I stumbled across a fascinating story. Apparently, there are a number of areas of coastal California that for some time have been experiencing “hot spots”, smoldering, underground fires:
Deep beneath the surface, a fire continues to burn and smolder years after authorities discovered the underground blaze. In August 2008, gusts of smoke broke through the ground, prompting firefighters to clear brush from the hot spot and call in experts for answers.
Geologists and other scientists investigated, trying find the cause of what officials first called “a thermal anomaly,” said Bill Nash, a spokesman with the Ventura County Fire Department.
“We’ve met with a number of people on it, really trying to figure out what it is,” he said.
They prodded and tested the ground and the smoke and decided the fire likely started in an oil seam. What exactly ignited the blaze and how long it will last are less clear.
“It’s been there for a long time, and it’s just something we’re going to have to continue to monitor,” Nash said.
It’s not the only one under Ventura County. In 2004, a patch of land northwest of Ojai grew hot enough to start a brush fire, burning 3 acres in the Los Padres National Forest. The spot has since been cooling off.
“It was hot enough to actually ignite some of the local vegetation there,” said Scott Minor, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver. “When the firefighters came in to put it out, they realized it wasn’t just wood burning. It was actually this hot gas coming out of the ground, which could not really be put out.”
I’m no petroleum engineer but it seems to me that any patch of oil or gas that can burn continuously for four years should be investigated thoroughly and, possibly, removed for, er, safekeeping. If it’s a NIMBY issue it’s a very strange one. It’s already in their backyard. The question is whether it will burn uncontrolled, possibly springing up in inhabited areas to burn homes and businesses, or burn under more controlled conditions.
Michael needs to stop playing with matches.
Seriously, strange phenomenon. I’m surprised there is sufficient oxygen to support combustion.
As a child I remember visiting Northeastern PA and learning about the fires that still burned underground in some of the abandoned mines.
@Doug
I was about to say. See, Centralia, Pa.: How an underground coal fire erased a town
The difference between coal mines in Pennsylvania and oil/gas deposits in Southern California is that, ironically, unless I very much misunderstand what’s being suggested as the cause, fracking would actually solve an existing environmental problem.
I think I saw television coverage of the underground coal mine fires that sam links to. What struk me was not so much how long the fires had been burning, as much as the residents who’ve refused to leave because of loyalty to a memory of a community that no longer exists.
Folks may not know it, but Southern California sits, or anyway, used to sit, on an ocean of oil. See, 1892: L.A. Strikes it Rich with Oil. There’s still a rig pumping oil in Beverly Hills.
It’s impossible to have visited Long Beach and not be aware of it. IIRC it used to be the busiest oil port in the world.
My understanding is that there’s still plenty of oil in Southern California but oil production has run afoul of environmental concerns. To some degree this is a classic California north-south problem. Northern California greens stand athwart continuing development of Southern California’s oil shouting “Stop!”
… fracking would actually solve an existing environmental problem.
Is it necessarily an environmental problem if it is a naturally occurring phenomenon? It’s like the oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico – they just ARE. Inconvenient for other parts of the environment, perhaps….