captioning performed by vitac captioning performed by vitac essentially this phenomenon that dimension in which the earthquakes are triggered by the

injection activity is a function of the volume of fluid that goes in and so what you see here is actually a correlation between the volume of fluid and actual magnitude. this would indicate contrary to the previous slide that the more water or fluid you put down the hole more waste that is disposed of the larger the potential earthquake. and that dilemma, that research -- that's the research question which usgs is trying to address now working with the epa on some case studies and we're also working on the theoretical side of the question. so, finally if you need more information on the subject i'm pointing you to our website. we have a frequently asked

question set for earthquakes that are induced by fluid injection and may answer some of the questions you may have. thank you. >> thank you. [ applause ] . >> a round of applause for all of our speakers here. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> so we're ready to take some questions now if you want to line up by the microphone over there and while you do so i might mention that our next public lecture is scheduled for wednesday, may 2nd and is titled "nature altered seasons." we certainly encourage you to attend that, if you wish. if we can start with the questions and then our speakers will do their best to address them.

sir, the first question. >> can you tell us how much a developer puts in a pad and how much money does he make pulling gas out of it? i want to invest. >> no. i can't answer that. sir. >> another question. >> are you familiar with use of propane as a fracking fluid and is it as good as it sounds? >> could you repeat the question, please? >> the question was about the use of propane as a fracking method. that's new to me. i just heard about it in media

recently. all i can say is i know it would lessen the amount of water that's used on each one of the pads. what other chemicals it would involve, i don't know. >> i guess i have a kind of a strange question. i'm struck by the contrast between the number of people who are here, presumably they have other things they could be doing, and the rather scientific and quiet tone of the presentation, very technical talk. i'm wondering, i'm trying to understand why there's such a great interest on the part of the audience and yet the spirit of the presentation was rather technical and somewhat distant. i mean, there obviously is a great deal of concern on the part of people about this subject and yet none of that was really conveyed by the presentations i heard. do any of you have any

reservations about this whole process you would like to admit to us today? [ laughter ] >> again, i think at the beginning of the talking talked about how we don't take a position on these. we try to do the best science we can to inform those who do make policy, inform the public such as you, so that you can be active in your community if you want to about these things and become informed. i was born and raised to be a scientist and this is what i do. so it's not me taking an advocacy role for any position or another position. >> obviously we're very interested in the topic. but we try to be dispassionate and address it in an objective manner as possible. we apply the science but not go over board on what the interpretation and how the science might be applied later. >> well, i would like to follow

up on that. first of all i enjoyed all of them but the last one especially. in terms of being totally objective, when i see the only films you're showing are from besides usgs are from industry, that is not what you might call fair and balanced. and i wish you would have shown a couple of scenes from gasland which showed the true effects of these procedures. you didn't even mention the fact that there was a waiver to the clean water act sometimes known as the cheney waiver which said that these companies do not have to reveal what chemicals are going into the ground and yet you have government agencies approving this. so, my question is -- well, one question is do the companies have any responsibility in terms of damages caused by earthquakes, for example? are they held accountable financially or in any other way,

do you know? >> as far as i know, no. there's no direct -- i guess the better way to say this is i don't know of any laws which have been enacted which would put the companies at liability for triggering an earthquake or any damage. >> okay. thank you. with the exception of the last one i thought you gave a pass to industry. >> if i could briefly address your comment about the films. i have to take credit for encouraging the use of the first film because i was putting together a presentation a couple of months ago and wanted to try to illustrate the concept of hydraulic fracturing and i found this film was very fair and straightforward and fact the all and did a much, much better job than i could do.

with respect to it waslagasland know is i was in it so if that helps you at all. >> i would also like to make one other comment about the regulatory aspects. the disposal of the produced waters from fracking operation actually is regulated, it's regulated by the epa. epa has a program called underground injection control and if you want to dig into it, the well type which is commonly associated with the disposal activity is that underground injection control type two well. >> might add to dennis's presentation where you talked about gas that might emanate along a well certainly well aware of the fact that the public in general is concerned about possible currents of gas that could get up into their water well or into a public water supply, and this so-called stray gas, potentially has a

number of different sources only one of which could be hyper fracturing. as we develop our program is to better understand the various sources of stray gas. are they coming from not only the kind of shale gas units but also from coal bed and coal bed methane sources or even from the decay of biogenic gas. the flux and rate which they flow is part of our overall plan. >> i don't have a question but i want to congratulate you on recognizing the rangely field experiments and denver well experiments that were worked on back in the late '60s. and there is -- they did publish their results in a science magazine article which seems to

have been throats an awful lot of investigators. but i think it's very relevant to what people should be looking at now. thank you. >> it's very much relevant. and that old paper has certainly been uncovered by quite a lot of people in the last year. >> some of our pioneers from the usgs in our earthquake program, what we can use to predict earthquakes. >> a lot of people haven't found it yet. i'm glad you did. >> i'm just curious on the proximate distance from the bore hole extend. the bore hole is horizontal. the fracks go up and down. ballpark what's that distance?

>> the data that i've seen again would be from industry, papers and journals indicate that in pennsylvania there's some barriers to the propagation of the frack. below the marcellus is limestone and it's a pretty significant barrier to propagation of the fractures below the marcellus. the limestone is above the marcellus which is less effective and limiting the propagation of cracks vertically. some of the data i've seen hundreds to a thousand feet vertically is what i've seen. thousand feet is the maximum. you tap into the marcellus shale at depths of between five and 8,000 feet in pennsylvania so you still got considerable

amount of shale and sand stone between the fresh water which is maybe a thousand feet at maximum and frack interval of the well. at some other places in new york and ohio, some of these units may be tapped to shallower depths which maybe be more problematic. >> thanks. >> yes. i want to ask you a few questions. i'm glad to hear you're looking further into the sources of leakage of gases, and where they may be coming from. there's a recent study that i think is getting a lot of attention by, i believe, from noaa out in colorado that indicated that the emissions from a large field that included a lot of fracking and other oil and gas operations was several

times what the -- thank you. the emissions were several times as much as conventional inventories would indicate should come and a substantial amount of that would, some of it was coming from the storage of natural gas liquids associated with these wells, but substantial amount must have been coming from the well itself based upon the composition. and that raised the question of more specifically of what part of the operations are actually responsible for those leaks, which are very for the greenhouse gas emission issue. i wonder if you could comment on that? >> sure. we are aware of that report that came out from noaa. and i'm not aware of anyone in the usgs working on that problem right now. >> maybe i could ask one other

question then. up in pennsylvania there was a recent interesting film shown on maryland public tv that talked a lot about passengers it indicated that people had not been too unhappy over the years with natural gas from conventional wells in their backyards, but now are -- many of whom at least are very unhappy with what's happening with fracking. part of that is the industrial activity that you pointed out on your presentations about having large pads and lots of trucks going by, et cetera. i wonder if you could put that in perspective, because if there are many more wells necessary for conventional gas than there would be for fracking, is it

simply a question of potential fracking going on because they are talking about the possibility of 100,000 wells or they suggested that there might be eventually 100,000 fracking wells in pennsylvania and that's got people quite upset. can you put that in perspective of the impacts of historically of conventional natural gas wells and why fracking may be so much more of a concern to people in terms of just land disturbance and industrial activity? >> i think it probably as you say has a lot to do with the disturbance, the truck traffic and that kind of thing. when i'm up in the areas of northern pennsylvania that is the thing i hear the most about is just the amount of congestion and hustle and bustle and truck traffic and that kind of thing.

i really can't answer in much more detail. i don't know how much conventional gas as posed to the hydro fracked gas and what i said in my talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the pad sizes and whatnot. >> i'll add to that we, some of our researchers are using remote sensing techniques to look at the total amount of disturbance associated with construction of pads, pipelines and roads for wells that are fracked compared to wells that are conventional, conventional shower production. and i think that is due to be out in the next several months, so i just say check back and then there will be some results on exactly to the question you asked. >> as dennis mentioned earlier in his remarks in areas where we hardly have any hydro carbon

production in the past, sudden activity now ran into a community is a stark change to what they are accustomed to, not just more truck traffic but the whole effect on the community with that many people. you'll find companies come in, they will lease up every room of the hotel. it changes the dynamics of the area. one of our aspects of our studies will look at socio-economics, the effects of changing ways in which communities react to this increase in industrial activity. >> okay. my question has to do with protection of the shallow aquifers. it seems the well casing and seal is one potential weak link in protecting the shallow aquifers. are there any regulatory requirements for doing well integrity tests prior to conducting the fracking operations? >> there are that have been modified about a year ago in pennsylvania that increased the

requirements for, you know, the strength of the cement, how long the cement needs to set before you can do any drilling, and, you know, i don't know the specifics of all that, but, yeah, there are definitely a lot of regulations about the cement and the casing. >> thanks. >> hello. just a quick question. i was wondering what type of mechanism or alienatation or ability do you intend to find in the injected water, and does it, is there variability from region to region? >> i'm sorry, can you hear me? >> yeah, i can hear you. . >> i'm not able to hear you very well. >> basically i'm curious about the survvariability of the foca

mechanism. >> can you repeat the question? >> your question, if i heard right was about the variability. first of all the focal mechanism is the orientation of the poles and the direction of the poles essentially and the questions about the consistency of that. so in most cases we do not have good enough seismic networks around the induced earthquake activity to be very sure of the

orientation of the focal mechanism and its variability around a single injection site. but where we do have that information is in arkansas and i did point this out on the slide i showed, when you look at this later online you can go back to it, that fault plane that was, that is, on which all those earthquakes are occurring is both very well defined by the earthquakes and focal mechanisms or sense of motion of all of those earthquakes is very, very consistent. it's a single process. a whole lot of earthquakes triggered with the same type of motion that indicates that the stress field is uniform and it indicates that the injection process has modified the stress date within a larger stress field. >> right. okay. thank you. >> okay. we're going to halt the formal questions at this point because

we're well over the allotted time but we'll be more than happy for people who still have questions to come on up and ask us directly. we'll do the best we can to respond to them. thank you very much for coming. [ applause ] just 30 years ago san da day o'connor became the first woman appointed to the u.s. supreme court. today the former justice takes

part in a discussion looking back at her career. she will be joined by ruth bader ginsberg, sotomayor and elena kagan. you can see it live at 6:30 p.m. eastern at c-span 2. also today live coverage of the indiana senate republican primary debate between senator richard luger and the challenger who serves as indiana's treasurer. the primary is held on may 8th. that debate begins live at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span or listen on c-span radio. and as congress continues its two week recess, all this week on c-span 3 we're showing you american history tv in primetime. tonight from our oral history series a look at the life and career of president nixon. you'll see programs on the impeachment charges brought against the president, the oval

office meeting with elvis presley and an interview with david guerra again who began his political career on the nixon speech writing team and later wrote the president's resignation letter. that all begins tonight at 8:00 eastern here on c-span 3. april 15th, 1912, nearly 1500 perish on the ship called unsinkable. >> once the lookout bells were sound the lookout sighted an iceberg ahead they struck the bells three times, ding, ding, ding, which is a warning saying that there's some object ahead. doesn't mean dead ahead, ahead of the ship and doesn't say what kind of object. what the lookout then did after they truck the bell he went to a telephone nest and called down to the officer on the bridge to tell them what it is that they saw. and when the phone finally answered the entire conversation

was what do you see? and the response was iceberg right ahead. and the response from the officer was, thank you. >> samuel helper on the truths and myths of that night sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern part of american history tv this weekend on c-span 3. [ applause ] national economic council director james sperling spoke last week at a white house forum on women and the economy. he talked about the u.s. job market and recent unemployment numbers. he's followed by a panel discussion. ate little more than an hour. >> my name is tina tchen. i'm the executive director on women and girls. it's my pleasure to start off our forum and welcome you all for being here. my job, first thing in the morning here, is one that gives me great, great pleasure and that is to introduce to you someone who has been a dear friend of mine, someone who is a

business woman, a single mom, a lawyer and now is senior advisor to the president of the united states, and chair of the council on women and girls and has been leading the effort for the last three years that brings us to all the accomplishments we'll talk about today and to our wonderful partnership working with all of you. my good friend valerie jarrett. [ applause ] >> thank you, tina and good morning, everyone. welcome to the white house. it is such a pleasure to welcome you to the white house forum on women and the economy. i am delighted to look around the room and see so many familiar faces in the audience. we have an extraordinary array of accomplished women and a few good and pretty brave men. [ laughter ] you represent a wide range of

stakeholders from all across the country. you are the trail blazers and the innovators that drive our country. a number of you have worked closely with us throughout the last few years and deserve a lot of the credit for many of our accomplishments. i would also like to thank the members of the cabinet who are joining us today for your presence and also for your exceptional service to our country. and finally welcome to all of those who are watching online. we will be streaming today's whole forum including the breakout sessions online. i am so proud to be in the chair of the white house council on women and girls and to join tina in leading this very important initiative. when president obama created the council in 2009 he said and i quote it's up to us to ensure our daughters and grand daughters have no limit on their

dreams and no obstacles to their achievements. he set a very high bar. as executive order, he ensured that the council would include representatives from every single agency in the federal government. the first president i would add to do so. i would like to ask all of the members of the council who are here to please stand and be recognized. come on. [ applause ] by creating the council on women and girls the president set a tone from the top. ensuring that the advancement of women and girls is a top priority for his administration. at the same time president obama has taken historic steps to appoint more women to the highest levels of public service, reflecting the diversity of our country. not only has he appointed women to key position but also

empowered them to drive critical policy, promoting the interests of women and girls both at home and abroad. you will hear during today's forum how these policies have significantly improved the lives of women and girls and helped grow the economy. now we all understand that so-called women's issues do not only affect women. women make up a majority of students in our colleges and an even larger percentage in graduate schools. they are nearly half of the workforce and they are the breadwinners for a growing number of families. so it's clear that the success of women in america is critical to the success and sustainability of our families, of our communities, and of the national economy. however, challenges still remain. for example, women still only earn 70 cents on the there are compared to men.

and for women of color it's even a larger discrepancy. today we're going to be releasing our report that's illustrates the obama's administration commitment to tearing down barriers that women face in the workplace, in the marketplace, in order to drive america forward. and those of you watching online, you can find the report at whitehouse.gov. the obama administration has helped create more security and opportunity for women in america at every stage of their lives and career. beginning with our girls. and i'm delighted to see we have a few girls with us today. for example, the president's innovative race to the cop competition rewards schools that take steps to close the gaps between girls and boys in classes that prepare them for careers in science and technology and engineering and math. stem as we