Posted on Jul 9, 2021
Rare mud volcano explodes into towering inferno in Caspian Sea
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Impressive display
A towering inferno, hundreds of feet tall, burned above the Caspain Sea on Sunday (July 4) after a massive explosion in Azerbaijan's oil and gas fields. The culprit? A mud volcano, authorities now say.
The blast occurred around 9:30 p.m. local time (1:30 p.m. ET) around 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the Umid gas field, which is 45 miles (75 km) off the coast of Azerbaijan's capital Baku, and it continued to burn into Monday morning, according to the BBC.
Local authorities initially suspected an accident at one of the multiple oil and gas rigs in the area, but the state oil company SOCAR later announced that preliminary investigations had deemed the cause of the explosion to be a mud volcano, and that none of its platforms had been damaged, according to The Guardian.
A towering inferno, hundreds of feet tall, burned above the Caspain Sea on Sunday (July 4) after a massive explosion in Azerbaijan's oil and gas fields. The culprit? A mud volcano, authorities now say.
The blast occurred around 9:30 p.m. local time (1:30 p.m. ET) around 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the Umid gas field, which is 45 miles (75 km) off the coast of Azerbaijan's capital Baku, and it continued to burn into Monday morning, according to the BBC.
Local authorities initially suspected an accident at one of the multiple oil and gas rigs in the area, but the state oil company SOCAR later announced that preliminary investigations had deemed the cause of the explosion to be a mud volcano, and that none of its platforms had been damaged, according to The Guardian.
Rare mud volcano explodes into towering inferno in Caspian Sea
Posted from livescience.com
Azerbaijan
Energy
Oil
Natural Disaster
Edited >1 y ago
Posted >1 y ago
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1LT Voyle Smith
That’s a good idea! It could run over Swamp creatures and fly over the debris and never even slow from its cruising speed of 350 kts.
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The Caspian Sea is a very strange place. Actually an inland lake, it’s fed by the Volga River but has no outflow, resulting in a salinity of about one-third that of salt water. Its depth ranges from 14 feet to over 3300 feet. During the Cold War, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained imagery of a strange-looking vehicle on the surface of the Sea; it resembled a jet aircraft with short stubby wings. Dubbed the Caspian Sea Monster, it was eventually found to be an “Ektranoplan”, a surface-effect vehicle that flies over the surface of the water. It was an experimental design for the Soviet Navy. Abandoned when the Soviet Union collapsed, the hulk lay dormant for three decades, but recently has been revived with plans to incorporate it into a museum in the city of Baku, and smaller versions are now being planned for the cruise industry in Russia.
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