The three major earthquakes that rocked Alberta’s Peace River in 2022 and 2023 had nothing to do with “natural tectonic activity” as initially claimed by the Alberta Energy Regulator, and had nothing to do with toxic water, the oil and gas industry’s hidden waste problem.
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As first reported by The Tyee, a new study led by University of Alberta geophysicists has once again confirmed that “the largest known induced earthquake in Canada” was caused by injecting large amounts of wastewater produced from asphalt facilities deep into the earth.
The earthquake caused people to lose their footing and the ground to be lifted up by 3 centimeters.
An injection well operated by Calgary-based company Obsidian Energy was the primary trigger for the earthquake swarm, with “secondary contributions from multiple wells more than 20 kilometers apart,” the study said.
Since 2012, Obsidian’s 2,000-meter-deep disposal well has injected more than 1 million cubic meters of brine into the ground. On November 20, 2022, a record earthquake occurred near the disposal well after fluids moved onto a nearby fault approximately 50 kilometers from the town of Peace River.
These actions subsequently triggered two more moderate earthquakes of magnitude 4.8 and 5.0 on March 16, 2023.
Scientists say an earthquake of similar magnitude would have been damaging and even fatal if it had occurred in densely populated areas such as Vancouver or Toronto.
The oil and gas industry is a formidable geological force on Earth, moving, separating, and injecting large amounts of water into the earth, causing earthquakes, ground deformation, well blowouts, and groundwater contamination.
The oil and gas industry produces approximately 3 to 5 cubic meters (18 to 25 barrels) of wastewater for every 1 cubic meter (6 barrels) of oil extracted from the ground.
Peace River oil sands operations typically recover a mixture of 25 to 30 percent bitumen and 70 to 75 percent water.
To date, the oil sands industry has injected 100 million cubic meters of wastewater into the ground in various formations around the Peace River. That’s the equivalent of 40,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools going to waste over several decades. As a result, the industry has now created three distinct industrial seismic activity zones in the region.
Managing the industry’s vast amounts of toxic water has become a regulatory and seismic nightmare around the world as the industry begins to run out of safe disposal sites. Every day, the fossil fuel industry must treat 250 million barrels of toxic wastewater containing salts, metals, hydrocarbons, and radioactive materials. With aging oil fields producing more water all the time, this number could soon reach 600 million barrels per day.
worldwide phenomenon
Almost half of the wastewater, which is three times more salty than seawater, is injected deep into the earth, a technique that has triggered massive earthquakes not only in Canada but also in Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma. In British Columbia alone, the LNG industry is currently pushing ahead with large-scale hydraulic fracturing in the Monny Shale formation, but the BC Energy Regulator is being forced to curtail or modify operations at 11 disposal wells due to increased seismic activity.
Meanwhile, other forms of fluid injection have changed earthquake patterns around the world. Hydraulic fracturing, which injects high-pressure streams of water, chemicals and sand into shale formations, has caused earthquakes from British Columbia to Argentina.
Injecting cold water into deep, hot rock formations to generate renewable, enhanced geothermal power has also triggered earthquake swarms in Europe and Asia.
And in China, three decades of massive injections of fresh water to dissolve salt in underground caverns have built up enough pressure to trigger an earthquake swarm and break another induced world record for magnitude 6 tremors. The earthquake killed 13 people and injured more than 200.
Meanwhile, Texas’ hydraulic fracturing industry is injecting tons of wastewater into the Permian Basin, about 5 billion barrels a year, the equivalent of what New York City consumes in eight months, overpressurizing the reservoir and triggering hundreds of earthquakes.
In an attempt to reduce seismic activity in the Permian Basin, the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry, has authorized wastewater injection at shallower depths. But that habit created another problem.
As a result, salt geysers erupting through faults and abandoned wells have punctured the landscape. The Wall Street Journal noted in a 2025 report that “some regions of the Permian appear to be on the verge of geological failure.”
Last year, the Texas Railroad Commission issued a warning letter restricting new disposal wells, saying they “may not be in the public interest and result in widespread increases in reservoir pressure that could harm Texas’ mineral and freshwater resources.”
The Railroad Commission, which is considering treating and disposing of the wastewater into rivers, added: “Drilling hazards, loss of hydrocarbon production, uncontrolled flows, surface deformation and seismic activity have been observed.”
No such warning has been issued by the Alberta Energy Regulator, but at a recent public hearing on the Peace River earthquake, the regulator acknowledged that there are so many wastewater treatment operations and associated clusters of seismic activity in the oil sands region that it is “difficult to determine which treatment operations are responsible for a particular seismic event.”
“Domino-like sequences”: Report
A new study of the Peaceful Earthquake published last month in Geophysical Research Letters concludes that the quakes acted as a “domino-like succession caused by sewage injection and sustained by interactions between fault structures.” In fact, geology has channeled wastewater into deep ancient fault zones.
The study warns that “continued injections could rebuild pressure and initiate new seismic activity.”
At the time of the earthquake, the Alberta Energy Regulator initially downplayed the industry’s role, but later changed its tune after a 2023 Stanford University study identified water injection as the cause of the quake.
Regulators subsequently issued an environmental protection order against Obsidian, a medium-sized company based in Calgary. The order required the company to take action on one of its injection wells and submit a mitigation plan to reduce shaking felt across central Alberta.
But the company appealed the regulatory order on the grounds that “the evidence linking obsidian wells to the seismic phenomenon is ambiguous” and that it is “substantially likely” that other industrial activities in the area, such as other asphalt producers, were responsible for the seismic phenomenon.
Obsidian also argued that the seismic event was “more likely induced than by natural seismic activity, but this conclusion is not definitive.”
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After a public hearing on the matter in 2025, the Alberta Energy Regulatory Commission concluded that the order was justified and that the shaking was indeed “caused by human activity.” The panel also noted that Obsidian’s wastewater treatment operations, along with other nearby high-injection wells, directly caused or contributed to the earthquake.
Grant Ferguson, a hydrogeologist at the University of Saskatchewan who studies deep groundwater systems, said the study suggests the operation of injection wells is “increasing the risk of seismic activity in the Peace River region.” Ferguson also told The Tyee that the study showed “the potential for induced seismic activity at depths of several kilometers is consistent with what has been recorded in other regions, particularly Kansas and Oklahoma.”
He added that studies like this highlight the need for further research into the effects of industry on the underground. “Area with increasing levels of injection associated with oil and gas recovery may experience increased seismic risk, especially as production expands into remote areas.”
Mr. Ferguson pointed to the impact on efforts to transition away from fossil fuels and reduce emissions associated with fossil fuel production. “All of these activities can involve fluid injection and can be large-scale,” Ferguson said, citing carbon sequestration, geothermal power generation, hydrogen storage or lithium production from brine.
The amount of wastewater, liquids, and gases currently being pumped into the ground presents another predicament. It is the increasing impact of industrial waste streams on natural underground ecosystems.
override earth processes
A study published in the journal Earth’s Future in 2024 and authored by Ferguson and colleagues showed that the oil and gas industry, combined with deep underground mining such as potash mining, is injecting more water deep beneath our feet than underground ecosystems would naturally do. In other words, industry has become a much more powerful geological force underground than natural processes.
Moreover, all of this industrial water flow occurs in microbial-rich environments that scientists have little understanding of.
“Whatever the underground world is doing in terms of microbes, chemicals, water flows, humans are doing even more at depths of hundreds of meters,” Ferguson told The Tyee.
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Or, as the study states, “Fluid flow rates associated with oil and gas production are likely to exceed natural groundwater flow rates at depths greater than 500 meters.”
The study warns that renewable technologies touted as environmentally friendly could increase the impact. “Planned carbon capture and sequestration, geothermal energy production and lithium extraction to facilitate the energy transition will require fluid production rates that exceed current oil and symbiotic water extraction,” the researchers wrote.
Over the past two decades, scientists have discovered even more microbial communities living deep underground, up to several kilometers deep. Little is known about their important role in recycling chemicals and nutrients in the deep biosphere.
“We don’t know what their function is or how they participate in the carbon cycle,” Ferguson added.
“We’re doing this to underground systems that we don’t understand. Critical functions may be tampered with that can’t be undone.” 
