MUD VOLCANO

Volcanoes and volcanic eruptions are words we associate with enormous release of earth's energy, which results in a change to the face of the Earth. They usher us back to distant ages when the Earth was a lifeless planetary body when fire and water raged.

Everyone today knows about burning volcanoes made of magma with its liquid or molten rock. Scores of films have documented their activities, as have hundreds of books, and thousands of scientific papers. This is only natural since magmatic volcanoes are not only exotic phenomena, but they also provide a view deep into the interior of the Earth which is virtually inaccessible to us by any other method.

"Mud volcanoes," also known as "sedimentary volcanoes" or "gas - oil volcanoes," are close cousins to magmatic volcanoes. Just like magmatic volcanoes, they can erupt powerfully and hurl flames to great heights (sometimes even several hundred of meters). They spew out millions of cubic meters of hydrocarbon gases and tons of mud. Mud volcanoes also exist on the floor of the sea and can form islands and banks that alter the topography and shape of the coastline and even trigger earthquakes.

Another feature of mud volcanoes is their direct relationship to oil and gas fields. Mud volcanoes resemble super-deep exploration wells in the sense that they are direct indicators of hydrocarbons at great depths and provide valuable information on the formation and migration of oil and gas. Both mud volcanoes and hydrocarbon fields are the result of a single process of oil and gas formation, which has a characteristic vertical zone with methane gas forming in younger strata, overlying a zone of intense formation of oil and fatty gases.

Mud volcanoes are essentially channels for releasing pressurized gas and mineral water, sometimes with traces of oil, together with associated mud from great depths (8 12km) and depositing them on the surface of the earth where they form mounds ranging from 5 to 500m high. In both appearance and behavior, they outwardly resemble a magmatic volcano. The explosive release of pent-up gases combined with the burning of hydrocarbon gases adds to this similarity. But, unlike their magmatic cousins, which carry molten rock or larva or enormous heat to the surface, mud volcanoes are at ambient temperature and may even be cool.

Volcanoes are characterized by a constant activity of domes, gryphons (cones) and salses (pools). Some are dry in nature; others, wet. Normally they don't form distinctive volcano shapes as magmatic volcanoes do. Rather, they just flow down into the surrounding plains. They often peak at about 10 20 m but can spread across a surface of several kilometers.

Because of the softness of the rock, mud volcanoes on a geological timescale are considered to be rather ephemeral. The mud or breccia quickly erodes with wind and rain into systems of gulleys and ridges fanning out from the crater margins. Indeed a tell-tale sign of a mud volcano is its deeply grooved and often very attractive flanks. Mud volcanoes in the sea, of course, erode quickly with wave action.

Mud volcanoes are often created at points of weakness in the Earth's crust, along fault lines. They are associated with geologically young sedimentary deposits and the presence of organic gas from hydrocarbon deposits. Worldwide there are some 700 known mud volcanoes.

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