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A southern Kansas earthquake felt as far north as Omaha is likely to add to the debate about the relationship between earthquakes and energy extraction.

Wednesday’s quake, with a magnitude of 4.8, was the strongest of the hundreds to have occurred in the Oklahoma area in the last 11 months, said Dale Grant, a geophysicist with the USGS. Oklahoma has seen a sharp jump in earthquakes with the explosive growth in well drilling commonly referred to as fracking. Kansas, too, has seen a jump. The location of this quake was just north of the Oklahoma-Kansas border.

“Oklahoma has become the new California,” Grant said. “We’ve recorded more magnitude 3 and greater earthquakes in Oklahoma in the last couple of years than we have in California, which is unprecedented.”

The earthquake occurred at 3:40 p.m. and by late afternoon , the USGS had received more than 4,500 reports across 11 states by people who had felt it. Among those were more than three-dozen reports from people in Omaha, Bellevue, Lincoln and Peru, Nebraska, and Council Bluffs and Glenwood, Iowa. The USGS encourages citizen reports via a “Did You Feel It?” website.

Despite the number of reports, no damage was known to have occurred, Grant said. That’s likely because the quake was considered light to moderate, he said.