Rare mud volcano explodes into towering inferno in Caspian Sea
By Harry Baker - Staff Writer 22 days ago
The enormous flames were visible from the mainland.
The explosion caused by a mud volcano on July 4 in the Caspian Sea. (Image credit: Gavriil GrigorovTASS via Getty Images)
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 mud volcano erupting at Gobustan National Park near Baku (Image credit: Shutterstock)
Mud volcanoes are a rare type of volcano that erupt a superheated slurry of mud and water instead of lava, which means they don't get as hot as regular volcanoes. However, they also contain high concentrations of natural gases that build up inside them, which can be ignited by sparks created by fast-moving rocks and boulders beneath the surface during eruptions. This is believed to be what caused the recent inferno in the Caspian Sea.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/caspian-sea-explosion-mud-volcano.html
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