In November 2013, Oklahoma’s state seismologist, Austin Holland, got a request that made him nervous. It was from David Boren, president of the University of Oklahoma, which houses the Oklahoma Geological Survey where Holland works.
Boren, a former U.S. senator, asked Holland to his office for coffee with Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources, one of Oklahoma’s largest oil and gas operators. Boren sits on the board of Continental, and Hamm is a big donor to the university, giving $20 million in 2011 for a new diabetes center.
“It was just a little bit intimidating,” Holland says.
Holland had been studying possible links between a rise in seismic activity in Oklahoma and the rapid increase in oil and natural-gas production, the state’s largest industry. During the meeting, Hamm requested that Holland be careful when publicly discussing the possible connection between drilling and a big jump in the number of earthquakes, which geological researchers were increasingly tying to the underground disposal of oil and gas wastewater – a byproduct of the fracking boom that Continental has helped pioneer.
“It was an expression of concern,” Holland recalls.
Before Holland became the state seismologist in 2010, there wasn’t much for Big Oil and state researchers to argue about. Over the previous 30 years, Oklahoma had averaged fewer than two earthquakes a year of at least 3.0 in magnitude. In 2015, the state is on pace for 875, according to Holland. Oklahoma passed California last year as the most seismically active state in the continental U.S.
Details surrounding the aforementioned meeting and others have emerged in recent weeks as emails from the Oklahoma Geological Survey have been released through public records requests filed by Bloomberg and other media outlets, including EnergyWire, which first reported the Hamm meeting.
The emails suggest a steady stream of industry pressure on scientists at the state office. But oil companies say there’s nothing wrong with contact between executives and scientists.
