A disaster waiting to happen in Oklahoma? The link between fracking and earthquakes is causing alarm in an oil-rich town

From:  Independent 


by Andrew Dewson - April 6, 2015

A transportation hub, Cushing, Oklahoma, is home to just 8,000 people and 87 million barrels of oil. Due to fracking, it’s now one of the most active seismic areas in the US – and potentially the scene of a catastrophe. 

Oil storage tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma, located at the convergence

of several pipelines; the number of earthquakes above 3.0 on the Richter scale has risen from two in 2008 to 585 in 2014 Bloomberg

 At first glance the small town of less than 8,000 inhabitants looks like typical country America, the kind of place that John Updike might once have written about. Except Cushing, in north-east Oklahoma, is very different.

On top of its human residents, it is also home to about 87 million barrels of oil storage. The biggest ocean-going supertankers carry about two million barrels. The Exxon Valdez spilled less than half that amount when it hit Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1989.

Now, more tanks are being built in Cushing as storage companies seek to increase stocks at lower oil prices.  MORE