Tremor about half an hour ago in Arroyo Grande, San Luis Obispo

[Cleita]

County. The crows who were beginning to roost are all a flutter. I'm a little concerned since I learned fracking is going on off the coast here. Sorry to be such a chicken little but there is stuff going on behind the scenes that aren't kosher and that the life long residents seem to be blasé about. Then there is that nuke plant up the coast by a beach where locals gather to watch the whales play and that is still operating.

[snappyturtle]

1. I'd be a chicken little too! I've only felt one tremor in my life

(IL, of all places) and that was enough for me. Be safe.

[Cleita]

2. Thank you. I hesitated to post in case there

was another one. It still could happen.

[snappyturtle]

3. Here's an earthquake monitor:

Click on the map in your area to enlarge that area~

http://www.iris.edu/seismon/

[DJ13]

4. M4.2

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci15396097

[Cleita]

5. Didn't know it was that mag.

Where the epicenter is, is close to the fracking.

[longship]

6. No, it's close to a plate boundary, like everywhere in California.

Earthquakes happen many times a day when you live on a plate boundary. I lived in SoCal for a decade and they were so common that we basically ignored the little 3.x and even the 4.x tremblers. The dozens of 2.x and 1.x that happened every day, we never felt.

So, NO! This wasn't fucking fracking. It was plate tectonics, the overwhelmingly usually cause of earthquakes.

Sheesh!

[Cleita]

7. Several plate boundaries if you must know.

Plate slips are sudden. This rolled. Also, it seems that fracking would cause the faults to slip. Just MHO.

[longship]

8. The plates slip regardless of supposed fracking.

Whether one supposes there is fracking in CA or not, the plates slip every single day, causing many tremblers. So whether fracking is happening or not -- it isn't -- one could not separate the variables to determine cause. Ockam's razor says the simplest answer is plate tectonics rather then imaginary fracking.

QED.

[Cleita]

9. The fracking isn't imaginary, it happening and has been verified.

Wait until I get off this mobile device and I can give you links etc.

[longship]

10. Just because there's a damned earthquake doesn't mean there's fracking!!!!

Some people here have fracking on the brain.

There are many hundreds, maybe thousands, of tremblers in California every year. And there has been since time immemorial. That's plate tectonics which has governed geological processes since the Earth coalesced into a sphere.

Only recently humans have been doing fracking. So some paper published observed a correlation between fracking and some trembler. So it became a writ of fact that this was causation. Therefore, all earthquakes must be caused by fracking?

Sorry.

First, correlation does not imply causation. Second, in fucking California there are many more causes for earthquakes than any fracking that might be going on there (Hint: there isn't. There are oil reserves, but no accessible natural gas reserves there.)

If they aren't doing fracking, your jumping to conclusion is falsified. Regardless, there is a very fucking big reason why there are earthquakes in California. It's at the boundary of two tectonic plates, regardless of any imaginary fracking.

If you don't believe me, look here (from the CalTech earthquake center):
http://www.data.scec.org/recenteqs/

[Cleita]

11. U R right and I should never have concerns. Tic toc. eom

[longship]

12. Straw man. Gees Louise!

Apparently you don't understand the argument (as Monty Python aptly stated is an intellectual process).

There are earthquakes in California all the time. They happen every day! All over the state. Regardless of fracking. (Actually, I don't know of any fracking in California. Do you?)

Again, California is part of the Ring of Fire which surrounds the Pacific Ocean and is all -- fucking all of it -- tectonically active, which means you get a lot of earthquakes and volcanos.

So you attributing an arbitrary earthquake in SoCal to fracking is just utter bullshit. Is there even any fracking being done in California? I doubt it with Governor Moonbeam back in power and the most liberal state legislature in the country.

If you post a credible source of any connection to this earthquake to fracking, I will stand down on my position and publicly apologize. I just don't think you are aware of just how many earthquakes happen in California every day and how little fracking causes them, especially if there is actually no fracking in California, let alone remotely close to this trembler.

Thanks for your replies.

[Cleita]

13. I will when I can.

[longship]

14. Okay, but that's a tall order.

As I said. There are earthquakes all over California every damned day. Saying one is because of fracking and not because that California has hundreds of fault lines all over the place is a tall order. This especially if there is no fracking going on in the area of the earthquake, if in California at all.

The science of fracking causing earthquakes is dodgy at best. There are some preliminary papers positing such. And there is some plausibility. But the papers can only establish correlation, not causation. Since there are earthquakes all over the planet all the time, it is very difficult to statistically demonstrate causation. There are just too damned many unknowns.

I am sorry to burst your bubble, but science is pretty rigorous with techniques and analysis. Correlations alone cannot imply causation. That would not stand up to peer review.

I appreciate your responses.

[Cleita]

15. I will reply to you tomorrow when I'm at my main computer. n/t

[Cleita]

21. Looks like Petronius beat me to it.

His post has links.

[roody]

17. There is fracking going on in CA. Nt

[blkmusclmachine]

16. !

!

[petronius]

18. Truthout recently had an article about offshore fracking in CA

A Truthout investigation has confirmed that federal regulators approved at least two hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," operations on oil rigs in the Santa Barbara Channel off the coast of California since 2009 without an updated environmental review that critics say may be required by federal law.

The offshore fracking operations are smaller than the unconventional onshore operations that have sparked nationwide controversy, but environmental advocates are still concerned that regulators and the industry have not properly reviewed the potential impacts of using modern fracking technology in the Pacific outer continental shelf.

--- Snip ---

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/17765-special-investigation-fracking-in-the-ocean-off-the-california-coast

And I also found a nice GoogleMap of offshore platform locations:

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&t=h&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=111319004411642369478.000486bb8f4a093872b83

And here's a cool map of fracking locations in general:

http://www.fracfocusdata.org/DisclosureSearch/MapSearch.aspx


From what I can tell, though, the platforms near SLO are not those where fracking has occurred (yet). And I'd be pretty leary of attributing any individual quake here to human causes; 4.2 quakes occur quite commonly without any help from us. But I agree that these fracking developments are advancing without proper oversight and analysis, and that is a cause for concern.

Hope the crows settled down without being too annoying...

[Piedras]

19. Didn't feel the earthquake offshore from Vandenberg AFB - CA Central Coast fracking

Last edited Sat Aug 24, 2013, 03:28 PM - Edit history (1)

I didn't feel this mornings earthquake offshore from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Live in SLO and slept through the quake. Share a concern about ill effects from increases of oil and gas fracking in California and off our coast. Looked at the fracking map and no fracked wells are reported to exist in SLO or Santa Barbara counties. My understanding, not sure how accurate it is, is that reporting is voluntary and may not be complete. I've read that wells off the coast of Santa Barbara have been indeed fracked...which may support that the fracking maps are incomplete. [link:http://calcoastnews.com/2013/08/news-of-offshore-fracking-upsets-lawmakers/|


http://calcoastnews.com/2013/08/news-of-offshore-fracking-upsets-lawmakers/ :

Two California senators have told the California Coastal Commission that the practice of offshore tracking, which only recently has come to light, is “cause for grave concern.”

Offshore hydraulic fracturing — a method of extracting oil and natural gas — has been occurring off the Santa Barbara coastline.

Senators Hanna-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) and Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa), who represent coastal districts, told Mary Shallenberger, commission chair, in an Aug. 8 letter that many unanswered environmental questions still exist regarding onshore fracking.

The pair is asking additional studies of potentially negative impacts.

Locally, I wonder if the oil wells straddling Price Canyon Road between SLO and Pismo Beach have been fracked? They're the only active oil wells in SLO County I'm aware of.

I also wonder if the oil wells proposed for the Huasna Valley, in rural Arroyo Grande, might have been fracked if they had not recently been turned down for environmental reasons by SLO County? I'm pretty sure the Huasna Valley has an earthquake fault running through it...which I recall is the called the Huasna fault. The oil company filed a lawsuit against San Luis Obispo County for six billion dollars of "lost profits". http://calcoastnews.com/2012/11/slo-county-hit-with-6-billion-oil-lawsuit/

Cleita's concern for ill effects from fracking and earthquakes may not be at all far fetched since it could happen in her "backyard."

The Huasna Valley is near the Twitchell Reservior a water source for the City of Santa Maria.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitchell_Reservoir Local fracking could have many adverse consequences.

[Cleita]

20. I haven't been down Price Canyon in awhile. I have a doctor's appointment in SLO Monday.

I think I'll take a ride down Price Canyon to Pismo Beach then and have a look. There was an article in the SacBee that brought the fracking in the Santa Barbara channel to light. It seems to have been picked up by other sources including yours.

I did find this though about Price Canyon:

http://www.slocounty.ca.gov/Assets/PL/referrals/south+county/DRC2012-00101_PXP-MUP.pdf

Skip the application and go directly to the Project description pages. It doesn't indicate fracking but the proposed pipeline is only a few miles from my house.

Also, there is this from 2011:http://calcoastnews.com/2011/05/arroyo-grande-water-recycling-plant-under-construction/

The facility, in operation and using “a highly technical and sophisticated version of reverse osmosis technology,” is expected to produce 45,000 barrels per day of treated water that, according to Veolia Water, meets or exceeds state and federal permit requirements for cleanliness.

The completed plant, anticipated in 2013, will be used to process the water produced from increased oil extraction efforts and will allow PXP to boost daily production of marketable crude oil by thousands of barrels a day.

Over the last five years the field has produced on average about 1,300 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

“Anything that increases hydrocarbon production is helpful to the country, state and overall economy,” said Norm Witt, senior vice president of Cook Hill Properties which manages real estate assets for a number of PXP projects.

Advances in technology have enabled oil companies to produce large quantities of oil from some previously abandoned or under-performing oil fields.

In 2009, to improve oil extraction efforts at its San Luis Obispo County property, PXP spent $4 million on a capital improvement project that included drilling seven oil wells with depths averaging 1,700 feet. Because of the heaviness of the oil, the wells require continuous steam injection to operate.

When the oil is extracted from the ground, so is water which is then re-injected back into the earth. Once the water treatment facility is operational, it will allow PXP to skip the re-injection process and instead treat and discharge the water, speeding the oil recovery process.

Why do they need so much water if they aren't fracking or planning on it?

And more recently, there is this: http://www.newtimesslo.com/news/9497/double-the-drilling-proposed-in-price-canyon/

They say there is no hydraulic fracking proposed. I hope they are being truthful.

[pinto]

22. California Coastal Commission - SB 4 (Pavley) Oil and gas: well stimulation

(on page 4) SB 4 (Pavley) Oil and gas: well stimulation

http://documents.coastal.ca.gov/reports/2013/8/W31a-8-2013.pdf

[Cleita]

23. Here's more on this.

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB4

Do you really think a maximum fine of $25,000 a day is going to stop them from trying to sneak some fracking in? I would like to see some generous jail sentences and fines of a million dollars a day instead. That will stop them.

[pinto]

24. Yes. And the fines would fund -

(3) Existing law imposes an annual charge upon each person operating or owning an interest in an oil or gas well in respect to the production of the well which charge is payable to the Treasurer for deposit into the Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Administrative Fund. Existing law further requires that specific moneys from charges levied, assessed, and collected upon the properties of every person operating or owning an interest in the production of a well to be used exclusively, upon appropriation, for the support and maintenance of the department charged with the supervision of oil and gas operations.

This bill would allow the moneys described above to be used for all costs associated with (A) well stimulation treatments, including scientific studies required to evaluate the treatment, inspections, and any air and water quality sampling, monitoring, and testing performed by public entities, and (B) the development and implementation of specific consultation processes and agreements.

A good piece of legislation, imo.