Cartoon by Joel Pett: Fracking causes earthquakes.
About time we got around to messing up the bedrock!
Justice & Health
Fracking-Induced Earthquakes Are Menacing Argentina as Regulators Stand By, Policymakers have long known fracking operations can trigger earthquakes. Why has it taken Argentine regulators six years and counting to exercise oversight over the industry? by Katie Surma, April 14, 2024, Inside Climate News
AÑELO, Argentina—Ana Guircaleo was deep in slumber when a thunderous crash jolted her awake. Guircaleo, 72, barely had time to register that her television was shattered into pieces on the floor when she felt the convulsing of the Earth beneath her bed. She bolted, half naked and terrified, across the threshold of her red brick ranch-style home and into the open desert beneath a dark sky.
That 2019 earthquake, Guircaleo recounted in a recent interview, was not the first nor the most intense seismic event to hit her small Wirkaleo Mapuche community since hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for hard-to-reach oil and natural gas began in the early 2010s in Vaca Muerta, a shale and limestone deposit roughly the size of Maryland that is located in Argentina’s northern Patagonia region.
Since 2018, Wirkaleo and the adjacent small town of Sauzal Bonito have at times endured 48-hour periods of more than a dozen earthquakes ranging from mild tremors to violent shaking that have left many homes with veined cracks in walls, broken windows and crumbled chimneys. Guiracelo said the persistent tremors have aggravated her high blood pressure, caused pervasive mental stress and put her into debt—as a retiree on a small budget, she had to take out a loan to pay for repairs to her home.
“I have been completely traumatized,” she said.
For Guiracelo and her neighbors, many of whom are Indigenous Mapuche families, little relief is in sight. There is no chance fracking will diminish, or end, any time soon in Argentina, given the nation’s deep reserves of hydrocarbons and its desperate need to meet domestic energy demand and produce exports to power its economy.
Indeed, Argentine officials, like their American counterparts, are currently developing facilities to expand unconventional oil and gas production at a breakneck pace, with the ultimate aim of exporting liquified natural gas (LNG). With gas making up about 55 percent of Argentina’s energy consumption, the nation’s increase in domestic gas production in 2023 alone saved it about $2 billion by replacing imports, mostly from neighboring Bolivia. Exporting LNG to Southeast Asian countries moving away from coal and to a world weaning itself off of Russian gas could reverse Argentina’s energy balance, making it a net exporter and bringing in foreign currency needed to pay down tens of billions of dollars of its sovereign debt.
As he aims to pull the country back from economic crisis, Argentina’s newly elected libertarian president, Javier Milei, has vowed to eliminate the country’s environmental ministry and “unshackle” the energy industry. In recent months, Argentina’s inflation hit triple digits, its poverty rate reached 57 percent and the government narrowly avoided another sovereign debt default. Milei, who has in the past denied human-caused climate change, has introduced legislation aimed at stimulating investment in Vaca Muerta.
As the energy industry contends that unconventional oil and gas can smooth the world’s transition to low-carbon energy sources while meeting present energy demands, 
The usual cruel greedy selfish lying bullshit frac’ers spew everywhere they invade and destroyenvironmentalists point out that the development of Vaca Muerta, home to the world’s second-largest shale gas and fourth-largest shale oil reserves, will produce huge greenhouse gas emissions in contravention of Argentina’s commitments under international climate agreements.
Beyond governments’ wrangling over climate change, the outsourcing of the environmental and social impacts of oil and gas extraction on local communities remains ever present. While gas and oil have flowed abroad and to population centers like Buenos Aires, locals living in and around the Neuquen basin have been left largely on their own to endure fracking’s impacts.Like everywhere,Government officials lack adequate numbers of monitoring stations and data to track seismic activity, dispute the intensity of community-reported earthquakes, and early on had largely ignored decades of science linking fracking and wastewater disposal to earthquakes. Guiracelo and other locals say that in the wake of the first earthquakes, government and various energy company officials told them that the rumbling was natural—about 90 miles west of Sauzal Bonito lay the snow-capped Andes mountain range where two immense tectonic plates collide. A few miles east of the towns are two large man-made lake reservoirs, created in the late 1900s when hydroelectric dams were installed on the Neuquen river. Both geographic features can, in theory, put stress on underground faults, triggering earthquakes.
But, Guiracelo and other residents were skeptical of officials’ glib explanation. After all, people in her community and Sauzal Bonito had been living in the area for years if not decades, and some families for generations. They had never felt an earthquake before nor was there a record of earthquakes in the vicinity of Sauzal Bonito.
Some of those residents worked in the oil and gas industry and word spread throughout the communities about the mechanics of fracking—the pumping, then extracting, at high pressure of millions of gallons of water mixed with toxic chemicals, sand and other additives to fracture rock so that hydrocarbons can be extracted. They also learned that fracking companies dispose of some of the hazardous liquid waste that flows back to the surface by reinjecting the fluid at high pressure deep into the Earth.
If all of those underground hydraulic changes were suddenly happening beneath their homes, surely that had to be contributing to the problem, Guiracelo had thought. She and other rural residents already had low trust in the provincial Neuquen and federal governments. Among other reasons, no one had bothered to tell the people of Sauzal Bonito and Wirkaleo before officials approved fracking operations in the region, let alone consult those communities about it.
In light of officials’ flat denial that the earthquakes might be man-made, Guiracelo and other residents were left wondering, “Where can we go for some answers?”
Big Risks Shrouded in Secrecy and Denial
Locals weren’t the only ones who were rattled by the seismic activity hitting Sauzal Bonito and Wirkaleo in 2018.
News reports about the earthquakes had caught the eye of Javier Grosso, a 39-year-old geographer from the neighboring province of Rio Negro. Grosso, a well-liked and affable professor at the National University of Comahue, knew that unlike Argentina’s mountainous border with Chile, the low desert plateaus around Sauzal Bonito were not prone to seismic activity. When he sketched out a map marking the locations of fracking operations and quakes’ purported epicenters, the drawing produced a cluster of dots over and around the towns of Sauzal Bonito and Wirkaleo.
His suspicion that the tremors had some relationship to fracking operations was reinforced when he checked the official seismic activity records of international monitors and the Argentine government—they had no records of earthquakes in the area around Wirkaleo and Sauzal Bonito before 2015.
Over the next year, Grosso often made the two-hour drive to those communities, knocking on doors and gathering information about when and how intensely residents felt tremors.
He quickly noticed that what residents were telling him did not track with data that the federal government’s National Institute of Seismic Prevention, known by its acronym INPRES, was releasing.
To start, between 2015 and 2020, locals told him about far more felt tremors than the 64 earthquakes captured by INPRES.Sounds like they’re copying how Earthquakes Canada manages frac quakes, hint: remove the details from public viewThat agency, like the U.S. Geological Survey, maintains a national network of seismological stations to monitor movements in the Earth. Seismograph machines in those stations record motion when underground faults slip, releasing energy that sends vibrations through the Earth.
Scientists need at least three monitoring stations to roughly locate the epicenter of an earthquake—the nearest station picks up the vibrations the earliest, and the difference in time among different stations can be used to calculate, or triangulate, where the earthquake’s epicenter is located. The more monitoring stations in place, the more accurately scientists can locate the epicenter.
Knowing the position of an earthquake’s epicenter is important because scientists need that information to best assess what caused the affected fault to slip—and ultimately policymakers can use that information to implement preventative measures if human activity is inducing earthquakes.
Yet around Sauzal Bonito, historically few seismic monitoring stations existed because the area had no recorded history of earthquakes and had long been considered low risk for seismic activity. As Grosso saw it, the deficiency in monitoring devices meant that the information INPRES had been reporting could be deficient or flawed.
Then there were the conflicting characterizations between locals and some government officials about the intensity of the earthquakes. While each earthquake has one magnitude, its intensity—what effect the shaking has on people and infrastructure—is relative to how far away the epicenter and hypocenter (the depth of the earthquake) are located. An earthquake that originates deep inside the Earth’s crust, or far away, will be felt less intensely than a earthquake of the same magnitude but that is closer to Earth’s surface.
INPRES reported that most of the tremors near Sauzal Bonito and Wirkaleo had relatively low magnitudes, with a few exceptions exceeding a magnitude four. Grosso suspected the smaller magnitude earthquakes were both shallow and near the towns because locals recounted terrifying episodes of undulating ground and walls, barking dogs and rock slides, among other effects. And Grosso himself saw the physical damage to infrastructure and rock formations, documenting it by taking photographs on his cellphone.
Some Neuquen government officials characterized the onset of tremors differently.
As one provincial legislator put it at the time, the earthquakes around Sauzal Bonito were so minor that they were “one millionth of the smallest earthquakes with enough intensity to do damage.” Roaring laughter! The cover-up agents are the same everywhere, zero creativity in their lies.
Reactions like that led Grosso to believe that Neuquen officials, who had primary regulatory authority over matters involving natural resources, were either willfully shielding fracking operations from scrutiny, or that those regulators were not understanding the hazards now facing residents throughout the region—almost no infrastructure in the Neuquen basin was built to withstand earthquakes, including the two hydroelectric dams located kilometers away from the afflicted communities.
“Shale oil and gas production carries a big risk that these dams could be broken by induced seismic activity,” said Argentine seismologist Andres Folguera. “That is a big risk, and it’s not quantifiable, it’s not totally understood.”
Whatever the reasons for officials’ initial denials, Grosso thought there were serious gaps in regulatory oversight and wondered how he could force Neuquen officials to take the problem seriously. He considered that scientifically linking fracking activities to the earthquakes might do that. Nope, even with company data proving frac’ing contaminates aquifers and or causes earthquakes directly or indirectly via frac waste injection, energy regulators and politicos lie and engage in fraud to enable the harms. Frac’ing is slow genocide of the earth; frac’ers and their enablers are genocidaires.
So, he sought out the help of the Argentine engineer Guillermo Tamburini Beliveau, an expert in cartography and geodesy. Starting in 2019, the men set out to gather information that they would ultimately piece together to answer the question Grosso heard repeatedly from locals: Is what our government saying true?
Dozens of Studies Link Earthquakes and Fracking
Communities like Wirkaleo and Sauzal Bonito endure a disproportionate burden of the impacts from hydrocarbon extraction. Factors like the towns’ remoteness, low socioeconomic status and the comparative power of the energy industry all contribute to the likelihood that the burdens borne by people like Ana Guircaleo are kept largely invisible even when the causes of that harm are well understood.
“The majority of the Argentine population accept the sacrifice zones around oil and gas development because we’re in this social and economic crisis and the narrative is: We have 40 percent poverty so we can’t have the luxury of not exploiting this activity,” said Santiago Bernabé Cané, an Argentine environmental lawyer. I’d say humanity does not have the luxury to frac. It’s destroying water and taking our species and many others down.
When residents of Sauzal Bonito reported feeling their first major earthquake in 2018, the energy industry and policymakers had long known that human activities—from oil and gas disposal wells to mining, and geologic carbon sequestration—could induce earthquakes.
As far back as the 1960s, when the injection of hazardous chemicals into a well at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver triggered a 4.8 magnitude earthquake, the risks of pumping liquids deep underground have been understood. Pushed into sedimentary rocks at high pressure, fluids can lubricate existing underground faults, causing those faults to slip and trigger earthquakes.
In the 2000s, when fracking combined with horizontal drilling took off throughout the United States, the increase in the number of earthquakes in fracking regions, many of which were previously low or aseismic areas, correlated with an increase in underground fluid injection and extraction operations. In the central United States, the number of annual earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or greater ballooned from a historic annual rate of 25 to 1,000 in 2015.
Today, dozens of scientific papers have documented links between induced seismicity and the unconventional oil and gas industry’s waste management practice of reinjecting fracking wastewater into old wells. Later studies confirmed that fracking, in some contexts, can itself induce quakes.
While there are still many uncertainties about induced earthquakes, known or knowable factors—the natural rates of seismic activity in an area, the permeability of sedimentary rock (which provides a pathway for fluids to reach faults), the relative location of operations to faults and the pressure and amounts of fluid injected—have bearing on whether oil and gas operations are likely to trigger tremors. And so the gathering and sharing of information about the phenomenon is immensely important to understanding and preventing the tremors.As long as companies frac, extract, and or inject waste, drill vertical and horizontal well bores, inject steam under high pressure, it’s not possible to prevent frac quakes. And, they’ll increase in number and magnitude. Only way to prevent frac-induced tremors is to not frac or inject.
Whether regulators and the industry are willing to put regulations in place There is no regulation a person can create to prevent frac quakes. Besides, frac’ers gleefully ignore regulations everywhere they frac, notably in Indigenous territories and communities requiring the tracking and sharing of that information, or whether they’re willing to take adequate precautionary measures, is a different matter, according to Grosso.
As earthquakes menaced communities living near fracking operations in Texas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy and elsewhere, regulators have responded differently to the problem, with some mandating versions of a so-called traffic light system to minimize the risk.The silly traffic light system only mitigated risk in the UK where authorities realized red lights didn’t stop the devastating frac quake harms underground or to hundreds of homes, so frac’ing was banned! In Canada, the traffic light system is a corrupt overflowing sewer.Under those rules, companies continuously monitor operations’ seismic impacts. If underground tremors become more pronounced, companies must either slow down pumping or pause operations.Too late. Slowing down or pausing does not repair the damages already done to the subsurface or nearby homes, businesses, public infrastructure, and worse, to energy well bores. How much leaking methane is caused by frac and other oil and gas industry induced quakes? Causing how much horrific climate chaos suffering and billions of dollars in damages? And how many deaths to humans and or other species?
In Oklahoma, an area not prone to earthquakes, regulators have, at times, ordered pauses or shut down pumping operations based on seismic reports. In doing so, regulators there have brought down incidents of induced quakes of 3.0 magnitude or greater from more than 900 in 2015 to 30 in 2022.
In the Netherlands, after more than 1,000 quakes affected residents living near the Groningen gas field, the Dutch government shuttered all fracking operations there, leaving valuable gas underground and requiring the consortium of operators, Shell, Exxon and the Dutch government, to compensate homeowners harmed by the quakes. Courts years ago also ordered billions of dollars in compensation, but have the companies paid? When will they? How many court and gov’t orders have been issued and how many delays? How will anyone make the companies pay what they’ve been court ordered to pay? Santa’s crew of magic makers only work part time.
A scathing governmental report into the causes and consequences of the Groningen earthquakes found that while the consortium made over $425 billion in profit, thousands of residents were left with property damage, health issues and diminished quality of life. Throughout Groningen, earthquakes are expected to continue for years to come as a result of the changes made to the underground geology. Calling the situation a “disaster in slow motion,” because of the persistent earthquakes, the Dutch report concluded that “not only decision-makers, but the rest of the Netherlands as well as the media, long underestimated the problems in Groningen.” Oh, FFS! Industry knew, authorities knew, media lie to enable harms by the oil and gas industry. They didn’t give a shit about anything but filling their own pockets and serving genocidal rich.
Terrorized by Earthquakes
Similarly, families in Wirkaleo and Sauzal Bonito have—for six years—been reporting financial losses, diminished property values and mental health ailments they blame on the uncertainty now woven into their daily lives from not knowing when the next rumbling will occur. Many live in earthquake-damaged homes that may or may not be safe—in Groningen, the Dutch government has been carrying out safety checks on affected infrastructure. In remote Argentine Patagonia it’s unclear if any safety checks have been carried out. In response to a question from Inside Climate News about whether the province had a policy in place for carrying out safety checks on homes and infrastructure, a spokesperson for the Neuquen provincial government said that was “outside the orbit and scope of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources.”
In Sauzal Bonito, some parents say that to comfort children terror stricken from the shaking, they have taken to sleeping outside in tents or cars, while others have moved to regions less affected, breaking up families and tight-knit communities in the process.
Andres Duran, a former oil worker who now raises livestock in Sauzal Bonito, said his animals “go crazy” when the tremors come. “They run around and look for places to shelter, shaking and terrified,” he said. Other locals alleged that rock falls triggered by earthquakes have crushed some of their livestock.
The seismic impacts on Wirkaleo and Sauzal Bonito have been serious enough that the provincial Neuquén government has offered small anti-seismic replacement homes to some affected residents while working with INPRES to ramp up seismic monitoring in the region, according to a spokesperson for the Neuquen government. Wooop dee doo, what’s monitoring going to do? Nothing but enable the frac’s to continue bigger and more and more damaging and deadly, and riches for frac’ing’s genocidal rich.
Argentina’s decentralized system of government gives provinces like Neuquen a significant amount of power over the oil and gas industry. Some analysts say that structure has led to oversight of the industry being determined largely by political negotiations between governors and companies, as opposed to through more transparent lawmaking processes. Since late 2018, Neuquen province’s environmental ministry has said it is conducting research for a “Preventive Plan for the Occurrence of Seismic Events,” but has not said when that plan will be released.
The Neuquen government spokesman said there are no plans to enact new regulations aimed at controlling induced seismicity, but that the province was working on a seismic traffic light plan and early warning system.Ah! The usual plan to have a non plan plan that will always be in development, and never released, to make sure the frac harms continue unimpeded. The only way to prevent frac quakes is by criminalizing frac’ing, CCS, enhanced oil recovery, and waste injection. The traffic stop light system does not prevent frac quakes or the damages from them.
“It’s not my fault.” “It’s not my fault.” “It’s not my fault.” “It’s not my fault.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“It’s not my fault.”
Images above by Fox Creek resident Barb Ryan about AER’s (Alberta Energy self-Regulator for industry) frac quake enabling, non mitigating traffic light system, useless but it cons the concerned public and harmed families into believing frac quakes are being mitigated. The light system’s real purpose is to let frac’ers keep frac’ing, continue damaging the subsurface and well bores, and carry on unimpeded removing vital water from the hydrogeological cycle) and destroying earth’s livability.
The traffic light system does not mitigate or prevent frac quakes! The only way to stop frac quakes is to stop frac’ing! Easy Peasy!
He did not say when those systems would be implemented. Currently, fracking companies are not required to include seismic risk assessments in their environmental impact studies, the regulatory document used to assess risk and form the basis of licensing decisions.
Nor are companies required to publicly disclose the seismic monitoring information they track— if they are tracking it at all. At least one company operating adjacent to Sauzal Bonito, Mexico-based Vista Oil & Gas, told the Neuquen government that it does not have a monitoring network for seismic activity, according to a 2024 Neuquen environmental ministry report.
And so, when Grosso and Tamburini-Beliveau began writing to company and government officials throughout 2019 and 2020 requesting more detailed seismic monitoring information, it did not come as a surprise that their requests went unanswered.
When the men began showing up at government and company offices, they were turned away empty handed or told the seismic information they sought was covered by confidentiality agreements between fracking companies and the government.
This was seemingly in breach of the decades-old commitments Argentina and world governments have made to ensure the public has access to environmental information—a bedrock principle not just of environmental law making but of democratic governance, according to the Argentine environmental law group Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN), which accused officials of violating the Escazú Agreement, among other national and international laws. Seismologists and academics have also emphasized the importance of information transparency to better understand and manage induced earthquakes.
“The key to effective regulation and mitigation is transparency. In this regard, scientists can work towards building trusting relationships with industry, and specifically ones that facilitate the sharing of data openly,” wrote Swiss seismologist Ryan Schultz in a 2020 paper on fracking-induced seismic events.The problem with such thinking is that frac’ers know the only way they can frac and make money, is to ignore regulations, lie – a lot, keep endless secrets so that their lies are more successful at conning the harmed and investors, all enabled by regulators and politicians they bribe and or lobby. Industry and regulators know well that it’s impossible to frac safely or without causing harm to the earth, climate, communities, families, water, livestock, pets and wildlife, public infrastructure and more.
Tamburini-Beliveau, the engineer working with Grosso, was apoplectic about the stonewallingshit, he’d lose his mind in Alberta!, thinking at the time:
“It’s impossible to understand why the government makes confidential agreements with the companies—this is a matter related to our national territory, our soil, our geography and geology.”
It’s tremendously easy to understand:
NDA’s (Non Disclosure Agreements) hide fracking trail of pollution (and frac quakes and their harms!)
The La Calera and Loma Campana Oil and Gas Field
Earlier this year, underneath a bright February sky mirroring the light blue and white colors of the Argentine flag, Grosso, tall and with a mane of salt and pepper hair, leans out of our car’s passenger-side window, assuring an industry security guard that he is on the visitors’ list for the Campo Maripe Mapuche community.
As the guard waves us through, Grosso explains that the land we are entering legally belongs to the province of Neuquen, but that the provincial government, in 2014, officially recognized that the families of Campo Maripe, one of the roughly 20 Indigenous Mapuche communities living around Vaca Muerta, have been living here since at least 1927.
One of the limited privileges of that modest recognition is that the Campo Maripe community can allow a small number of visitors into what Grosso calls “one of the epicenters of fracking in Vaca Muerta.” And it has become so despite the Campo Maripe community’s opposition to fracking.
Energy companies refer to this area not as Campo Maripe territory, but as the La Calera and Loma Campana oil and gas fields, and so far only about 5 percent of its recoverable reserves have been extracted.Oh horrors!That the industry has had its way with the land is apparent in the dozens of fracking wells in various stages of development dotting the landscape. As of April 2024, there are 1,089 wells in Loma Campana, the vast majority of which are for unconventional production. Among the platforms are gas flares and giant plumes of beige dirt churned up by industry vehicles moving to and from operation sites. Everything here, from desert plants to our clothing, is covered by the industry’s gritty dust, which tends to find its way into your mouth and nose.
Above photos: Frac’ers dusting up the air in Alberta.
Before frac’ing, I only had to dust my house a few times a year; after Encana/Ovintiv frac’ers invaded, I had to dust twice a week, could have dusted daily.
Our car turns over gravel stones as it climbs past pipelines the circumference of a basketball that stretch far off into the distance. Known as “anacondas” here, the pipes are used to transport water miles from the Neuquen river to well sites where it’s mixed with additives, pressurized and shot underground.
Investment in expanding oil and gas production in Argentina is rapidly growing, with more than $10 billion pouring into development last year alone, an 18 percent increase from 2022. Vaca Muerta has received the majority of that investment and, now that a new pipeline has been installed to alleviate a production bottleneck, more hydrocarbons are flowing to the eastern part of the country.
Plans for additional pipelines and export terminals near Buenos Aires will further enhance Vaca Muerta’s development; the energy consultant Rystad Energy estimates that the shale deposit will see up to 400 new wells installed each year by 2030. Expectations are that Argentina will in the coming years begin, or increase, exports via pipelines to Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and via LNG shipping to the rest of the world. Beyond stupid.
In a sense, the mechanics of the operations are a feat of human ingenuity.
But many homes in the region lack access to clean water and piped gas for heating and cooking, and bear the brunt of the environmental impacts, making the industry’s lustrous achievements seem as shrouded in problems as the landscape here is in dust.
Grosso points to a well site that is actively fracking. Clustered around the well are more than a dozen semi trucks helping to pump a slurry of chemicals, sand and water underground. He explains that fluid injection and extraction rates are part of the data that he and Tamburini-Beliveau used for the study they published in the scientific journal Nature in November 2022 that established a link between fracking operations and the induced earthquakes in Vaca Muerta.
For that study, they also used satellite radar interferometry (InSAR) data to examine land deformation in the region over time, which gave them insight into what “background” local tectonic and ground dynamics have been happening in the area so they could better assess what role fracking was playing in the seismic uptick.
Based on their analysis, which included modeling because of the lack of seismic data in the region, Grosso and Tamburini-Beliveau concluded that there was a “clearly shown” correlation between the earthquakes, fracking operations and ground deformation that “suggest a direct relationship between hydrocarbon production and seismicity.”
One graph included in the study looks like the infamous climate change hockey stick graph: water injection and extraction rates are flat until about January 2017, when they lurch up and to the right through the year 2020, corresponding with an expansion in fracking operations and seismic energy in the region. During a temporary moratorium on operations in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, earthquakes in the region dropped to zero.
Independent seismologists, one of whom worked as an industry consultant, reviewed the study at my request and affirmed its findings. However, they noted, as did Grosso and Tamburini-Beliveau, that one of the limitations of the study was that the data available from seismic monitoring stations was incomplete because there was, and still are, an inadequate number of seismic monitors installed in the affected region. While 10 new INPRES stations have been added in Neuquen since fracking operations began in the early 2010s, the number is still low compared to places like Oklahoma, which has 93 stations across the state maintained by the state’s geological survey; within the Netherlands, which is about one-fourth larger than Vaca Muerta, the Groningen area alone has 70 stations. A spokesperson for the Neuquen government said six more public monitoring stations are being installed in the province but are not yet operational. The spokesperson also said the data being gathered from companies’ private monitoring stations is not made public.
Tamburini-Beliveau and Grosso’s research is part of a body of work from scientists, activists and lawyers that has pushed the Neuquen government to increase transparency around what officials and companies know about fracking operations’ links to induced seismic events. Their work also helped force officials to acknowledge that fracking operations are very likely driving the hundreds of earthquakes that have happened in and around Vaca Muerta since 2018. Progress beyond that acknowledgement has been slow, with some locals and researchers attributing the pace to economic factors.
“The government always favors the conditions for exploitation,” Folguera, the seismologist, said, pointing to a rollback of environmental regulations in the 1990s, during another financial crisis, to drive investment into the mining industry. “I’m not against mining or oil and gas, but the state has to study environmental impacts and regulate.”Look around the world! Miners and frac’ers, are not regulatable; they piss on the rule of law and regulations whenever it suits them, which is nearly always, and is nearly always enabled by authorities.
After their 2022 Nature study published, Tamburini-Beliveau and Grosso have continued cross-checking INPRES data with other sources, including monitoring stations in Chile that pick up the more intense quakes happening in Vaca Muerta.
They’ve found that often the INPRES data doesn’t match what the Geoscientific Network of Chile has found. And, because the Chileans, like the U.S. Geological Survey, disclose the formulas they use to calculate epicenter coordinates, Beilveau and Grosso are able to check on the reliability of those formulas and have found them credible. INPRES does not publicly disclose the formulas it uses and does not publicize data on earthquakes registering below magnitude 2.5.
“Those formulas and the seismic data that we know some companies are tracking is crucial to understanding the risk of fracking operations, inducing earthquakes,” Tamburini-Beliveau said during a recent interview. “We know the information is actively being hidden and they don’t want us to have it.”
“I’m not against mining or oil and gas, but the state has to study environmental impacts and regulate.”
In Loma Campana, Grosso leads me to a different well site, one that is in the beginning stage of being drilled. On average, 1.1 of these sites are installed monthly in the Neuquen basin. This well belongs to Argentina’s national oil company, YPF, and Grosso rattles off the names of some other companies with operations in Vaca Muerta: Chevron, Exxon, Shell, Tecpetrol and Vista Oil and Gas. He says that between the companies, they have installed at least 22 private seismographs and some use the publicly funded Fernando Volponi Geophysical Institute at the National University of San Juan to process the information the monitors gather. That data is part of what Grosso and Beilveau have been trying to get a hold of—and believe residents are entitled to not least because it’s being subsidized by public funding.
“We’ve tried to get it, but the state looks the other way,” Grosso says, shaking his head.Looking the other ways is The Frac’ing Way! Always!
Staying in Their Homes
Last year, some of the residents of Sauzal Bonito and the Wirkaleo Mapuche community filed a lawsuit against the Neuquen government, seeking to force officials to carry out environmental impact studies that include an evaluation of induced seismicity and its risks for existing infrastructure and underground aquifers. Until such a study is completed, the plaintiffs asked Argentina’s Supreme Court of Justice to order a moratorium on all operations in Vaca Muerta.
Their complaint, prepared by the Buenos Aires-based legal aid group FARN, notes that in the first two weeks of September of 2023, there were 14 earthquakes in the Vaca Muerta area—one of which hit Sauzal Bonito with tremors of magnitude four on the Richter scale. FARN has also asked the court to order INPRES and Neuquen officials to release the seismology data Grosso and Tamburini-Beliveau have been after.
While the case remains pending, Grosso has continued his visits to Sauzal Bonito and Wirkaleo. In February, he met with Noemi and Carlos Painevil, two plaintiffs in the litigation, who have lived in Sauzal Bonito for about 20 years. Their home is tucked into the center of the one-street town and Noemi operates a small grocery store that’s attached to her living room.
A former secretary with an entrepreneurial spirit who smiles widely and often, Noemi painted the home’s interior bright shades of orange, lime green and purple. Today, those walls are veined with cracks that began in 2018 and have continued to grow with successive tremors.
2015: Frac’d to Hell Fox Creek Alberta: Chevron paid for the town’s water tower to be painted, complete with company logo (propaganda) and frac quake damages!
“First came the sounds of the Earth cracking,” Carlos explained, sitting at the couple’s dining room table where the sweet bread Noemi prepared sits next to the couple’s shared steaming cup of maté. “Then it felt like there was a monster under the Earth, shaking it.” He makes claws with his hands and thrusts them back and forth in the air.
The couple has gone to bed nearly every evening for the past five years wondering if an earthquake will hit in the middle of the night. A few times, they have been right to worry, and Noemi describes the feeling of awakening to tremors as “cold going through her spine.”
Still, they have refused the Neuquen government’s offer to provide them with an anti-seismic home. They aren’t alone. Some families told me that the anti-seismic structures are a fraction of the size of their existing homes. Others view government provided homes as made from inferior material (wood) as compared to the brick homes they currently have. Those families, including some of Guircaleo’s relatives, said they want the government or fracking companies to repair or rebuild their existing homes in a way that is substantially similar to what they have now.
One family told me that they tried to negotiate with Tecpetrol, but that company officials told them they couldn’t afford to pay for a replacement home.I do not believe Tecpetrol for one second. Frac’ers are notoriously inhumane liars!
Tecpetrol did not respond to requests for comment. In response to a question from Inside Climate News about whether the Neuquen government offers affected residents the option to be reimbursed for property damage caused by induced seismic events, the province’s spokesperson said “I don’t know.”
Mabel Panero, one of the Painevils’ neighbors, did accept one of the government-provided homes, but said she did so only after officials told her that she would need to sign a legal waiver if she opted to remain in her earthquake-damaged home. Panero said she feels safe in the new dwelling but regrets how small it is. When she takes me across the street to what remains of her old cement-block home, her eyes water as she stands in her former dining room, remembering the memories made there.
For the Painevils, accepting one of the government’s offered homes feels tantamount to taking a payoff in exchange for their silence about the impacts of fracking operations. Beyond earthquakes, fracking-related drinking water issues have plagued Sauzal Bonito, and nearly everyone has a five-gallon water jug dispenser in their dining room.
Here’s my frac’d water after Encana/Ovintiv was enabled by “regulators” to illegally frac my community’s drinking water aquifers and walk from responsibility for the many harms, photo by Colin Smith:
And, my water tank to get alternate water, a dreadful chore at the best of times, never mind when it’s -30C.
The only way to stop the frac harms and endless crimes that regulators work hard to cover-up is to criminalize frac’ing.
“We have to fight for things that you shouldn’t have to fight for,” Noemi says, rubbing the silver chain around her neck with her thumb and pointer finger.
She glances down at the pendant at the center, which holds an image of Saint Benito, known as the saint of the impossible. “After big earthquakes, the first thing I do is pray to Saint Benito and the angels,” she said. “Then I call Javier.”
Exxon, Chevron and Shell: No Data on Earthquakes
Earlier this year, Neuquen’s environmental ministry released some preliminary findings that will be considered as part of its forthcoming “Preventive Plan for the Occurrence of Seismic Events.” The preliminary report features Grosso and Beilveau’s research as well as responses from oil and gas companies operating in Vaca Muerta. It is the first time some of the companies have publicly disclosed information about how they are monitoring seismic activity and taking steps, or not, to prevent it.
According to the preliminary report, several of the companies, including Chevron, told regulators that to adequately assess fracking operations’ relationship with induced seismic activity, it’s necessary to establish a baseline of natural seismic activity. Chevron began operations in Vaca Muerta in 2013. The company did not respond to questions about whether it carried out a background seismicity assessment at the time, or whether the company asked the government to do so.Another standard “best” practice by frac’ers: use “baseline” to get away with endless crimes against humanity and nature, start collecting “baseline” data only after thousands of fracs and refracs destroyed any semblance of baseline and only after endless water supplies have been contaminated.
Shell’s Argentine subsidiary told regulators that it does not have records of earthquakes in the areas where it is operating in Vaca Muerta because it doesn’t own a network or contract seismographs that generate data on seismic activity potentially induced by fracking operations. Shell was a member of the consortium, also including Exxon, that operated in the Netherlands where fracking operations were linked to over 1,000 induced earthquakes in the Groningen area. Shell said it was now in the process of working with INPRES and others to “quickly only years too late, intentionally, of course!develop a network of seismographs that provides us with information on monitoring,” according to the Neuquen environmental ministry’s report. Shell did not respond to a request from Inside Climate News for comment.
Buenos Aires-based Tecpetrol, which operates in the vicinity of Wirkaleo and Sauzal Bonito, told Neuquen regulators that “not having historical data (prior to the start of the activity – year 2010), limits any analysis” Of course, that’s the intent of intentionally starting to collect data only after baseline conditions have been frac’d to hell and back!regarding fracking induced seismic activity. The company explicitly denied that any of the 2020 earthquakes were related to its operations.More standard “best” frac practice: lie, non stop: “It’s not my fault.” “It’s not my fault.” “It’s not my fault.” “It’s not my fault.” “It’s not my fault.”
2011: Rachelle Van Zanten – My Country on Shell’s intended frac invasion on Indigenous lands in NEBC, Canada, stopped by protests.
A spokesperson for Tecpetrol responded to Inside Climate News’ request for an interview, saying that “the appropriate team internally has received your request and will respond directly to you if there is interest in commenting.”Slithering slippery frac fuckers.
YPF, Argentina’s state-run energy company and the largest operator in Vaca Muerta, told Neuquen officials that its working with the National University of San Juan to assess seismographic data—the same data Grosso and Tamburini-Beliveau have been seeking—but that the data isn’t available yet. The company also said it’s installing 12 new seismic monitoring stations in the Neuquen basin in the areas where it has unconventional operations.Data collected after the years of endless harms to create “baseline” propaganda with? It’s unclear whether the data gathered from those stations will be publicly available. Why on earth would frac’ers make proof of their damages public!? YPF did not respond to a request for comment.
ExxonMobil said it did not have a record of earthquakes where it operates in Vaca Muerta and that it has been making available its “international experience” obtained by the company in the United States and Canada, according to the Neuquen governmental report.
Ann Telnaes’ cartoonsums frac’ers and their enablers up perfectly in my experience.
The report did not indicate whether Exxon mentioned its experience in Groningen in the Netherlands. Earlier this year, Exxon announced that it was considering a $1 billion sale of its assets in Vaca Muerta. Exxon told Inside Climate News in a written statement that the company was “committed to developing a better understanding of the factors leading to seismic activity, including natural seismicity” and that it shares its “technical knowledge with regulatory agencies and academia.”Raping corporations’ good old escape hatch, “committed to” drags the frac harmed into more frac harms for decades. Yet another frac industry “best practice” that is unregulated and even if it were, unenforceable.
Refer also to:
(Many more posts on this website on frac quakes and their horrific harms, below is but a tiny sampling.)
2024: “These 4 countries refuse to abide by the ICC warrants
Hungary, Germany, USA, and Argentina(and if Putin and Musk’s disinformation and anti democracy project continues as successfully as it did during the Fucker Trucker invasions, they’ll plunk Pierre Picklehead and his boss Herr Harper to make Canada also violate international law, protecting genocidal Israel and mass murderer Bibi Netanyahu. Frac’ers in my view, are as evil as genocidaires, they just kill more slowly and less obviously.
2023: Dutch Gov’t NAM Exxon Shell Game: Delay Delay Delay Court orders to Pay?
2021: Frac’d to Hell NEBC, Kiskatinaw area: After fracs were stopped, quakes keep shaking
2021: Argentina: “Trail of Impunity” Toxic frac waste scandal exposed as lawyers present new evidence
The main owners of the toxic frac waste in Vaca Muerta: Exxon, YPF, Shell, Chevon, PAE, Pampa energia, pluspetrol, Tecpetrol, Vista Oil & Gas
2020: Scientific Truth: “Fracking has been an unmitigated disaster for the planet’s climate system.”
2019: 4.6M earthquake, 1 km in depth, most powerful yet in central Alberta, hits SW of Red Deer, cracks walls in homes, knocks power out to thousands. Vesta Energy reports quake to AER, shuts down frac’ing. AER investigating. Geological Survey of Canada says looks like fra’cing didn’t do it even though they knew it did!
2019: Frac’ing greed & insanity: More billions of frac dollars to go down the drain
2017: World governments make citizens pay billions to destroy their own health
… THE LEGISLATURE OF THE PROVINCE OF ENTRE RIOS SANCIONA WITH FORCE OF LAW
ARTICLE 1 – The prospecting, exploration and exploitation of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons by non-conventional methods, including the fracking technique, is prohibited throughout the province of Entre Ríos.
ARTICLE 2.- The Enforcement Authority shall exercise pertinent and timely preventive actions to guarantee the protection of rainwater, surface and groundwater, including the Guaraní Aquifer.
ARTICLE 3.- The Environment Secretariat or the body that will replace it in the future will be the Authority to control this standard.
ARTICLE 4 – Invitase to the member Provinces of the region seated on the Guaraní Aquifer System to legislate in the protection of the same.
ARTICLE 5 .- Communicate, etcetera.
LENA – LAMBERT – BAHILLO – PROSS – ROMERO – ACOSTA – ARTUSI – ROTMAN – KOCH
Commission Room, Paraná, April 19, 2017.’ [Emphasis added]
Global-Frackdown Entre Ríos province in Argentina bans fracking!
Enormous victory! It becomes the first province of the country, on top of over 50 municipal bans across Argentina. It creates more protection to the Guaraní Aquifer region, a transboundary watershed that stretches through Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. One of the biggest in the world. …
2016: AER allows Repsol to resume fracking after causing world record 4.8M frac quake (felt 280 km away near Edmonton) in AER’s Fox Creek Blanket Approval Frac Frenzy Free-for-All Experiment Isn’t the traffic light system wonderful? For frac’ers, that is.
2015: Dutch government bans shale gas drilling for 5 years
Main conclusion:
“The Dutch Safety Board therefore concludes that the parties concerned failed to act with due care for citizen safety in Gronigen with regard to earthquakes caused by gas extraction.”
That failure is standard “best practice” used by frac’ers, in my conclusion of living frac’d for 24 years and still forced to haul alternate unfrac’d water for my home, and years of study of frac’ers, their enablers, the courts, and hydraulic fracturing.
2014: “Quite leveraged” Calfrac doubled capital spending for 2014 to expand in Argentina, Canada and US
2014: Quake-Plagued Texans ‘Shake the Ground’ in Austin; What say the regulators? Suffer while we study.
2013: Major earthquake could cause $75B in damage, study by Insurance Bureau of Canada warns; major quake would bring insurance industry to its kneesNo worries, climate chaos is destroying the insurance industry globally.
2013: Constitutional protection, Judge gives way to request on Chevron frac deal in Argentina
… Last month, the national government signed a deal with Chevron to exploit Vaca Muerta, a shale oil and gas formation, mostly located in the province of Neuquén. Chevron will put in US$1.24 billion to launch a joint pilot hydraulic fracturing project in a new area known as the “Enrique Mosconi.” If all goes successful, a second phase in the project would require some 1,500 wells and US$15 billion that the two companies would split equally. “Federal Judge María José Sarmiento accepted the request we presented last week and asked the federal government to present a report,” Luján Pérez Terrone, executive director of the Patagonia environmental lawyers association (AAAP), said yesterday. The federal government will now have to outline whether fracking involves risks to the environment. Lawyers with expertise on the issue told the Herald yesterday that the report will have to be presented in five working days. While she approved the request for constitutional protection, Sarmiento also rejected the demand to put a stop to the technique, saying there is no immediate risk. …
2013: Argentina libre de fracking Frac Free Argentina
2013: Science be damned, EnCana wants to inject waste into drinking water aquifer
2013: You’ve Been Fracked by NYYouthAgainstFrack, Moving Box Studios Winner of Yoko Ono’s Artists Against Fracking Video Contest
I am a fracking company
I own the USA. …
I’ll poison all your water
contaminate your land.
I’ll make you sign a contract
You don’t really understand.
I’ll dig a well straight down to hell
And turn your water black.
And when I’m done,
I’ll cut and run,
‘Cause you’ve been fracked!
My drills go down a mile
And they crack the earth in two.
That sometimes causes earthquakes
But there’s nothing I can do.
A quake’s an act of nature
That’s just a simple fact.
I can’t be sued,
So you are screwed,
If you’ve been fracked!
by Edith O. McCrea
et si tu te sens seule – and if you are lonely by Julie Ali, Reading Children’s Books, translation by lesamisdurichelieu
et si tu te sens seule
ne pense pas
que tu n’as personne
les étoiles dans le ciel
prononcent ton nom
et le vent souffle avec toi
la rivière
colle une chanson
sur la porte de neige
avec les merles
et les mésanges
entretemps le geai bleu
éclate en fleurs de delphinium
dans l’épinette
chante ce que tu peux
pour te garder compagnie
mais comprend bien que la terre
t’enveloppe
et nous t’accompagnons
peu importe où tu vas
tu n’es jamais seule
and if you are lonely
do not think
that you have no one
the stars above
say your name
and the wind limps with you
the river
pastes a song
on the door of snow
with the robins
and chickadees
meanwhile the blue jay
bursts out in delphinium bloom
in the fir
sing what you can
to keep yourself accompanied
but understand the land
envelopes thee
and we accompany you
wherever you go
you are never alone
2013: Alberta **Environment** Minister McQueen says no need for baseline water testing yet because “There have been very few wells” fracked after thousands of gas wells were frac’d and refrac’d in Alberta, with many citizen and municipal water wells contaminated. For a teeny example, refer to the maps included below. Frac harm enablers and companies delay to collect appropriate baseline data to make sure the data is not baseline so as to blame nature, e.g. “Your water was always contamianted, see!??” and, if that doesn’t shame you silent, blame you.
2013:
2013: Map presented by the ERCB at “The Fracking Truth” Expert Panel in Calgary.
2012: There’s been over 171,000 wells that have been hydraulically fractured in Alberta since the practice began in the 1950s, said ERCB’s (now AER) Bob Curran.
2012: Big Oil and Gas industry writing down billions in U.S. shale gas assets
2012: Investigation of Observed Seismicity in the Horn River Basin
Between April 2009 and July 2011, 31 seismic events were recorded and located by NRCan in the Etsho area of the Horn River Basin in northeast British Columbia (Figure 1). Another seven events were recorded near the Tattoo area between Dec. 8 and Dec. 13, 2011. The observed events ranged in magnitude between 2.2 and 3.8 ML on the Richter scale as recorded by NRCan (Table 1). A search of the areas in the National Earthquake Database from 1985 to present shows no detected seismicity in the Horn River Basin prior to 2009.
… Two instances of wellbore deformation along horizontal sections were reported by one operator. These occurred over a short interval beginning at 3,011 m KB (Kelly Bushing) in the d-A1-D/94-O-9 well. In this instance, casing deformation was minor and did not hinder completion operations. At d-1-D/94-O-9, the deformation was encountered at 4,245 m KB and the casing distortion blocked completion efforts at 4,288 m KB. … This deformation was detected in July 2011.
…
Conclusion
Horn River Basin seismicity events, from 2009 to late 2011, were caused by fluid injection during hydraulic fracturing. All events occurred during or between hydraulic fracturing stage operations.
2012: Civil Gas War by Peter Becker, Whitehorse, Yukon
Explosions and hydraulic jolts
Release gas from the deeps
Smell and filth of earth rape
Soil water, land, air and rabbits
Weasel words and false fronts
Kuweit incubator babies
Cigarettes are good for you
Synergy Alberta to the end
2012: Watch: Jessica Ernst, The Consequences of Fracking 6:57 min. by CaptureMeFilms, Michigan USA.
Gaz de schiste – Entrevue avec Jessica Ernst translation and complete transcript by Amie du Richelieu
“No healthy community will allow hydraulic fracturing
so they have to make the community sick —
And they do so by feeding the dark side [of] human nature
which is greed, sloth, selfishness they feed the ego
they promise a little bit…
…and then whammo, the community is divided.
The people with concerns are then abused
by the people who want more money
and Encana doesn’t even have to do the dirty work!
A lot of the other companies;
the people in the communities
do the dirty work for them.
It’s an incredibly brilliant technique
which works very well.
Everywhere they’re fracking this is happening.
And my conclusion as a scientist,
and as an environmental biologist–
as an environmental specialist that has worked in this industry…
My conclusion is that
No healthy community on this planet
would allow hydraulic fracturing
because it is not safe,
It is impossible to do
even with the best rules and regulations.”
2011: Le diable et le fermier prise 2
This is the story of a devil straight out of the flames
Who promised the farmer he would spare his soul
If they shared the fruits of the land
To each his half, the bargain was struck
To sweeten the deal the devil chose
To keep what remained on the ground in the fall
The farmer agreed and planted parsnips
Potatoes and carrots and turnips
Oh oh oh who would give away for nothing?
Oh oh oh the bounties of his land
Oh oh oh the devil or the man
Oh oh oh who made a better deal?
When the time came to share the wealth
The devil, furious to find himself empty-handed
Told the farmer “For a change, next year
It will be your turn to harvest above ground”
The farmer agreed and this time planted
Tomatoes and squash and melons and peas
Then came the harvest, the devil reaping nothing
Returned to Satan as the farmer triumphed
Oh oh oh who would gamble his future?
Oh oh oh without knowing the stakes
Oh oh oh who would want to fracture?
Oh oh oh the earth beneath his feet
The devil returned, true to his word
He would drain the land of water, iron and gas
What, then, would grow on the land?
Tainted water and poisonous gas leaks?
Resources depleted, the devil became rich
And went away leaving only concrete
The earth shattered like this Québécois
Condemned to boil the water for his child to drink
2011:
2010: Trident’s endless frac’d wells in their Horse Shoe Canyon, Alberta
2006: Wells frac’d to April 2006, red dots are super shallow gas wells frac’d above the base of groundwater protection (where the fresh drinking water is); black dots are deeper energy wells.
2002: Trident well under way frac’ing the shit out of central Alberta
2000: Seismicity in the Oil Field
Much of this article originally appeared in the Schlumberger Russian version of the Oilfield Review, Neftegasovoye Obozreniye 5, no.1 (Spring 2000): 4:15. Results in this article were based on data obtained by the local seismic network of Stock Joint Company “Tatneft.” The authors thanks I.A. Iskhakove, head of the TNGF seismic crew and K.M. Mirzoev, chief of the Tatarstan seismic survey, who provided the catalogue of seismice events and the produced and injected fluid volumes data. The support from “Tafneft” and the Russion Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR project #98-05-64547) is gratefully acknowledged.
The gas field was discovered in 1956 and production began in 1962. Over the next 14 years, roughly 600×106 m3 of water, or 106 ton per km2, were injected. …
Beginning in 1976, a series of large earthquakes was recorded. The first significant earthquake occurred on April 8, 1976 at a distance of 20 km [12 miles] from the Gazli gasfield boundary. The earthquake magnitude measured 6.8. Just 39 days later, on May 17, 1976, another severe earthquake occurred 27 km [17 miles] to the west of the first one. The magnitude of the second earthquake was 7.3. Eight years later, on March 20, 1984, a third earthquake occurred 15 km [9miles] to the west of the second earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.2. … Aftershocks occurred in a volume surrounding the three hypocentres. These earthquakes are the strongest of all the known earthquakes in the plain of Central Asia. …
There was no clear relationship between the location of the earthquake hypocenters and any previously known active tectonic structures.
Closer investigation showed that the earthquakes had created new faults.
… In all these cases, the result of human interference was to change the state of stress in the surrounding volume of earth. If the stress change is big enough, it can cause an earthquake, either by fracturing the rock mass—in the case of mining or underground explosions—or by causing rock to slip along existing zones of weakness.
The situation in regions of hydrocarbon recovery is not always well understood: in some places, extraction of fluid induces seismicity; in others, injection induces seismicity.
… Even minor actions can trigger strong seismicity.
… The amassed data indicate that the Gazli earthquakes were triggered by the exploitation of the gas field.
… In regions of high tectonic potential energy, hydrocarbon production can cause severe increases in seismic activity and trigger strong earthquakes, as in Gazli, Uzbekistan.
In regions of lower tectonic stress, earthquakes of that magnitude are less likely, but relatively weak earthquakes could occur and damage surface structures.
“There may be no upper limit” to the size of earthquakes caused by the oil industry
