Induced Earthquakes and Outsider Knowledge in Oklahoma and Arkansas

• In Event: Transplantation and Extraction: Oil, Gas, & Seismicity in Brazil, Germany, and the American Midwest

Abstract

Very recently, people in the American states of Arkansas and Oklahoma have been surprised by seismic tremors. Many attributed the quakes to fluid injection wells associated with hydraulic fracturing. Recent scientific work has increasingly concurred: earth scientists have offered new models for induced seismicity because of American extractive practices.
Yet in the two states, public reaction, as reflected in newspapers, other media reports, and social media, has been markedly different: though many Oklahomans have been concerned about their “frackquakes,” public activism has been surprisingly muted, especially compared to the outcry about smaller earthquakes in nearby Arkansas. Several factors shape this difference. The two states have different historical relationship to the oil and gas industry. Oklahomans have long accommodated themselves to the oil and gas industry, which has long fueled its economy. The two regions also have different seismic history: people in north-central Arkansas newly aware of the historic New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 have asked whether small induced tremors could induce damaging New Madrid quakes.
Uniting both states, though, is pervasive skepticism about knowledge created or promulgated by outside experts. The Oklahoma Geological Survey notably lagged in formal recognition of the likelihood of anthropogenic causes for recent activity. In less formal ways, also, public understanding in both regions of the possibility of induced seismicity has failed to keep pace with published scientific work. When Arkansans decided to limit injection wells to stop earthquakes, they did so out of “gut feeling,” not on the grounds that local suspicions about earthquakes were largely ratified by recent scientific efforts.
Underlying public debate in both regions is an underlying continuity of stance with respect to knowledge seen as non-local. Transplanted knowledge—or that seen to be transplanted—occupies an uneasy place in public conversation about current changes in American oil and gas development.

Author

• Conevery Bolton Valencius, University of Massachusetts Boston