(Bloomberg) – Sunday night's 5.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Cushing, Okla., is the latest and, in some ways, the most troubling in a series of temblors that has rocked the Sooner State over the past few years.
Not only did it strike within a mile of what is arguably one of the country's most important strategic assets — Cushing is the largest crude oil trading hub in North America, with almost 60 million barrels of stored crude — but its occurrence raises questions over the state's ability to do anything about the significant rise in earthquakes, which has been linked to oil and gas activity.
While regulations limiting the underground disposal of wastewater have succeeded in reducing the overall frequency of earthquakes, they haven't been able to stop the really big ones from happening. And when they hit close to Cushing, they suddenly become an issue of national security.
|1,000 quakes at least 3.0 in 2015
Last year, Oklahoma experienced more than 1,000 earthquakes measuring at least 3.0 in magnitude; that's up from fewer than two in 2008. The state is now the most seismically active in the continental U.S. Seismologists believe the quakes there are the result of wastewater injection wells used by the oil and gas industry.
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