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Tulsa Geologist: There's No Mystery In Oklahoma Earthquakes
Dr. Bryan Tapp is a structural geologist at the University of Tulsa; basically he studies how rocks move beneath the earth's crust. He says Oklahoma has small earthquakes every day.
"We are still under a region that is trying to shift, but it is relatively slow," said Dr. Bryan Tapp, Ph.D.
Dr. Tapp says you can blame this on events that first happened 300 million years ago. He says when the Wichita, Arbuckle, and Ouachita Mountains were formed, the ground rose up. But just north of the Wichita and Ouachita Mountains the ground sunk and formed the Anadarko and Arkoma basins.
This action caused a fault line to form between the two basins, that fault line is where the epicenter to these large earthquakes is located. He says the earth is still trying to relieve pressure from those long ago geologic events.
"So we just seem to be relaxing, just slightly, over time," he said.
One thing he's positive of: this mess was not caused by fracking.
"There's no way that this particular fault or this particular earthquake could have been activated by oil field activity; there's just no evidence of that," said Dr. Bryan Tapp, a structural geologist.
Dr. Tapp says we can expect some more earthquakes in the future but probably around the magnitude 3 range.
Dr. Bryan Tapp is a structural geologist at the University of Tulsa; basically he studies how rocks move beneath the earth's crust. He says Oklahoma has small earthquakes every day.
"We are still under a region that is trying to shift, but it is relatively slow," said Dr. Bryan Tapp, Ph.D.
Dr. Tapp says you can blame this on events that first happened 300 million years ago. He says when the Wichita, Arbuckle, and Ouachita Mountains were formed, the ground rose up. But just north of the Wichita and Ouachita Mountains the ground sunk and formed the Anadarko and Arkoma basins.
This action caused a fault line to form between the two basins, that fault line is where the epicenter to these large earthquakes is located. He says the earth is still trying to relieve pressure from those long ago geologic events.
"So we just seem to be relaxing, just slightly, over time," he said.
One thing he's positive of: this mess was not caused by fracking.
"There's no way that this particular fault or this particular earthquake could have been activated by oil field activity; there's just no evidence of that," said Dr. Bryan Tapp, a structural geologist.
Dr. Tapp says we can expect some more earthquakes in the future but probably around the magnitude 3 range.
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