Earthquakes in Texas get the attention of Louisiana agency

A series of minor earthquakes recorded as recently as last week in Texas have raised the specter of tremors in northwest Louisiana, where a natural gas discovery has launched a gold-rush style drilling boom.

A similar rush hit north Texas several years ago, after geologists found vast stores of natural gas in the Barnett Shale, a layer of underground rock spanning 5,000 square miles. Thousands of wells have been drilled, and some scientists have blamed the recent earthquakes on the intense process used to extract gas from the shale, called fracturing.

Developers are using the same process in Louisiana on the Haynesville Shale, which spreads beneath a six-parish region near Shreveport. Prospectors began flocking to the area early last year, after an energy firm announced that the Haynesville Shale could be the largest natural gas reserve in the country.

Louisiana’s Department of Natural Resources has its ear to the ground for more rumblings from Texas. But until scientists can draw a firm link between drilling and the earthquakes, state regulators have no plans to discourage gas production in the Haynesville Shale, where hundreds of wells have been drilled and hundreds more are planned.

The Times-Picayune