Cuadrilla makes seismic data available to public

Fracking firm Cuadrilla has launched an online tool that allows the public to view daily records of seismic activity around its Preston New Road shale gas exploration site.

The new tool also documents incidents of naturally occurring seismicity across the North West since late 2017 and this will be updated weekly.

The new pages on the ePortal include a local map view so that people can look at a bird’s eye view of the operational area, which is approximately 4.8 sq km around the Preston New Road site, including any seismicity occurring within that area, the magnitude of the seismicity and its depth.

The Oil and Gas Authority regulates seismicity associated with hydraulic fracturing and a description of this regulatory process and the actions required at differing thresholds of any seismicity induced by fracturing can also be found on the e-portal. Hydraulic fracturing operations are to be temporarily paused if a seismic event of 0.5ML (Local Magnitude) or above, induced by fracturing, occurs. An event of 0.5ML cannot be felt at surface.

Francis Egan, CEO of Cuadrilla, said: “As we prepare to carry out hydraulically fracturing of the shale rock around the site’s horizontal wells, this additional reporting will help reassure people that monitoring is in place to ensure that operations will continue to be conducted in a safe and responsible manner.

"In fact, the data already shows that naturally occurring seismic events of 1.5ML to 2.0ML, which are rarely felt at surface, occur relatively often across the North West.

"Once we start hydraulically fracturing our limit to temporarily pause operations, in the event of a seismic event induced by fracturing, is significantly lower, at 0.5ML, than the existing background seismic events of 1.5ML and above.”

Members of the public can also view contextual and historic seismic data on the portal.

This includes the results of a recent investigation by the University of Liverpool’s seismology department research group, led by Dr Ben Edwards, into earth movements induced by everyday human activity in the Blackpool area. Their examples including vibrations from passing traffic, such as a bus, cars passing and a tram.

The team discovered that standing beneath ‘The Big One’ rollercoaster is comparable to ground vibrations felt directly above a 1.8ML earthquake occurring at a depth of 2km below ground and that the ground vibrations felt when standing 2m away from a passing tram are the same as standing directly above a 2.0ML seismic event.

The portal can be accessed here and Cuadrilla's informational video can be viewed below. [embed]https://youtu.be/KMyKif9AMTg[/embed]