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Vacation At "The Door To Hell," Enjoy View To Burning Gas Crater!
Submitted by Ky Krauthammer via OilPrice.com,
The cosmopolitan delights of Azerbaijan’s boomtown capital Baku are well known to international oil industry types, so it’s not surprising that the authoritarian country is heavily promoting itself as a tourist destination. With endless beaches, ancient ruins, snowcapped mountains and the chance of glimpsing the critically endangered Caucasian leopard, the country has plenty to offer visitors. Add mud volcanoes to the mix, and Azerbaijan begins to look like paradise for jaded travelers.
Mud volcanos -- typically, small conical mounds that bubble up a clayey slurry -- aren’t as spectacular as Etna or Mount St. Helens, but they are safer to view – normally – and Azerbaijan has more of them than any other country: 344, according to Adil Aliyev of the Geology Institute of Azerbaijan, co-author of “What Do We Know About Mud Volcanoes?”
The most popular place to see mud volcanoes is Gobustan National Park, about 37 miles from Baku. Famous for its ancient petroglyphs, Gobustan is also dotted with small mud volcanoes that can be viewed close up. These geological oddities are generally well-behaved but can occasionally erupt in magnificent bursts of flame. The Lokbatan volcano near Baku belched fire hundreds of feet into the air in 2001, and its 2012 eruption left a layer of mud spread over an area of two hectares, according to the Geology Institute.
Across the Caspian, another energy-rich former Soviet republic is trying to shake off its reputation as one of the world’s most isolated and repressive countries. Tourism, though, is in its infancy in Turkmenistan. The brand-new luxury hotels of the Avaza beach resort complex, complete with artificial river, are mostly empty, and it’s a bit disconcerting that the government’s official resort website is a dead link.
Tourists are few, but Turkmenistan swarms with oil and gas experts from all over, especially China, which the two countries recently announced will up its annual gas purchases to 65 billion cubic meters a year by 2016. Turkmenistan is thought to have the fourth largest gas reserves in the world, and the Galkynysh field that will supply China is the second largest after the South Pars field in the Persian Gulf.
And for adventurous tourists, Turkmenistan offers something even more spectacular than mud volcanoes: a “Door to Hell.” Set amid the bleak Karakum Desert, this attraction near the village of Derweze, or Darvaza, dates to the 1970s when a sinkhole opened beneath a test well drilled by Soviet geologists. Gas just beneath the surface ignited and has been burning merrily ever since. The ever-burning flames can be invisible by day, but at night they create a truly eerie sight, lighting up the desert for miles around like a giant witches’ cauldron big enough to swallow an office block.
Source: Wikipedia
Several local tour operators arrange trips to the crater. Accommodation is in tents, and the evening entertainment consists of, “Enjoy view to burning gas crater” followed next day by “enjoy morning view to burning gas crater.”
But that’s not all, according to one travel agency, which claims that the crater by night “becomes an attraction for huge and largely harmless spiders that run into the fire for reasons best known to themselves.” Presumably they run out again, or you’d think they’d be extinct by now. Could Derweze and its spiders have inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to create Shelob, the humongous spider in “Lord of the Rings” who guards the way into the land of Mordor and the fiery pit of Mount Doom? Since Tolkien died in 1973, it seems unlikely.
But in the land whose late dictator erected a 50-ft golden statue of himself, anything is possible.
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I didn't know Lloyd Blankfein's house had pictures available on the internet. Neat! Where's the pool?
Now that's funny.
There be dragons.
I thought the "Door to Hell" was the entrance to the White House.
Nope, it's here:
http://www.history.com/images/media/slideshow/washington-dc/district-of-...
No, the door to hell is inbetween Hitlery's legs. Uggg.
Now I know why Slick Willy loves his cigars so much.
I thought the "Door to Hell" was the entrance to the White House.
Nope.....it's here.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/130130035540-federal-reserve-b...
Azerbaijan Tourisism Slogan:
Okay...so never mind that you'll probabaly end up kidnapped by some wack-job Al Quaida radical islam mooslim-types who'll chop your head off and eat your heart out of your chest while filming it for the YouTubes. Come to Azerbaijan and stick your face in our volcanos!!!
I'll pass, bitchez
Since Tolkien died in 1973, it seems unlikely.
It would behoove one to not underestimate the capacities of Mr. Tolkien.
And they want to carbon tax us to death and keep the lights off and this thing including oil wells and vulcano's are chuck how much carbon per year???
Volcanos are less than 1% of anthropogenic emissions....
Any idea how much they flare in the Bakken compared to the this curious sideshow?
Edit: As seen from space http://aleklett.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/bakken1.jpg
Error 404. File not found. Do you have another link?
Damn... its a legit link from here
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2013/01/julia-sklar-...
and many other places...
Just google "Bakken Flaring from Space"....
That is what I ended up doing. I wasn't certain if that's what you were trying to link to though. It is a stunning picture.
Sorry, Flak those are the lights from Metropolitan Bismarck, ND. See, the tremendous economic and population growth is now rivaling the likes of L.A. or NYC.
Looks like you forget to close the sarcasm environment....
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/600-new.jpg
http://www.aei-ideas.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/bakken1.jpg
http://www.greenprophet.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Bakken-from-space...
Jumbotron,
Looks like Bakken is in Canaduh.
Thank God for that Co2 that every green plant on Earth depends on for its life. Apprx. 6% of the total food supply we've able to grow in the last 30 years has been due to the slightly increased Atmosphere content of this minor trace gas. Of course, it had no effect on global temperature at all; there was never any rational mechanism by which it could. Nice try by the UN tho. to increase their power and influence; not to mention governments who jumped on the "let's tax this !!" Bandwagon. You really have to feel sorry for anyone stupid enough to buy the propaganda for negative co2 effects. Like You.
Pity about details like this...
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/05/rising-co2-poses-significa...
As for the rest of your ravings, hell, even Denialista poster boy Roy Spencer knows you are full of shit re: C02:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/01/top-ten-skeptical-arguments-that-d...
The irony is palpable...
even more ironic is that agricultural land area is much higher than 15k years ago when the great plains were buried under a glacier
Ironic, how so?
you must not have taken the time to read his post.
answer this question: why do people burn wood stoves inside greenhouses?
Answer this question:
What fucking relevance does your post have?
Total horse manure, flackmeister. Due specifically to the rise in harmless, beneficial CO2, the biosphere has been measurably greening. Poor people are alive today directly due to the increase in CO2.
I understand that your religious cult cannot accept that. Fortunately, your influence is waning. About time, too. The money wasted on the "carbon" scam could have fed millions.
Any more gems that you can pull out of your ass?
That is exactly the type of fact-free reply I get from the ignorant, when I post verifiable scientific evidence.
Our planet is measurably greening due directly to the rise in harmless, beneficial CO2 ["carbon" to the ignoratii]. More CO2 is better, and the beneficial warming it causes is too minuscule to measure.
Global warming stopped more than 17 years ago, but the 'carbon' scare has colonized your mind. Once that happens, there is little hope. You have my sympathy.
stay in your little, closed-minded world SAT 800.
don't worry. the architects will assure your transformation process goes smoothly.
stop resisting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2nUdpY_Utg
I'll pay a carbon tax when the "volcanoes" pay. Until then, "bite me!"
But in a way you already do given the outrageous subsidies via the tax code enjoyed by the oil and gas industry...
...would be there, carbon tax or not, carbon fallacy or not...
...but if the government werent interested in another source of tax revenue, they never would have subsidized the grants that conjured the poor GCMs in the first place.
on yet another day we see more news of some report being rejected for being damaging to the cause...
For shits and giggles, when was the first GCM created?
Volcanos are illegal.
I'd like to start a volcano. Is there already a special US Department for that matter?
Getting through the permit/zoning reviews will be a bitch.
Yeah - and this fire was set deliberately in 1971 by scientists ('experts', no doubt) to burn off the gas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_to_Hell
"Gobustan"---LOL. Cracked me up. I guess they one-upped go-broke-ville. Love the mud volcanoes. good place to send the 13 million illegal aliens. they can make mud pies.
ha ha , classic !!!
a "sunspot" on earth - where's the EPA to close it down ?
"where's the EPA to close it down ?"
Out forcibly preventing people from gathering rain water or making ponds on private property.
wow a cool place to throw bankers and goverment workers in
Kali Ma Shakti de.
Indy, cover your heart!
umnum Shiva, umnum Shiva.
My older brother used to do that Mola Ram shit to me. Man that was torture. Now I do it to my kids. :)
pods
"...mommy can i throw a banker in the fire? Please mommy please please..."
So this is where central bankers come from?
No, it's where their going
My guillotine called dibs first.
If that was in the U.S. there would be a perimeter fence a mile away and a bunch of Blackwater thugs to make sure you payed your $50.00 to view the flaming mud... Oh there would also be 4-500 hundred lawyers surrounding the crater in case someone falls in after signing 100 pages of indemnification Docs.
I hear it's a lot of fun to bring your babe to the rim of it in a Bikini and talk shit about Mohammed together over a picnic lunch of pork rinds and Jack Daniels.
One of the few (okay the only) instances where we fucked up the planet and left something pretty cool behind.
Engali; the lands around Baku are naturally soaked like a sponge with it, have been since times immemorial. Pools and lakes of fire there were legendary before Islam, before Christianity.
a tent to boot.....I am in...the hot dogs must be great...marsmellows too...you need to bring your own stick...no trees for miles..actually countries
Not too sure about the giant singed spiders tho.; don't care for that part.
Don't worry, they are "largely" harmless. I'm not quite sure what that means, but I'll just go ahead and keep my distance.
Relax - it's just the Earth farting...
Habanero chilli for dinner or chronic indigestion.
Minor correction. The gas WAS ignited by the geologists, who thought it would burn out quickly.
my appologies, cannot see your post for some reason, only your avatar.
Baku has its origins as a sacred ground for the Zoroastrians; who worshipped the Sun and some of whom maintain to this day shrines where fires burn for centuries. The Zoroastrians predate Islam and represent the true essence of Persia; not the mullahs who are by comparison snakes.
Iizards worship the Sun. Zorastrians represent the basic, unchanging, fundamental stupidity and massive ignorance of the human race.
Sat 800 you are half correct. Lizards have been around a long time; maybe they know something we don't. They will also be here long after we have burned through Mother Earth's goodwill; which is not boundless.
you don't have to got that far to see a natural gas flame occuring in nature.
in upstate new york there is a surface natural gas seep that is flaming. it's not a drilling site either.
non-man made natural gas seeps on the surface are rare but do exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Flame_Falls
stop bitching about fracking bitches.
Godzilla's toilet.
I thought that was Detroit.
Yeah, make fun while you can. Now that they bought it all up for pennies on the dollar, don't be surprised if they make Detroit the next global hotspot.
I don't see any of the "stans" becoming anyplace that tourists are going to willfully go to. Well, at least until the US stops bombing brown skinned people for trying to trade oil in something other than dollars.
pods
are there no more virgins to be sacrificed?
One upvote, one downvote; I'm satisfied
The local village of Derweze of 250 people was closed and relocated in 2004 . . .
Because it was thought too unattractive to tourists visiting the gas crater.
Perfect. Flaming asshole of the Earth=Good; people living in village=Bad. Can't put anything over on those government leaders; they're really smart, alright.
this is hardly f**king news
so what? what other blog out there can you swear like a sailor, get up voted for it and not get banned?
ZH fucking rocks!!!!!
You come here for the swearing?
it will hold us over until the Ukraine fully implodes, the news thereof
http://en.itar-tass.com/world/731932
...for your fix.
fracking the nat gas in Al Gore's manner.
We should chip in and send Al Gore a ticket to the fire pit tour; maybe his head would explode at all the Co2 going in the air. What a relief that would be.
Forget the tourists, that would be a great place to sacrifice WS Banksters.
Actually, there could be tourism in that as well.
Shouldn't there be a bunch of kids running up throwing stuff into the fire? Where are all the bottles, cans and Twinkees wrappers?
Nobody in Fuck-Buma-Stan can afford a bottle of anything; much less a Twinkee. Makes for a nice clean landscape.
Isn't Turkmenistan the place where the dictator renamed Monday after his dead Mom? Sorry, I'll take my vacation on Bora Bora...
Where the hell is Evil Kneivel when you need him?!?!
Why don't they put it out? Just fill it in and smother it with dirt then they can sell the unburned gas.
Ha, Ha, Ha
The little people are funny, funny, funny. Its so easy to laugh at the child-like little people of the former Soviet republic as it is trying to shake off its reputation as one of the world’s most isolated and repressive countries. How absurd to watch them drop the articles from their silly translations. We should be allowed to have one of them as slave so we can laugh at them, poke at them, and later harvest their organs.
This will be Pennsylvania in a couple years...
The Real Gates to Hell:
whitehouse jpegs
Will you be able to tour the thousands of Armenians they killed in Baku in the 1990's?
While walking in a city in Japan, I suddenly had a feeling of peace and tranquility and then appeared a Japanese Zen temple; a contract job required my walking by the Whitehouse daily for a number of weeks, each time I passed it, I could sense a eerie feeling of evil and wickedness that was VERY palpable...
Def, climate changer heating things up in the Azeri desert.
Let's just throw some banksters in and see what happens.
Beautiful!
Now toss the Clintons and Bushes in.
eye vud say A small ooooo.666 kiloton nuclear switch plasma lock invert device low yield like world trade centre 1 and 2.
a suite case device thrown flung into the heat vortex central swollow hole followed by a 40 secs run for the hills dash should put this baby out.
good night satanick light
I imagine an NSA crawler bot probably just spaffed everwhere after skimming that post. Lol.
I would fill the suitcase full of shitty paper. I have it on good authority the Chinese are considering this option and are in a hurry to do so before Mr Krugman caps the site with a giant $1T coin.
hmm....
Build a damn closed loop steam powered electric generation plant there.
The fire started during a Michael Jackson 'I am bad' tour.
Turkmenistan is a country known by relatively few but will be in the future; the country has more proven reserves of natural gas than US.
It is already well known in a fashion to anyone following hydrocarbon flows...
Ya think lighting that baby was on accident? Jobob and Akmed just lost the drilling equipment. Jobob looks over at Akmed and says this day cant get any worse and gives Akmed a cigarette. FFFFOOOOOMMMM.