Vexed by Earthquakes, Texas Calls in a Scientist

Surely the seismologist -- this man of science, highly educated and blessed with good ol' boy roots in West Texas -- must know what he's getting himself into. The Texas oil boom is the envy of the nation, a source of strength in uncertain geopolitical times. Smart people are moving in from the coasts. Investors are getting rich. Even a high school dropout can make decent money behind the wheel of a truck. Life is good.

Among the less pleasant side effects has been a peculiar increase in the frequency of earthquakes, phenomena of the sort traditionally classified with great confidence as "natural disasters." In the northern part of the state, where energy firms make lucrative extractions from a rock formation called the Barnett Shale, a remarkable cluster of tremors first commanded the attention of local officials last November.

Everybody was scared, everybody was freaking out, saying, `What are you going to do about it?"' said Alan Brundrett, the mayor of Azle, a small town northwest of Fort Worth. "It was almost funny, like, `What are we going to do about earthquakes?"'

By the second or third or 12th time within a few weeks, though, it stopped being funny, especially when the tremors started flirting with the fourth digit on the magnitude scale. So local officials got some data from federal geologists, read up on the relevant scientific research and started demanding answers from the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the petroleum business. Positions hardened on all sides, with industry officials arguing that the available evidence fails to prove any direct link between their subterranean exertions and the dishes rattling around in people's cabinets.

Other states were already starting to make that connection, including Arkansas, Colorado and Ohio, but none of those places is the one where everything is bigger. Before long, the "CBS Evening News" even sent a camera crew to see what was what in Texas.

There followed a set of increasingly clamorous public hearings, after which the state commission agreed to gather data on wells used to dispose of oil industry wastewater in the vicinity of the earthquakes. Perhaps not coincidentally, in the view of Brundrett, the tremors became less noticeable.

"It's my personal belief," he told the Houston Chronicle, "that the well water operator dialed it down to make them stop."

In March, the commissioners promised to determine once and for all "the exact cause of seismic events in Texas." The man they hired for the job, given the title of state seismologist, soon presented himself at Azle City Hall.

Squat and country-mannered, wearing khakis, a plaid shirt and a how-ya-doin' grin, the seismologist did not quite match the expected profile of a laboratory recluse.

But the stakes of his assignment are clear. Oil and gas companies employ hundreds of thousands of people across the state, generating billions of dollars in taxes and royalties. Officially connecting that bonanza to earthquakes -- earthquakes! -- could cause problems for some fairly influential people.

And his background offers clues to how he may handle one of the biggest questions looming over the state's most powerful industry.

"He's got the pressure on him," Brundrett said. "He ultimately can be the scapegoat for them. So I'm not sure I'd want to be in his shoes."

Graduating as salutatorian of McCamey High School in 1976, David Craig Pearson made the front page of the McCamey News in Upton County in West Texas. The town, named for a wildcatter, counted a population of about 3,000. Its newspaper used an image of a derrick in place of the "A" in its flag.

Pearson played football, baseball and track, made the National Honor Society, served on the student council and presided over the speech club. But a single outlier in his biography gave a better hint of the path his career would take: "Attended Boys State Nuclear Science Symposium."

After high school, he found work with the oil field services firm Halliburton, according to his resume. He earned a geology degree at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, then enrolled in a master's program at SMU, where he became a favored student of a scientist named Brian Stump.

"He's curious; he was hands-on," Stump recalled. "He was not somebody that closes his mind to things."

At SMU, Pearson studied seismic imagery. After earning a doctorate, he followed Stump to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Their research focused on coal mining explosions that could be mistaken by foreign governments for nuclear weapons testing. The work took Pearson around the world, contributing to documents with names like "Shallow Velocity Structure at the Shagan Test Site in Kazakhstan."

"He led us on so many adventures in so many places, it's really hard to imagine," said Diane Baker, a technologist at the laboratory.

Respected for his diligence, Pearson became a prized team member for qualities that did not necessarily shine through the dry language of research papers. From the corporate offices to the mine gates, his demeanor put at ease the men causing the underground explosions.

"He grew up in Texas," Baker said. "And it gave him a natural gift for not coming in as a suit and fitting in with guys in the industry."

Over the course of 13 years, Pearson rose through the ranks. Then he left, in 2006. Even Stump, who describes him as a "good friend," was not sure of the reason.

Pearson, who declined interview requests, described the move on his r�sum� as a return "to family ranching business." He took a $12,000 pay cut.

"We were all very shocked and saddened," Baker said, "when we found out he was going to leave seismology and go be a rancher."

Nearly eight years would pass before a question drew him back to the field

The question before the seismologist is not really a new one. On Aug. 16, 1931, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake destroyed the little concrete schoolhouse in the West Texas town of Valentine. The bell tower collapsed, adobe walls cracked across town and gravestones spun around in the local cemetery. Wondering whether oil extraction might have played some role in this turn of events, reporters sought the opinion of experts at the University of Texas. Not to worry, a professor told the Associated Press: The oil removed from the ground was being replaced by water.

Which was true, sort of. Buried in ancient reservoirs, crude oil shares the catacombs with saltwater. The latter was typically allowed to sink back underground, often with human assistance.

In later years, scientists determined that injecting liquids directly into the ground could sometimes cause seismic activity.

Given access to a Chevron well in the early 1970s, federal researchers found they could turn earthquakes on and off by altering fluid pressure. No clear pattern emerged, though, from one formation to the next. Tens of thousands of wells seemed to cause no tremors at all.

For industry officials, the paradox amounted to unsettled science. To their critics in the environmental movement, it sounded more like plausible deniability. Hardly anyone considered the question a major priority.

But in 2008, the companies leading the new domestic energy boom changed the equation. The technique known as hydraulic fracturing, in sporadic use for decades to extract the last drops of oil from aging wells, expanded to tap in to tight shale formations. Fracking, which involves spraying water mixed with sand and chemicals into porous rock formations to flush out a mix of oil and saltwater, uses more than 26 billion gallons of water a year, according to a report by the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology.

When the process is done, all that water has to go somewhere. So across the state, oil companies maintain about 35,000 watery holes in the ground, known as injection and disposal wells. While these wells have long supported the profitability of traditional production companies, experts say, they are crucial to the fracking business model.

Among researchers, attention has focused on the water disposal. In 2010, a Southern Methodist University study identified a saltwater injection well as a "plausible cause" of tremors around Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Since then, scientists have strengthened the connection in peer-reviewed journals.

"It's well-documented that fluid injection causes earthquakes," says William Leith, a scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey. "The problem is to do forensics. Can one make a confident association between the injection of a well and an earthquake? Can you say this well triggered this earthquake?"

For researchers, two problems stand in the way.

The first is relatively easy to solve: The federal government's seismic monitors are spread too far apart. So in January, SMU researchers deployed a dozen extraordinarily sensitive devices in the scrub around Azle.\

The second is the tough one: Data on the frequency and intensity of injections is considered a trade secret of the oil companies. The Railroad Commission requires only a pressure check once a month, conducted by the operator and reported to the state once a year.

"Lacking access to that data, the owner of the well or the oil and gas commission can say, `Oh, that is highly speculative,"' Leith says. "And we can't fight that. We're scientists. We need data."

To gather more specific data on the oil industry's injection wells, the Railroad Commission came up with a plan: Ask nicely for it. But first, the commission needed someone to interpret the data, officially, for the state of Texas.

In his job application, Pearson promised to call a good clean game. At 56, he was competing for the seismologist position against more than a dozen qualified candidates, including several who offered to work for less, according to documents obtained under the state public information law.

"My objective in seeking this job is to develop a broad understanding of the impact of oil and gas extraction activities on the day-to-day lives of the citizens of the State of Texas," he wrote. He vowed to determine the cause of the earthquakes, "be they natural or man-made."

His eight-year absence from seismology may present a challenge, some experts say, but not an impossible one.

"While the field moves forward, and is doing so rapidly in the area of injection-induced seismicity, it is largely through more and better observational studies rather than theoretical advances," said William Ellsworth, a scientist at the U.S.G.S. Earthquake Science Center in Menlo Park, Calif.

While Pearson was working as a ranch manager in the oil-rich Permian Basin, county clerk records show, he received mineral rights in the area. The rights, which can be leased to oil companies in exchange for royalties, are hardly unusual for anyone with deep family roots in Texas. They were passed down as a gift through the lineage of V.T. Amacker, whose name is attached to some of the top producing leases in the county, according to a database maintained by texasdrilling.com.

For a commission employee, the ownership could create a conflict of interest, experts said, though not necessarily in favor of the oil industry.

"He's a mineral owner, a land owner, and would potentially be in favor of making sure things get done right and maybe less favorable to the producers," said Ed Hirs, an energy economics expert at the University of Houston. "The only one for whom he might have an affinity would be the producer who's on his property."

By the time Pearson joined the staff in March, at an annual salary of $110,000, the question of man-made earthquakes was rising toward the top of the political agenda surrounding the state's energy boom. His bosses run statewide for election to six-year terms on the Railroad Commission.

When they announced his hiring, the commissioners made clear their own views. The chairman at the time, Barry Smitherman, said it was necessary to investigate because "very few and relatively minor seismic events have been documented over the past several decades compared to more than 144,000 disposal wells operating nationwide."

Pearson, for his part, has not left a trail of extraordinary political passion. Registered as a Republican in Upton County, he served as vice president of the local water district. His wife has given a couple of thousand dollars to the Texas Sheep & Goat Raisers' Political Action Committee.

At the commission, he got right to work. After his visit to Azle, he wrote to seven companies operating in the vicinity of the tremors, requesting maps, pressure readings and other data. Several responded, and the commission posted the data online, where it remains open to scientific interpretation. Representatives of all seven companies declined to comment or did not return calls.

In August, just five months after Pearson joined the staff, the commission relied on his observations to propose new rules for closer scrutiny of wastewater wells. As an indication of their seriousness, the proposed rules have gained praise from the traditionally more stringent federal Environmental Protection Agency.

But as the commissioners consider the proposed rules, with a legislative committee looking over their shoulders and more communities expressing concern about hydraulic fracturing, the earthquake question is no longer academic. In the end, the task of recommending an official answer will fall to Pearson.

"If it's shown that there's a definite link between fracking and earthquakes, that's definitely going to have a serious impact on the oil and gas industry," said Andrew Lipow, an industry consultant in Houston. "Not just in Texas, but all over the country."

In the basement of the state Capitol, the House Energy Resources Subcommittee on Seismic Activity came to order one afternoon in August. Under the gaze of several dozen industry representatives and environmental conservation advocates, Pearson took a seat in the front row. He wore a loose-fitting suit, brown cowboy boots, wire-frame glasses and a neatly trimmed beard.

"We are delighted," said the committee chair, Myra Crownover, a Republican from Denton, "to have a seismologist on our team."

But among the audience members, different teams were experiencing the delight in different ways.
The Sierra Club sent a representative to offer measured praise. The Texas Oil & Gas Association sent a representative to express unspecified "initial concerns."

As the hearing began, Rep. Crownover defined for the record a list of terms deeply familiar to her audience. Hydraulic fracturing, she emphasized, was not the focus of the committee's inquiry, though the water wells "needed further study."

Then she called the new state seismologist to testify.

"He will enlighten us," Crownover said, "on progress we are making."

Pearson took the witness seat.

"Madame Chair, subcommittee members ." he began.

Crownover cut him off immediately, though not harshly. Proper legislative procedure requires verbally identifying oneself for the record.

"Oh," said Pearson, minding his manners more than protocol. "I'm sorry."

Quickly regaining composure, he summarized his initial observations. Since January, he said, the region under study had recorded no "felt" earthquakes, defined as magnitude 3.0 or above, but many "unfelt" earthquakes, most below magnitude 1.0.

"You'd have to be really close to it," he told Crown-over. "Like, closer than you and I are right now."

Then Pearson told the lawmakers of his efforts to evaluate the seismological data against the well data. He described the industry's cooperation as "excellent" and "fantastic."

Before drawing any conclusions, he said, he wants to wait for the next report from his former colleagues at SMU, which could take several more months. For the time being, the proposed rules could help the state monitor fluid pressure, protecting fault lines in formations known to be unstable from potential new tremors "on a case by case basis."

By the end of the hearing, which lasted less than an hour, the state of Texas, through its Railroad Commission, still took no official position on Big Oil's role in generating earthquakes.

But the question is not going away. A month after the hearing, three new quakes would strike North Texas at magnitudes between 2.0 and 3.0, just strong enough to make people reach for the phone.

"And that," the seismologist said as he ended his testimony, "that's where we are today."

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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