A few weeks back, The Oklahoman reported that yet another oil company has settled yet another earthquake-related lawsuit:
A settlement has been reached between two Oklahoma oil and natural gas companies and a Prague resident injured in the magnitude 5.7 earthquake in 2011, the woman's lawyer confirmed Thursday.
Sandra Ladra filed the suit against Tulsa-based New Dominion LLC; Cleveland, OK-based Spess Oil Co.; and 25 other unnamed companies. Ladra asked for more than $75,000 in actual damages, plus punitive damages.
Details of the settlements were not disclosed.
From there, The Oklahoman tl;drs through the boring legal history of earthquake lawsuits and how they've moved through the courts. For some reason that obviously has nothing to do with the paper being a shill for the oil industry, the article didn't mention a couple of important facts:
1. Oklahoma's had over 250 magnitude 3.0 or higher earthquakes in 2017. Although that's a drop from the record 887 in 2015, it's still a little bit higher than the annual average of 1.6 from 1978 - 1999.
2. Austin Holland – the former seismologist for the Oklahoma Geological Survey – recently claimed in sworn deposition that he and other OGS scientists were reprimanded by superiors, and even threatened with frivolous lawsuits from oil companies, for not following the company line and turning a blind eye when it came to studying the Oklahoma earthquake epidemic: