This article was published on November 2nd, before these reports of a very seriously damaging 5.6 quake that hit Oklahoma last evening.

From the article:

Earthquakes are typically triggered by stresses more prolonged than those found in fracturing, a reason it is generally held in the geology business to cause seismic events of magnitudes less than zero.

 

"These were just normal naturally occurring earthquakes," Holland told the resident.

 

But out of due diligence, Holland began examining the suite of almost 50 seismic events that followed the 2.8-magnitude quake. The majority of the microquakes struck within 3.5 kilometers of the fracturing well, Picket Unit B 4-18. The quakes were shallow and fit well in time and space with the start of fracturing in the nearby well. The geophysical model fit, too.

 

"The more and more we looked at it, it looked like it was a correlation," Holland said.

 

This is not the first time that fracturing has faced a possible link to earthquakes. The first case occurred in Oklahoma in 1978