(Bloomberg) -- The number of tremors afflicting oil-rich Oklahoma has fallensince regulators began cracking down on the injectionof wastewater from oil and natural gas wells, but thestate still faces the highest risk of induced earthquakes in thenation.
|New seismicity maps released Wednesday bythe U.S. Geological Surveyshow that a swath of Oklahoma and Southern Kansas are likely toexperience high-magnitude earthquakes this year. USGS alsoidentified the Raton Basin, straddling Colorado and New Mexico, asa high-hazard area.
|Related: Fracking and earthquakes: What'scovered?
|Oklahoma in recent years has seen a steep rise in the number ofearthquakes clocking in at magnitude of 2.7 or higher. Geologists,including the USGS, attribute that spike to increased wastewaterinjection deep underground. The state more than doubled itscrude output from 2011 through 2015 and is the sixth producer inthe U.S.
|New oil production rules
State regulators aiming to curb the tremors have imposed newproduction rules cutting disposal volumes by about 800,000 barrelsa day and limiting potential for future disposal by 2 millionbarrels a day. That effort seems to be paying off, according to theUSGS study, which shows that the number of ground-shaking quakesdropped to 2,500 in 2016 from 4,000 the year before.
"This is a success story," said Mark Petersen, head of the USGSNational Seismic Hazard Mapping Project. "The collaboration betweendifferent agencies and regulators has reduced the hazard, which isgreat news. The question is: Can we sustain that?"
|The Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates oil and gaswells in the state, also credited its disposal rules for the drop,saying in a statement it "serves to confirm the validity of thework done in Oklahoma to reduce earthquake risk, as well as theneed for the effort to continue."
|Most tremors exceeding 4.0 in 2016
But the number of quakes is only part of the story. While theincidence rate fell, 2016 saw the greatest number of tremorsexceeding 4.0-magnitude for any other year. Oklahoma last year alsoexperienced the largest earthquake in the state’s history, a 5.8magnitude quake that struck September 3.
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