On December 6, 2018, Express.co.uk, and with them a lot of other resources, devoted materials to the next “anniversary” eruption of Steamboat Geyser, which broke all records and now erupts almost regularly, like clockwork.
Geologists giving interviews make round eyes and express concern, but assure that everything is normal in the caldera and everything is within normal limits. However, access to the Steamboat geyser is closed for an unknown reason and for an indefinite period.
We have devoted a lot of materials to Yellowstone, we are closely following it and, in our (and not only our) opinion, a giant steam explosion is outlined in the caldera. Seismic activity in this area is increasing (there were 126 official earthquakes in November), new geysers appear, while the old ones are gradually losing water and no longer shoot boiling water, but stones. Rocks are cracking, huge areas of the park are closed to the public - in general, all the signs of a steam explosion are evident.
However, as it turns out now, some particularly cool American guys can no longer wait and therefore decided to speed up the process a little. Who are these guys?
This map shows the main gas fields developed around the caldera. If you place a compass in the center of Lake Yellowstone and draw a circle with a radius of 200 kilometers, then almost all of the above deposits fall into it. At the same time, the deposits closest to the caldera fall into a circle with a radius of less than 100 kilometers.
For example, a gas field at the head of the Green River:
Promotional video:
Or, for example, a gas field near the town of Livingston:
Note that we measure the distance from the center of the lake to this or that settlement, but if we measure from the extreme tower to the caldera to the edge of the caldera, the distance will be tens of kilometers less.
Further, we note once again that the above picture of the “caldera rim” (red line) is actually a picture drawn as if from a lantern, since no one knows for sure the real boundaries of the caldera and from time to time the USGS publishes frightening messages about that in Yellowstone there is not one magma chamber, but several and these chambers go far beyond the edges of the caldera.
At the same time, the plume under any hot spot has a diameter of hundreds of kilometers, and therefore it seems that it is he who is responsible for the appearance in this area of various kinds of "gas deposits"
Most likely, the reader will have a question: so what is it that someone is developing gas fields above the plume? For the lithosphere, a borehole is less than a mosquito bite.
The question is correct and completely logical, so we explain.
a) Firstly, when gas and oil are produced, not one well is drilled, but a whole package of several dozen pieces. So if you don't feel the bite of a small mosquito, a swarm of termites will surely cause blisters and other anxiety.
b) Secondly, and this is the most important thing, the problem is not in the production of natural gas itself, but in the method of its production. If in Yakutia, for example, it is enough to drive a pipe into the ground and the oil will be trampled from there with a fountain, then there will be no fountain at most of the US fields. Gas and oil are produced there by the method of so-called fracking or hydraulic fracturing.
Fracking technology is the injection of a fracturing fluid (the so-called proppant) into a well using powerful pumping stations - usually a solution of one or another acid, which not only expands, but also corrodes the rock. So what the result of hydraulic fracturing just above the caldera is hard to imagine.
The above deposits have been developed in Montana and Wyoming for a long time, it all started far from yesterday. But the problem is that sooner or later old wells come to an end, as a result new ones creep stubbornly. And since the American "Gazprom" produces, in fact, volcanic gas released by the plume that forms Yellowstone, the only thing left for new wells to crawl is to the center of the caldera.
The issue of new mining concessions arose in the summer of last year, which generated a storm of protests from local environmentalists. Environmentalists can be understood: when a proppant is pumped into the ground under enormous pressure, natural gas, that is, methane, begins to flow from all cracks to the surface in a huge area, from which the grass withers and the birds die.
Nevertheless, the issue of drilling new wells was resolved positively and the companies started developing the field sometime in January of this year, after which something like the following began:
In other words, microearthquakes seemed to creep from the edges of the caldera and began to spread along the periphery, which throughout the year baffled all sofa volcanologists. In theory, the shaking should have been closer to the main lake of the park, because the center of the plume is somewhere there. But the epicenters of all these strange seismic events were not clear where. More precisely, it is not unclear where - but precisely in the directions of the developed gas fields.
As everyone can see today, the seismic situation in the world is not very good, the lithosphere is increasingly reacting to some approaching global events. Perhaps this will be the passage of Nibiru, perhaps some processes have begun in the core of the Earth. Yellowstone, as part of the world's volcanic system, also reacts to all this. But, as it was already noted above, some serious American guys decided not to wait for the general End of the World and confidently continue to dig deeper and further.