack whales, you actually produce about ten times more UH kind of water stand other sediment than you do oil and gas, and

you've got to put that somewhere. And the practice has been tied two earthquakes in Oklahoma, or at least the regulator there and that state believes so, and so they're they're taking action today. The number of earthquakes measuring three point oh Ohio reached at least eight hundred ninety last year, followed by about three d seventy this year through June, two, far cry from only two and two thousand eight before the fracking boom. So it doesn't seem too hard to

make a connection, is it? Will it just be totally out of the question now too expensive and how in the heck would you do it? Anyway? For company needs not to inject the wastewater back into the earth, but find into something else to do with it. Right, there are a number of options, so you don't have to always inject. You can treat the water. The problem though, is that some of the other options are more expensive, and so the common practice has been to do this

wastewater injection because it's the most economic. And so if the state regulator really continues to hammer away on this point and put additional regulations in place, it will force the industry to really take those other options more seriously. If if they're going to continue to produce at the kind of volumes that they've been in Oklahoma, and perhaps neighboring states too. It's not there's nothing special about the

geology of Oklahoma. Other states are wrestling with this same kind of issue right now too, right and then, and the geology of Oklahoma is sort of getting new attention because this most recent earthquake was on a fault line that had been previously unknown. That's right, But not all

regulators in all states see it the same way. Texas has been looking at the issue as well, and their their commission in their state basically said that they don't think that there's anything to the connection between earthquakes and wastewater disposals. So really is a big mismatch between kind of where the science is, where the regulators are, and right now it's completely a game that is being handled

by the states. The federal government really hasn't taken a strong view on this, and there really isn't regulatory authority coming from Washington on this. It's all being managed by the states right now. Is there less of it? We I just read the numbers on the increase in earthquakes since two thousand eight in Oklahoma. Has Texas not had a similarly proportionately large increase in the number of earthquakes they've experienced since they started doing a lot more fracking

and injecting the wastewater back into the ground. The geology does matter, so uh there there has been an uptick in many of the places that are doing uh this oil and gas exploration. But the the I guess it's it's all about how whether you believe in correlation causation. I mean, but they had this kind of big jump in earthquakes in Texas or As, Oklahoma been much more

susceptible to this. Oklahoma has been particularly susceptible. So other states, while they're experiencing the issue, they haven't had the same staggering increase that you mentioned just a few minutes ago. So Oklahoma is particularly put prone to this problem. But it is an issue in other states as well. It's not not specifically there, but the big the big jump that you would see, I mean, depending on how you

cut the number. Oklahoma had three into thousand and five that were greater than two point five magnitude, and they had twenty five hundred last year. So complete order of magnitude to orders of magnitude increase in a very short amount of time. That's tied to fracking in the state and greater oil and gas production. Other states haven't had that same order of magnitude increase, but there is. It's it's not specific to Oklahoma, but it's Oklahoma is a

hot spot for the topic. Sure sounds like and there's someone who grew up in earthquake country out in Washington State. I can just imagine when it feels to go from almost no earthquakes to several. Rob Barnett, thank you so very much, part of our Bloomberg Intelligence team in Washington, d C. Senior energy policy analysts for b I. This is Bloomberg. Bloomberg Taking Stock is brought to you by Triton Benefits and HR Solutions, one of the country's leading

benefits providers. Visit Triton Benefits dot com. That's t r I t O N Benefits dot com called five Okay Triton