A rogue mag
6. 5 quake which struck Botswana yesterday is becoming quite a mystery!
A strange place for a major quake to occur I don’t ever remember reporting a major quake anywhere near here before, there is also no region summary or history available for this location on USGS which would suggest the area has no history of major quakes, or minor quakes for that matter.
Why is it called a rogue quake?
Why is it called a rogue quake?
Quite
simply because the major quake struck more than 2,000 miles away in any
direction from a major fault line.
Secondly there
is almost no previous history of quake activity in Botswana large or small, you
have to go all the way back to April 2002 when a mag 4.5 struck 150 km from Gaborone
and even further back to February 1993 when a mag 4.3 struck 120 km from Gaborone
So what
could have caused the rogue quake?
An eagle
eyed Gary W. Long sent me link on my Facebook page suggesting the quake could have been caused by fracking, I have posted a snippet
below dated , 2nd of December 2015.
Botswana sells fracking rights in national park
Licences for more than half of the Kgalagardi Tran frontier park, one of Africa’s largest conservation areas, have been granted to drill for shale gas
The Botswana government has quietly sold the rights to frack for shale gas in one of Africa’s largest protected conservation areas, it has emerged.
The Kgalagardi trans frontier park, which spans the border with South Africa, is an immense 36,000 sq. km wilderness, home to gemsbok desert antelope, black-manned Kalahari lions and pygmy falcons. But conservationists and top park officials – who were not informed of the fracking rights sale – are now worried about the impact of drilling on wildlife.
Prospecting licences for more than half of the park were granted to a UK-listed company called Nodding Donkey in September 2014, although the sale has not been reported previously. That company changed its name earlier this month to Karoo Energy.
Link to full story
If this
quake was caused by fracking it is one hell of a powerful quake!
