Bloomberg: China Fracking Quake-Prone Province Shows Zeal for Gas

China won’t let earthquakes hinder its quest for energy.

Companies such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc and China National Petroleum Corp. are starting to drill for gas and oil in shale rock in Sichuan, the nation’s most seismically active province, a process geologists say raises the risk of triggering quakes.

“For the Sichuan basin, earthquakes are a problem for shale gas and shale oil production because of the tectonic conditions,” said Shu Jiang, a professor at the University of Utah’s Energy & Geoscience Institute in Salt Lake City. “The siting of the wells could cause some artificial earthquakes.”  MORE