Earthquake mystery: Western Texas rocked by dramatic spike – leaving scientists confused

A new study has revealed there has been a dramatic upturn in the number of tremors to hit western Texas since 2009. By analysing seismic data, researchers from the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) found that in 2009, there were 19 earthquakes of at least magnitude one in West Texas. However, in 2017, there were more than 1,600 earthquakes of magnitude one or greater.

A new earthquake monitoring system called TexNet was implemented in 2017, so experts are unable to determine when exactly the earthquake swarms began.

But the team believe the tremor upturn may have something to do with oil and gas drilling – with production jumping in the region in the 2010s – production in the Permian basin alone has increased by 71 percent since 2018, according to oil company Chevron.

However, there is not enough data to support this, said UTIG.

Study lead author Cliff Frohlich said: “Especially for these West Texas earthquakes, we would like to get some information about when they started.

Co-author and Southern Methodist University Associate Professor Heather DeShon added: “West Texas now has the highest seismicity rates in the state.

“What remained uncertain is when the earthquakes actually started.”

Peter Hennings of Center for Integrated Seismicity Research (CISR) concluded: “The obvious next step is exactly what the University of Texas is doing – conducting these careful studies on the relationship between earthquakes and their human and natural causes to build an integrated understanding.”

Many in the UK believed that oil and gas drilling had caused a swarm of tremors in Surrey – until it was proved not to be the case.

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The team found the earthquakes were around 2.5 kilometres deep, while oil is extracted at a depth of just one kilometre. They also said the earthquakes were more than three kilometres from the extraction site.

Lead author Dr Stephen Hicks, of Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: “The quakes seem to have occurred naturally, and our findings suggest their closeness to oil extraction sites is probably a coincidence.

“It would be unprecedented for this type and scale of oil extraction to affect sites more than a kilometre away.

“The quakes seem to have occurred naturally, and our findings suggest their closeness to oil extraction sites is probably a coincidence.”