Advertisement OGS: 150+ quakes in one week in Oklahoma Kansas, Texas study quakes, Arkansas homeowners file suit Share Shares Copy Link Copy

There have been more than 150 earthquakes in the past week in Oklahoma, according to the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS). That’s not normal.Before 2009, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported Oklahoma would typically get three or fewer 3.0+ magnitude quakes a year. In the last few years, the average jumped up to about 40 significant quakes a year. Less than 2 months into 2014, Oklahoma has had more than 25 quakes registering 3.0+ magnitude in Oklahoma.Michael Lewchuk, an earthquake expert with Casady School, told KOCO, “For Oklahoma that is an unusually large amount. We typically have somewhere between 50-100 in one full year.”A dozen of the largest quakes in the last week, all magnitude 2.5+, have been centered near Liberty Lake just off Interstate 35 near Guthrie. Half of those quakes have hit in just the last 24 hours, as of Monday evening.“Very often one seismic event will trigger others,” said Lewchuk.Nancy York is one of many homeowners in the area claiming the constant quakes are causing cracks. She described the earthquakes “like bombs going off.” York wants to know what's causing the sudden shaking.Lewchuk explained, “An earthquake is essentially a response to a changing stress regime.”Whether those stresses are natural or triggered by human activity is currently being studied.“You can't not ever connect an individual earthquake to an act of drilling or waste water injection. However, I think it's counter intuitive to think there's not some relation,” said Lewchuk.Monday, the governor of Kansas named a task force to study if oil and gas activities can cause earthquakes, calling it "a matter of public safety." Some of the quakes picked up by seismographs in Oklahoma are centered near the Kansas border. The Kansas task force will present its findings to the governor in April.Texas is also now investigating its quakes. In the past few months, dozens of quakes have rattled cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth and north to the Red River. Texas' Railroad Commission is working with the USGS to find the cause.Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy is being taken to court for allegedly causing earthquakes. Twenty-eight homeowners from Arkansas claim the company's injection wells caused thousands of earthquakes. As a result, they claim their homes have been significantly damaged.Cory McHaga, an attorney for the homeowners stated, “They (Chesapeake) operated four injection wells that were putting the waste water back into the ground and that wastewater is what caused the fault system underneath the towns to fail and that caused the earthquakes.”Chesapeake has not responded. In 2011, Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission voted to ban the use of wells in some areas, because of earthquakes.Crime footer