Talk:Injection well

Expertise needed on environmental impacts of deep well injection

Several strong claims are made in support of deep well injection over other disposal methods and with no sources cited. e.g., "Injection wells are widely considered to be the best method for disposal of treated waste water."

A balanced discussion comparing DW injection, direct discharge to surface waters, etc. should be added to this article, or links provided to other articles, to address the above claims, with appropriate references. DWI is not currently discussed in the Industrial wastewater treatment or Wastewater articles. Moreau1 (talk) 03:59, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Is likely to cause earthquakes: http://www.rawstory.com/bors/2014/03/07/u-s-geological-survey-confirms-human-activity-caused-5-7-quake-in-oklahoma/

Not sure of the procedures to participate here - I have a question pertaining to the linkage between injection wells and earthquakes. The depth of these events, it seems to me, is as relevant as their geographic surface location. No mention is made, that I can find, of what depth injection wells reach and at what depth the earthquakes are. Activity similar to that in Oklahoma, fracking and injection wells, in North Dakota and West Texas have not resulted in earthquakes. I can find no specific information on these locations, except the depth of the earthquakes (2 to 6 miles, according to USGS) in Oklahoma. Jose Jimenez99 (talk) 01:04, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Emerging Reports Suggest Modern Disposal Wells are Accepting Far More Material

Even without industry admission, we know that there may be far more material being injected into the earth: There is far more hydraulic fracturing (a newer technology, but parallel to injection in that much of the equipment and many of the techniques are similar); On-going need for safe disposal and the apparent impossibility of using wilderness mountain areas of Nevada for nuclear waste disposal; Increased shallow pressurized storage of natural gas in underground caverns (including some notable breakthroughs and explosions/fires); Modern disposal wells may be using horizontal drilling techniques to spread wastes over a far broader area; Carbon dioxide sequestration may begin soon, increasing demand for pressurized, underground sealed storage; and state and federal laws pertaining to logging of oil and gas well drilling are well established and understood, whilst the rules and law pertaining to underground disposal, while clear in some situations and with some materials, are the "wild west" in others. Further the general reticence of injection well operators, their clients, and state regulators strongly suggest a desire to hide the goals, realities, and dangers of extreme high pressure injection which can reach 15,000 pounds per square inch.

As of March 31, 2015 the State of Kansas Corporation Commission has issued a report on "induced seismicity" pertaining to earthquakes in Sumner and Harper counties, which lie just adjacent to Oklahomas north border. The report states that the high pressure injection wells, some of which inject wastewater at rates of 150,000 barrels per month, is ".....threat to public safety." http://www.tulsaworld.com/earthquakes/kansas-declares-earthquakes-an-immediate-threat-in-passing-new-energy/article_fa556dea-56d6-54d7-856c-4f18be10ecdc.html68.97.87.243 (talk) 12:12, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

potential resource

"Operations Suspended at Hazardous Fluid Wells after 11 Quakes. Ohio has suspended operations at five deep-well hazardous fluid disposal sites after a series of 11 earthquakes in the Youngstown, Ohio, in the past year, including one on Saturday with a magnitude of 4.0, officials said." by Richard Van Noorden Scientific American January 3, 2012

99.181.130.110 (talk) 11:34, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Re: Injection-induced earthquakes

zomg! Earthquakes were caused by injection wells in ... 2010 to 2016? Huh.

That's Old news.

Possibly really old. We've known since at least the 60s that deep injection wells can be linked to an increased risk of earthquakes (look at Colorado earthquake history around 1966). I say "can be linked to an increased risk" for a reason. It's not as simple as "You do X and Y instantly happens". Just as you can say "Smoking is linked to an increased risk of cancer", you can say "deep injection wells can be linked to an increased risk of earthquakes". Likewise, you cannot say "deep injection wells caused earthquake X on XX/YY/ZZ" any more than you can say "Smoking killed patient X", perhaps that patient lived in an abandoned asbestos factory, perhaps he smoked because he knew he was dying of cancer... perhaps that earthquake occurred too deep for deep well injection to have any role in, or perhaps it would have still occurred without the injection. Doing some light skimming of the net on the subject I found some biased articles that were treating deep well injection and fracking as the same thing. I'll grant that there may be some similarity between the two, and I'll observe that the two would very likely place very different stresses on the rock underground. The risks from each should not be lumped together, but investigated separately.

As far as this article is concerned... I'm no expert on the subject but I can tell the article needs help. I'm inclined to strip out the mention of specific instances and instead indicate simply that the link between the two exists. Also, I question at the mention of a specific researcher post 2000 researching something known since at least the 60s - do we want to mention the original researchers if such can be found, or was there something specific that made this researcher interesting? Because seriously, it sounds like his findings are old news indeed. The link in the citation for that research, by the way, takes me to what amounts to a blank page. 174.29.85.161 (talk) 02:30, 23 September 2016 (UTC)