AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The state’s official seismologist has no plans for immediate action following a report that says gas drilling and wastewater injection most likely caused a swarm of earthquakes in North Texas.
Craig Pearson said at a news conference Tuesday that he wouldn’t recommend that the Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator, suspend activity at two wells the report’s authors identify as the source of the temblors in Azle.
Pearson, who previously studied induced seismicity at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was hired last March after residents from Azle and neighboring Reno traveled to Austin to ask the Railroad Commission to halt oil and gas operations.
Pearson said he will review the report published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications and likely offer his opinion next month.