Yesterday, the third-strongest earthquake in Texas History. The USGS reported a magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck near the Reeves and Culverson County Line in West Texas at 3:32 p.m. on Wednesday, November 16.  There were also many after-shocks reported as well.  The location of earthquake was located near Marfa, Texas!  The National Weather Service in El Paso also tweeted the earthquake rattled West Texas and Southern New Mexico. However, many people in the San Antonio area took to social media to report an earthquake in San Antonio, as reported by mysanantonio.com



Aaron Velasco, a professor of Earth, Environmental, and Resource Sciences at the University of Texas at El Paso, told KFOX 14 that he thinks deep water injections for fracking may have caused the earthquake even though it occurred along a fault line.This same area experienced a 5.0 magnitude earthquake in March 2020. The strongest ever earthquake registered in Texas with a 6.0.

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EARTHQUAKES HAPPEN IN OUR AREA ALL THE TIME:

At one point last year, there was a total of thirty-three(1.8-3.3 magnitude) reported earthquakes in this general area that started happening on Super Bowl Sunday on February 7th, 2021, and stretching out 6 weeks. Before that date, nothing much. So the question is, why are these happening?  The response from the United States Geological Survey for those earthquakes is also fracking.

How does this cause an earthquake? Wastewater disposal wells typically operate for longer durations and inject much more fluid than is injected during the hydraulic fracturing process, making them more likely to induce earthquakes.

 

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