fracking protesters , page-36

Let's have some common sense here. Earthquakes are all about energy. Energy builds up along the points where tectonic plates meet. Finally, the stress becomes so great that the plates slip and the energy is released as an earthquake.

So, if fraccing was to actually cause an earthquake, the tension between the plates would have to be present. Otherwise it couldn’t be released. Of itself, fraccing couldn’t create the tension – there isn’t enough energy input to the system by the process. The only thing fraccing could conceivably do is to trigger a slip prematurely. Which is surely a GOOD thing, because it alleviates the stress at a lower level, triggering a less severe quake before the energy in the system becomes great enough to slip naturally with worse results.

Personally I can’t believe they have any effect; that if fraccs did cause earthquakes the boys running the rigs would have correlated the data by now and wouldn’t be involved in anything that set off a quake under their own feet (especially whilst encouraging hydrocarbons to flow faster!); and that, this is just another excuse for pseudo -ists (in this case geolog-ists) to line up for grant money.