It was an evening of March 1933 when the Newport-Inglewood fault has ruptured uncontrollably along the Huntington Beach coast. The said phenomenon allegedly brought down several buildings and establishments from Santa Ana to Compton with Long Beach known to be particularly affected the most. Currently, a new study from the US' government scientists suggests that the said earthquake may have been caused by another factor which is common for the people of the Huntington Beach - deep drilling in an oil field.
According to The Guardian, experts have recently found a possible association between oil extraction and seismic activities near the LA basin which, in turn, doesn't necessarily apply to modern industry practices. Rather, it was found that the natural rate of earthquake occurrences in the region can actually be lowered than what has been previously calculated.
KTLA has also revealed that the study was actually written by two of the leading scientist from the US Geological Survey in Pasadena. The study, which was also set to be published in the Bulletin of Seismological Society of America on Tuesday, explains that as far as the other three earthquakes are concerned, including the magnitude 5.0 earthquake that happened in 1920 in Inglewood and in 1929 that took place in Whittier was also believed to be related to oil drilling.
On the other hand, experts highly emphasize that the study's finding does not directly imply that oil drilling is causing earthquakes in Southern California today. Furthermore, the reason of the said occurrences could be that oil drilling practices in the LA basin may have drastically changed over time since the years when oil was first discovered in this region.
Today's techniques are said to be safer and thus unlikely to trigger earthquakes as they might have done long ago. As of the present time, water is now more carefully being used to replace the pumped-out oil, which prevents land from sinking and helps extract more oil.
