James Muirhead

And that's because the depth that the fault lines extend around Auckland is far shallower than where the magma bodies sit below Auckland.

So they likely wouldn't interact.

But what can happen is that if a volcanic event was triggered and magma started to rise up from the deep earth, it could get entrapped in those fault lines and then be guided along those.

And that is something of potential future exploration.

Yeah, so they extend down as far as we know, the maximum depth that these fault lines would extend would be 25 kilometres below the surface.

And at those sorts of depths, it's unlikely that we can build up enough stress to actually get this large fault movements that we get in the other shallower parts of the crust.

So with the work that we do, we don't drill the boreholes that we've got.

They weren't that deep into the ground.

Now, there are very interesting examples, particularly in the United States, in Oklahoma, where they have shale gas exploration.

They draw up gas out of the ground out of these deep boreholes.

And they draw their gas for energy use.

And fluids come up with them.

And they have to return those fluids back into the ground.

When they inject those fluids back into the ground, it drives small earthquakes.

And in Oklahoma, around about 2012 to 2014, it started to experience more earthquakes than California does.

And then around that time, the price of oil dropped, and so the amount of money available for them to basically counter legislation decreased, and then they created more restrictions around it, and the amount of earthquakes then dropped down.

So it is a very interesting example of humans interacting with tectonic processes.

Honestly, it's such a great question, but for me it feels like the stuff of science fiction.

No, not at all.

I mean, I would be interested, but I also wouldn't take any risks like that at all.