A study that was recently announced found that earthquakes around the San Ardo oil field are tied to wastewater injection.
The study is led by a professor of seismology at the University of Memphis and another professor of geophysics at Virginia Tech. The two examined over 40 years of wastewater injection data and nearly 2,000 earthquakes.
What they discovered was San Ardo earthquakes would occur near wastewater wells and the rate of earthquake activity relates to the rates of wastewater injection.
The delay in correlating the two events consists of 13 to 17 months between the wastewater injection rate and earthquake activities.
