So, a Magnitude 5.0 Earthquake Strikes in Toyah, Texas
Severe Seismic Activity Strikes Oil Extraction Sites in "Drill Baby Drill" Texas
A massive shake rattled Toyah, Texas, a remote town located 190 miles east of El Paso, on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2025 (Figure 1). Surprisingly, the tremor was felt all the way in Albuquerque. The quake plunged 6.6 kilometers, or around 4.1 miles, beneath the Earth's surface.
Despite a shutdown of deep saltwater disposal wells by the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) in Reeves and Culberson counties due to seismic activity last December, this quake still happened.
Figure 1. Earthquake reports from all over the place (red star) on February 14, 2025.
Scale of an M5 Earthquake
As a general rule of thumb:
- Magnitude 3 (M) can be felt by the naked eye.
- Magnitude 4 (M) will make items fall off of shelves, and create cracks in walls.
- Magnitude 5 (M) may result in minor structural damage, such as chimney collapse.
- Magnitude 6 (M) causes significant structural damage, making houses almost collapse.
- Magnitude 7 (M) will trap people under debris, causing accidents and fatalities.
- Magnitude 8 (M) marks a large-scale disaster.
More Serious Earthquakes in Texas
A list of major earthquakes near Texas with M5 or higher has been shadowed in the past decade. The most powerful earthquake in Texas in the past decade occurred on November 16, 2022, at 2:32 MST. It had a magnitude of 5.4 and hit 147 miles east of El Paso, in the North Culberson Seismic Response Area (SRA).
The table below presents four M5 earthquakes that have occurred in the North Culberson SRA since 2020, including the recent one in February 2025. This area is heavily faulted, as previously mentioned. The two other M5 earthquakes occurred near Midland (Figure 2).
Back in the day, Ralph Bewley, an oil industry historian, wrote an entertaining account of the earthquakes in Oklahoma, featuring all the ups and downs of the situation.
Explaining the Earthquakes
The accepted explanation for the earthquakes is disposal of wastewater after fracking a well, and during oil or gas production. When drilling is intense, as it was in Oklahoma from 2009 to 2016 and is now in the Permian Basin of west Texas and New Mexico, injected volumes of wastewater become sufficient to induce earthquakes.
Wastewater builds up pressure, which works its way into a fault or pattern of faults, leading to a slip and inducing an earthquake. In 2015, Oklahoma recorded almost 900 quakes larger than M3, six times as many as in California.
The biggest was the Pawnee Earthquake which was M5.8. Fortunately, the damage was superficial, as the earth's surface in Okla was softer.
Regulators
The Permian Basin witnessed a rapid escalation of induced earthquakes since the year 2000, triggered by increased wastewater disposal, as production wells multiplied. More than 20 deep disposal wells exist in Culberson and Reeves Counties, at depths between 11,000 to 16,000 feet (i.e., below the bottom of the Wolfcamp production zone).
The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) is responsible for regulating Texas' oil and gas industry. In the Northern Culberson-Reeves SRA, regulators took the following actions (comments in capital letters to highlight them):
December 9, 2022, Revised Response Plan
On November 16, 2022, a 5.4 magnitude earthquake occurred within the Northern-Culberson Reeves Seismic Response Area (NCR SRA). In response, RRC staff and disposal well operators within the SRA took additional actions to rapidly reduce seismicity within the NCR SRA, including expanding the SRA from 2,366 to 2,601 square miles to include more disposal wells and amending the response plan to further reduce injection volumes. Operators committed to meeting the original deep disposal volume target of 298,000 barrels per day three months early and meeting a new target of 162,000 barrels per day by June 30, 2023. This represents a 68% drop in disposal volume compared to January 2022 before the plan went into effect. COMMENT: THESE ARE VERY DRASTIC ACTIONS, BUT THEY FAILED TO PREVENT AN M5.2 EARTHQUAKE THAT OCCURRED IN THIS AREA JUST 12 MONTHS LATER.
December 19, 2023 Action
*Between November 8 and December 17, 2023, the TexNet Seismic Monitoring Program reported seven (7) earthquakes in northern Culberson and Reeves Counties, with magnitudes (M) of 5.2, 3.6, 4.0, 3.6, 3.8, 3.7, and 3.9 (in order of occurrence). These are the most recent events in a continuing sequence of earthquakes that have occurred in this area over the last three years. RRC staff determined that injection into deep geologic strata—below the bottom of the Wolfcamp Formation and especially the Devonian, Silurian, and Ellenburger Formations—is likely contributing to recent seismic activity in the Northern-Culberson Reeves Seismic Response Area (NCR SRA). In response to continued seismicity within the NCR SRA, RRC suspended all disposal well permits that inject oil and gas waste into deep strata within the boundaries of the NCR SRA. This action applies to 23 deep disposal wells. The permit suspension was effective on January 12, 2024. _COMMENT: THESE ARE VERY DRASTIC ACTIONS, BUT THEY FAILED TO PREVENT AN M5.0 EARTHQUAKE THAT OCCURRED IN THIS AREA ABOUT 12 MONTHS LATER—ON FEBRUARY 14, 2025.
Ruptured Pipeline
There was slight damage caused by the M5 earthquake on February 14, 2025. A gas pipeline burst the same evening. Emergency teams extinguished the fire connected to the rupture by the next morning.
But this isn't the first ruptured gas pipeline. The first rupture happened 19 months ago, and the second was 7 months ago. These two ruptures were just 300 yards apart, and in the North Culberson SRA. The second rupture occurred on July 15, 2024. Although not connected to any M5 earthquake, a Facebook video shows what looks like a fault line in the ground nearby.
Need for Better Regulations for Drilling Oversight
These pipeline failures, and the RRC's restricted actions not being able to prevent M5 earthquakes, are cause for concern at the least. At worst, earthquakes could potentially rise to M6, becoming a significant threat to the region's population.
Attitudes surrounding this danger vary. The oil and gas industry in the Permian Basin continues to increase its production, pushing the region to a drill baby drill mode, which raises the potential for induced earthquakes due to wastewater disposal. On one hand, the threat of an M6 quake can't be ignored, as damage to gas or oil pipelines, or even buildings, is a real concern in the sparsely settled west Texas area. The Holtec nuclear waste site in New Mexico, not far from Carlsbad, would be surrounded by hundreds of oil and gas wells, making it vulnerable to earthquake damage. However, an Appeals court has, in March 2024, vacated the NRC license provided to Holtec.
On the other hand, the oil and gas industry argues that regulations should balance damage against economics and profit. Any restrictions on drilling or disposal actions may have serious economic repercussions. But this stance is weakened by the lucrative nature of the Permian industry, which in 1921 boasted an equivalent oil and gas revenue of $24 billion per year at the wellhead, assuredly an underestimate of the situation in 2025.
An experience in the UK reveals a different place and different attitudes. In 2019, a company called Cuadrilla, completing a shale-type well in Lancashire, was banned by the government from all wellsite activities because an earthquake of magnitude 2.9 was detected. In contrast to sparsely settled West Texas, dense settlement in the region of Lancashire led to the migration of local inhabitants considering the earthquake unpleasant or unsafe.
MORE FOR YOU
- Despite the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) shutting down deep saltwater disposal wells in Reeves and Culberson counties due to seismic activity, a Magnitude 5.0 earthquake still occurred in the Permian Basin in 2025.
- The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) in Texas is responsible for regulating the oil and gas industry and took drastic actions to reduce disposal volume in the North Culberson-Reeves SRA.
- The table presents four M5 earthquakes that have occurred in the North Culberson SRA since 2020, including the recent one in February 2025.
- Wastewater disposal wells, at depths between 11,000 to 16,000 feet, are associated with induced earthquakes in the Permian Basin.
- A Magnitude 5.0 earthquake struck in Toyah, Texas, on Valentine's Day, 2025, causing slight damage and a gas pipeline rupture.
- The RRC suspended all disposal well permits that inject oil and gas waste into deep strata within the boundaries of the NCR SRA, but an M5 earthquake still occurred 12 months later.
- The need for better regulations for drilling oversight is crucial, as pipeline failures and M5 earthquakes continue to occur in the North Culberson SRA and the surrounding areas.
