Our project Analysis included relating earthquake events in the state of Texas to horizontal and directional fracking activities during oil & gas production. The process is followed by water injection and disposal back in the well at different depths near faults causing them to slip overtime due to high pressure. The major area of study is the state of Texas where recent induced earthquakes took place. Cities such as Dallas, San Antonio and Snyder were mainly effected by earthquakes. Our study focused on years 2000-2018; fracking began to develop early 2000 where Texas did not face many induced earthquakes with a magnitude of 2.5 or higher. Once Hydraulic fracturing and water injection completely developed starting year of 2008, more induced earthquakes began to occur in Texas near areas of major oil and gas production. Visual and statistical analysis shown using ArcGIS & Microsoft Excel proved our results.  

 

 We correlated the data using “optimized hot analysis” to prove the main reason behind these earthquake events is due to the increase of hydraulic fracturing and water disposal during horizontal and directional drilling activities near faults. The tool allows you to determine how different each value and its neighbor from the area of study. Optimized hot analysis applied on both Drilling activities and Earthquakes by magnitude and drilling time. The tool helps determine spatial dependence in the area  of each value. It assigns a certain value for each feature then determine how significant the feature is to the area of study and not just a random value. The Results showed significance for both the drilling activities and earthquakes by magnitude, time and drilling type.  The fault studied near occurring drilling activities is known as the Balcones fault, Our analysis shows this fault is located near the city of Dallas and San Antonio and several other cities where induced earthquake activities occurred.  High pressure over time caused by injecting water and disposing it back into the well after production led to the fault to slide overtime causing several earthquake activities.