Captain Marvel Cracks the Quake? Or: Drill, Baby, Drill!

By Robert Wilonsky Fri., Oct. 31 2008 at 12:11 PM

Categories: News, The Environment

U.S. Geological Survey

This map of The Great North Texas Quake of '08 is referred to as "intensity." Which is, like, intense.

In the comments to the morning's first cup, former Dallas Morning News-er Bill Marvel suggests the following may be responsible for the morning's wake-and-shake in Irving and the GP:

The earthquake may have something to do with natural gas drilling in the Grand Prairie-Irving area. Denver in the 1960s began experiencing a series of small quakes. The culprit: Deep drilling at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.

You can read all about that right here, matter of fact. Though I was hoping it had something to do with wanting to stick it to Willy Bank. --Robert Wilonsky

Write Comment

Email to Friend

Print Article

Related Content

More About:

I think it's just the 'erf' redistributing the weight of Jerry World in Arlington. Do I get a prize for being the first person in three weeks to not use the word "redistributing" and "Obama" in the same sentence?
I'm not a geologist, Gravy. I did hear one geologist interviewed who said he "wouldn't rule it out." The quakes have centered around 3 miles. That's 15,840 feet by my calculations, but then, I'm not a mathematician, either. I note that you do have to drill past 7,500 feet to get to 15,840.
Except that the quakes occurred at the 15,000 foot level and deeper. The drilling for the Barnett Shale goes down 7,500 feet at most. There goes your theory, Bill.
Texino, Not so far as you might think. The airport was built on Arsenal land (a source of much controversy when it was first proposed). Commerce City, which experienced the worst effects of the heaviest quake, is 5-6 miles to the west. Not ground zero, perhaps, but close enough to be worrisome. Fortunately, the quakes have become much milder, probably because the deep well is no longer in use. The Arsenal, by the way, was the major manufacturing and storage facility for nerve gas. It was pretty widely known that the well in question was being used for the "disposal" of toxic chemicals, a process not unlike the practice of pressure pumping brine into oil and natural gas formations to break up rock strata. I only raise all this because I was living in northeast Denver when the quakes started.
it was me i ate left over taco cabana, sorry.
Uh... no. Rocky Mountain Arsenal (now a National Wildlife Refuge) is north of the old Stapleton Airport in Denver. The current airport, DIA, is a good ways to the east of the RMA site. The well drilling that caused the Denver earthquakes in the 60's is nowhere near DIA.
The other interesting thing is that Denver built its new airport right over the source of the quakes.
That certainly wasn't what woke me up around that time last night. 3.0 Quake...BABIES!! Which, if that was your waking activity (here's hoping), was/were hopefully NOT your end result. I grew up in SoCal. I remember Northridge, the high 5-points and low 6's. Now those were worth getting scared over.