Vital Caspian Graphics - Challenges Beyond Caviar

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| | | | | Oil money threatens to make killing fields of Kazakhstan JOURNALIST STORY Paul Brown in Atyrau, Kazakhstan, The Guardian, 4 December 2002 01 |||| The Kashagan oil field has attracted widespread local environmental objections because it is right at the mouth of the Ural river, the last natural breeding ground of the famed, but endangered Beluga sturgeon, which produce the world’s most expensive caviar. Local fishermen and green groups believe exploitation of the field will cause the demise of the sturgeon. Professor Muftach Diarov, director of the Atyrau Institute of Oil and Gas, an independent geological school, believes that exploiting the field in a known seismic zone could trigger a massive earthquake. He said that the oil was under enormous pressure at temperatures of 100°C to 120°C. “This is a volatile area in geological terms. We had an earthquake here in 2000. We just don’t have enough experience working under such extreme conditions and [we don’t] know what would happen should this oil be released and a void created under such pressure. Releasing oil at 1,000 times atmosphere pressure is like releasing a genie in a bottle. Who knows what will happen? If there is another earthquake, the new pressures created in the oilfield could trigger a man-made earthquake. Oil would spill out into the sea and cause an environmental catastrophe.” ||| | | | | ||| ||| ||

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