Oklahoma may be only No. 12 in college football this year, but the Sooner State is now No. 1 in earthquakes.
A spokesperson for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission — a regulatory body tasked with ensuring the safety of oil and gas exploration in the state — told the Enid Rotary Club that Oklahoma now experiences more earthquakes than anywhere else on planet Earth.
"We have had 15 [earthquakes] in Medford since 5 o'clock Saturday morning," spokesman Matt Skinner said Monday, according to the Enid News. “We’ve got an earthquake issue.”
That won’t be news to most Okies. Before the fracking boom kicked off in 2008, Oklahoma experienced an average of one to two earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or higher per year. In 2014, the state was rattled by 585. As Rivka Galchen noted in The New Yorker in April, man-made earthquakes have become so common in the state, local weathermen often report the day’s seismic events along with the temperature.
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