Oil and Gas Lawyer Blog
The Texas Legislature has passed a supplemental appropriation of $4.471 million to fund a study of the cause of recent earthquakes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The money will be used to fund the purchase and use of seismic monitoring equipment and modeling of reservoir behavior, testing any connection between oil and gas activity and the recent swarms of quakes in the region.
The Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas will lead the study in collaboration with other Texas universities, including the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station. The legislation requires formation of a nine-member technical advisory committee to direct the study. Members of the committee must include two members from universities who have seismic or reservoir expertise, to experts from the oil and gas industry, and the Texas Railroad Commission seismologist, Craig Pearson. A report must be provided to the Legislature by December 2016.
It is notable that the Legislature chose not to entrust the study to the Texas Railroad Commission, even though industry representatives favored that position. The Commission’s three elected commissioners rely heavily on contributions from the industry to fund their campaigns, and until the recent seismic activity in the DFW region, the commissioners refused to recognize the connection between earthquakes and oil and gas production in the Azle area of the Barnett Shale. Last month, a team of scientists published a paper concluding that the Azle seismic activity was more than likely linked to salt water injection wells in the vicinity. Those scientists testified before a legislative committee about their findings.
When Dallas shakes, people listen.