Published: 06 April, 2012, 20:36

Oil pumps in operation at an oilfield near central Los Angeles on February 02, 2011 (AFP Photo/Mark Ralston)

A US Geological Survey research team says a remarkable increase in earthquake occurrence in the US in the past decade is “almost certainly man-made.”

­According to the study by USGS, oil and natural gas extraction activity have possibly provoked a series of recent earthquakes from Alabama to the Northern Rockies.

However, USGS authors did not estimate a direct cause-effect relationship between oil and gas activity and earthquakes.

“It remains to be determined how they are related to either changes in extraction methodologies or the rate of oil and gas production,” says the abstract for USGS study, published by the Seismological Society of America.

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