With the money, jobs and fuel produced by expanding oil production methods, such as hydraulic fracturing, likely comes a little trembling.

Dozens of small earthquakes with magnitudes greater than 3.0 have been recorded around Snyder in recent years, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Some of those earthquakes could be contributed not specifically to “fracking,” but with the associated injection of mass quantities of waste fluid into areas with even minor fault lines, said Bill Ellsworth, a senior geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.

He cited the United States Geological Survey’s Rangley Experiment, where fluid injection, underground pressure and the relative frequency and distribution of tremors, or seismicity, were monitored in northwestern Colorado oil fields.
The study from 1969 to 1973 showed a correlation between injected fluid and increased tremors, according to a report by Emporia State University in Kansas.

Ellsworth said large quantities of fluid injected into the ground can spread into fissures and create instability, sometimes producing small, but usually not dangerous or even noticeable, tremors.

Humans usually do not feel earthquakes with magnitudes less than 3.0, according to the USGS.

Of the 150,000 injection wells in the United States, about 40,000 are associated with petroleum production, he said.

He said there are occasionally cases of 4.0- or 4.8-magnitude quakes near wastewater or fluid injection sites around the country that have led to reports of minor structural damage.

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