CBC
Standing in his living room, Richard Kabzems brandishes a thick binder stuffed with letters and notes of his two-year fight to stop fracking wells near his home in Farmington, B.C.Ovintiv, a multinational oil and gas company, announced two years ago that it would expand fracking for gas at a new site built on a hill about a kilometre from Kabzems's home in the rural Lebell subdivision. The BC Energy Regulator (BCER) approved the permit.Over the last 24 months, Kabzems and his wife, Sandy Burton, have written six detailed letters to the gas company opposing the project, and another series of emails and letters to the provincial regulator. But drilling is scheduled to begin on Feb. 9, on the first of a projected 24 wells at the site."We are bearing the risk, and they are saying, 'Don't worry,'" Kabzems said.He is, in fact, worried. That's because in 2024, the number of magnitude 3 or higher earthquakes linked to hydraulic fracturing and the underground storage of its wastewater reached a record high in the Montney Formation, a gas-rich area straddling northeastern B.C. and northwestern Alberta. According to monitoring data from Natural Resources Canada, there were 34 recorded earthquakes at magnitude 3 and above (M>3.0) in Montney, more than three times the amount 10 years ago.The correlation between oil and gas activity and induced earthquakes is well-documented around the world.Magnitude 3 quakes can be felt and even cause damage, according to seismicity experts, depending on where they occur. Every step up in magnitude releases 10 times the amount of energy.Kabzems and Burton have felt quakes before — from fracking farther away than the new drill site.Over the last 24 months, Richard Kabzems, right, and his wife, Sandy Burton, left, have written six detailed letters to the gas company opposing the Farmington, B.C., fracking project, and another series of emails and letters to the provincial regulator. (Jill English/CBC)"It felt like a truck was hitting the side of our house, and the engine rumbling — this deep, low rumbling — and things would shift," he said, recalling a series of quakes four years ago.But Kabzems and Burton's home insurer notified them in June 2023 that earthquake insurance would be excluded from their policy.Allan Chapman, a former senior geoscientist with the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission who analyzed the data, concluded the frequency of significant earthquakes will only increase as fracking expands in the Peace River area. Kabzems says the first few times he experienced a quake, "you didn't know what was happening; You didn't have any experience. And again, with earthquakes, you just don't know when they will occur."Industry acknowledges riskHydraulic fracturing in the Montney Formation involves drilling deep vertically and then boring horizontally as much as four kilometres. A mixture of water, sand and chemicals is then forced into the well bore at high pressure, splitting the rock to release gas or oil. If the process hits a fault, it can cause seismic activity.In B.C, the industry has acknowledged the risk. But Ovintiv's website states "the occurrence and risk of seismicity is generally very low," and says it has a framework for "proactively addressing seismic activity through partnerships with independent research institutions and regulatory agencies to minimize any associated or perceived risks." The company has hosted consultation sessions with residents in Kabzems's subdivision, but declined an interview with CBC News. The incidence of stronger quakes isn't confined to the Peace River region. In both B.C. and Alberta's gas and oil areas, the number of higher-magnitude earthquakes has gone up. "In 2021, we saw about 60 earthquakes a year, and in 2024, we were up to 160," said Gail Atkinson, a consulting seismologist and former professor at Western University in London, Ont. Atkinson, who has studied "induced seismicity" for decades, says there's a direct link between the rising number of quakes and stronger seismic events. "Most of the quakes that you get are smaller magnitudes," she said. But more earthquakes means a higher incidence of quakes at every magnitude, including strong ones. In November 2018, construction workers building the Site C dam on Peace River were forced to evacuate the work site because of an induced quake measuring magnitude 4.6. (Samuel Martin/CBC)"The more fracking we do, the more oil and gas we take, the more earthquakes we will have. And the larger is the chance that one of those earthquakes will have an undesirable consequence," she said. "It's a trade-off."In November 2018, construction workers building the Site C dam on Peace River were forced to evacuate the work site because of an induced quake measuring 4.6.Atkinson urges regulators to pay more attention to the rising risks and create larger buffer zones."I think that for critical infrastructure, like major dams [...] it makes far more sense to have exclusion zones for fracking around high-value targets," she said.'That's a big one'The urgency to address the risk is exacerbated by a renewed boom in fracking in northeastern B.C. to feed a new, hungry pipeline just starting to send natural gas west to a LNG terminal in Kitimat, B.C. The terminal will liquify natural gas for export, for the first time opening overseas markets to Canadian gas. It's projected the pipeline will carry two million cubic feet of gas per day, and that production in the Montney could double in the next 20 years.U.S. President Donald Trump's invocation to "drill, baby, drill," suggests he'll support more production of oil and gas. His nominee for secretary of energy, Chris Wright, the CEO of Liberty Energy, is bullish on fracking.But signs of an uptick in fracking-induced earthquakes are also apparent in the Texas oil patch.WATCH | Fracking is causing earthquakes in Texas:Last July, 60 tremors in one week — ranging from small to significant — shook the area around Snyder, Texas.Jay Callaway was on duty as the city's emergency management co-ordinator on July 26."It sounded like a herd of cattle coming. And then it was just an eerie feeling. And then it sounded like the cattle was leaving," he told CBC, standing in the local fire department building. His first thought was: "There's a big one." It was magnitude 5.1.Jay Callaway was on duty as the emergency management co-ordinator last July, when 60 tremors in one week shook the area around Snyder, Texas. (Hugo Levesque/CBC)Callaway started getting calls. "Reports of cracks in walls, driveways, foundations — [that] was the main damage," he said. An emergency team had to repair a crack in a city water line.The quakes also popped up on monitors at a lab at the University of Texas in Austin, where seismologist Alexandros Savvaidis can watch earthquake activity in real time. Normally, he says, there are a couple hundred earthquakes a day — most of them small, less than magnitude 1.5.While the oil industry itself was slow to admit any connection between fracking and earthquakes, Savvaidis was recruited from Europe to help run TexNet, a state-funded program to monitor seismic events from the Texas oil patch.A few years ago, Alexandros Savvaidis was recruited from Europe to help run TexNet, a state-funded program to monitor seismic events from the Texas oil patch. (Hugo Levesque/CBC)They now have 200 sensors around the state."When I came here in 2016, [the producers] were in denial. That was really not the best thing," said Savvaidis. "I think in the last five years, it's been accepted by the industry and the public."Midland's gambleThe industry's hub is Midland, in the oil-rich Permian Basin. Oil exploration is so embedded in the culture, it's even the location of the new Paramount+ drama Landman. In Midland, drilling and fracking is so pervasive, it now happens in town. A tall rig towers over a parking lot and strip mall. Underneath, horizontal wells will extend far beyond the pad itself, stretching several kilometres under the city.In the Texas town of Midland, drilling and fracking is so pervasive, a tall rig towers over a parking lot and strip mall. (CBC)"This operator, they have a belief that they just get better wells where no one's drilled before," said Steve Melzer, an oil industry consultant and engineer. "He's betting that this is fertile ground that hasn't been touched, because it was in town."But Melzer recognizes the seismic activity this past summer is posing a risk to industry, too.Fracking relies on enormous amounts of water, which needs to be stored. According to Savvaidis, the water storage is causing most of the induced-earthquakes in Texas."If we have another big one, especially near an urban centre, it's going to impact us big-time," Melzer said. "Hopefully we'll be able to manage it, engineer more uses of that water, instead of putting it back in the ground."Storing the liquid is delicate, and the wrong pressure, depth or quantity can trigger seismic activity. It's a problem Melzer is focused on solving, both by improving the process and looking at other uses for the water, to reduce underground storage volumes."If we can't reduce the water volumes going into the [underground] formations, we're going to have to slow drilling down." Steve Melzer, an oil industry consultant and engineer in Texas, says the seismic activity this past summer is posing a risk to the industry, too. (Jill English/CBC)Warning systemKabzems has officially appealed the permit for the fracking pad in Farmington, B.C., but he's had no response since October. Meanwhile, construction continues.The BC Energy Regulator points to safeguards such as the 35 seismic monitors in the Montney area, and a "traffic light system" that warns the regulator of seismic activity. At levels of magnitude 3 and above, operators must stop fracking and investigate.Gail Atkinson says the measures are useful but not foolproof, because bigger earthquakes aren't always preceded by smaller ones.Leading Canadian seismologist Gail Atkinson has been studying induced-earthquakes in B.C. (Dillon Hodgin/CBC)"If you have one that just lights up right away and gives you a magnitude 4 or 5 as its very first salvo, the traffic light will not work," she said."I don't blame the oil and gas companies for following the existing regulations. They have a business. They have their own models of how they look at risk," she said."It's really up to the regulators and the government to protect populations and also to protect the industry as a whole to ensure that we don't end up with an environmental catastrophe as a result of an earthquake being generated in the wrong place."
