American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2016 - 100

ConventionCoverage: Kansas Independent Oil & Gas Association

Kansas Establishes Model
For Seismic Response
By Dan Holder
GREAT BEND, KS.-A 1932 supreme
court decision described states as laboratories
of democracy, where local governments
could try social or economic experiments
with minimal national harm. Kansas and
Oklahoma now find themselves in the experimental field of seismic mitigation.
The Sunflower State's handling of
what many believe to be induced seismic
events could be the model for Oklahoma,
as well as the rest of the country, assessed
Rex Buchanan, interim director of the
Kansas Geological Survey, during the
Kansas Independent Oil & Gas Association's midyear meeting. The convention
was held April 20-22 in Great Bend.
Geologists cite changes in pore pressures
within geologic formations as a key factor
in induced seismicity, Buchanan said.
"The additional mass of the saltwater
transmits pressure through the pore spaces.
It is the change in that pore pressure
regime that allows critically stressed faults
to move," he described. "Those faults
are under stress already; it does not take
much of a pressure change. Obviously,
this does not occur everywhere. There
have been a lot of disposal wells in the
Bakken Shale, and I have yet to hear any
talk about induced seismicity there."
An induced seismic event requires
faults that are critically stress-oriented in
a specific direction, and new, large volumes

of disposal fluids. He said those conditions
were seen in parts of Oklahoma and
South-Central Kansas.
Both states have experienced an uptick
in seismic activity, Buchanan related. In
Oklahoma, reported events increased significantly in 2013 and jumped sharply
the following year, with most occurring
east of Oklahoma City initially, and then
moving north toward the Kansas border.
A 5.1-magnitude event in 2016 outside
of Fairview, Ok., was the biggest in the
three-year outbreak, he described. A similar
pattern has been seen in Kansas, he said,
with a 4.9 event in mid-November 2014
the biggest of that year. He said Kansas
activity increased throughout 2015.
The two states took different response
paths. In 2013, the Oklahoma Corporation
Commission imposed a "traffic light"
system and established specific permit
requirements and disposal standards for
wells in "areas of interest" after reported
events. Two years later, the OCC ordered
more than 300 disposal wells in 21 counties to prove they were not injecting
below the Arbuckle formation. Operators
unable to do so were required to reduce
injection volumes by 50 percent.
The Kansas Corporation Commission
identified five areas in the state with unusually high levels of seismic activity,
and ordered injection wells within a specified distance of reported epicenters to
gradually reduce volumes, Buchanan said.

Rex Buchanan (left), interim
director of the Kansas Geological Survey, visits with Nick
Powell, chairman of the
Kansas Independent Oil &
Gas Association. Buchanan
gave an update on how
Kansas had reacted to an
uptick in recorded seismic
events.

100 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

Other states have responded to induced
seismicity in their own ways, Buchanan
pointed out. He questioned Arkansas' approach, and said its moratorium on injection wells over a broad area failed to
decrease earthquakes.
"There are ways to mitigate this issue,
and that is what the KCC is trying to
do," Buchanan said. "Nobody tried this
until Kansas did. Until now, everyone
was shutting down the nearest big disposal
well. By March 2015, it was clear that
did not work."
Buchanan said research often showed
suddenly stopping fluid injections preceded
larger seismic events, and contended
Kansas' approach of gradually reducing
injection volumes was preferable. Under
the state's system, operators have 10 days
to lower their injections initially, and
then three 30-day periods to reach the
mandated 8,000 barrel-a-day limit.
"That number was chosen as a preseismicity daily number. Before we were
seeing all these earthquakes, that was
what some of the bigger disposal wells
were pumping," he added.
In February, Oklahoma turned to the
Kansas model when the OCC imposed a
40 percent overall reduction in injection
volumes across a wide area of northern
Oklahoma, rather than ordering specific
volume reductions, Buchanan said.
Despite continuing media inaccuracies,
Kansas has seen no connection between
hydraulic fracturing and induced seismicity, Buchanan assured. "When you
fracture, you basically set off small seismic
events. But to the best of my knowledge,
there never has been a felt earthquake in
Kansas as a result of hydraulic fracturing,"
he said. "There have been fewer than
five in Oklahoma."
Monitoring Kansas
The Mississippian Lime play made
Harper County one of Kansas' top oil
producing counties, but that success led
to huge increases in fluid disposal volumes,
Buchanan said. In response to the jump
in reported seismic events, Governor Sam
Brownback appointed a task force composed of representatives from the KGS,



American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2016

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