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With the latest release by the USGS, silver production in the U.S. is now the lowest in more than 70 years. We have to go all the way back until the year after World War II ended to see U.S. silver production less than it was in 2018. While many reasons can be attributed to the decline, the main factors are falling ore grades and mine economics.
Unfortunately, there just aren’t too many economic silver deposits in the United States, especially with the high level of environmental and governmental regulations. Instead of dealing with all the bureaucracy, companies are looking to Mexico and South America to open new silver projects.
Regardless, U.S. silver production declined by more than 100 metric tons last year, or 10% in 2018, mainly due to the ongoing closure of the Lucky Friday Mine in Idaho. The Lucky Friday Mine has been shut down ever since the United Steelworkers went on strike on March 13, 2017. However, the dropoff in silver mine supply can’t all be blamed on the Lucky Friday Mine. Domestic silver production has been trending lower for the past two decades:
In 2000, the U.S. produced 63.7 million oz (1,980 metric tons) of silver compared to just 29.7 million oz (923 metric tons) last year. Thus, U.S. silver production has fallen by more than 50% in less than two decades. Silver production in the U.S. ramped up significantly during the 1990s due to the McCoy-Cove Silver Mine in Nevada. At its peak, the McCoy-Cove Mine supplied 20% of the total U.S. silver production:
I don’t have a chart of U.S. silver mine supply over the past 100 years, but I checked the USGS data, and in 1946, the country produced only 713 metric tons (mt) of silver.
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An unstoppable geyser of mud is continuously pouring from the San Andreas fault line and slowly creeping across California. The troublesome mud in California’s Imperial County has caused local authorities to declare it an emergency earlier this year.
It’s called the Niland Geyser, according to Science Alert, and it’s exactly that, a geyser of bubbling mud. But there’s a strange twist – this menacing puddle has been slowly creeping across the ground, to the point where it’s now threatening railroad tracks and a state highway. The Niland Geyser had first appeared in California in 1953 but it sat around without incident for decades. Then, around 11 years ago, things began to change. The geyser started moving across the dry ground at a glacial pace.
But now, suddenly, things are starting to get serious where the mud geyser is concerned. In the last six months, the geyser’s pace has picked up considerably. In just a few months, the Niland Geyser’s mud has traveled 18.3 meters (60 feet). It traveled another 18 meters in a single day – bringing it ever closer to Union Pacific’s railway tracks, State Route 111, a petroleum pipeline, and some fiber-optic telecommunications lines.
The mud has so far traveled roughly 73 meters (240 feet) from where it all began a decade ago. The Los Angeles Times called the mysterious mud geyser a “slow-moving disaster.” However, U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Ken Hudnut, who visited the moving spring in July, has said there’s no evidence that this is a sign that the “Big One” is approaching. “It’s a slow-moving disaster,” said Alfredo Estrada, Imperial County’s fire chief, and emergency services coordinator. But not because it could cause a massive quake.
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A massive magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the Indonesia island of Sumatra, prompting tsunami warnings across the Pacific ring of fire, according to USGS. The quake followed a smaller quake killed one person and damaged some homes.
✔#BREAKING: A magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck just minutes ago 48 miles North of Palu, Indonesia. A tsunami alert, meaning watch for updates and be ready to evacuate, is in effect for the island chain. No Tsunami Warning is in effect for the United States.
The comes after a series of earthquakes in July and August killed nearly 500 people on the island of Lombok, a popular vacation spot southwest of Sulawesi. Back in February, Mt. Sinabung erupted on the island of Sumatra, triggering mass evacuations.
Prelim M7.5 Earthquake Minahasa, Sulawesi, Indonesia Sep-28 10:02 UTC, updates https://go.usa.gov/xPWFd
The quake dredges up memories of the massive 2004 tsunami that killed 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia. Reports of the damage from Friday’s quake have not yet emerged. Tsunami warnings following the quake do not extent to the US.
There are at least 41 billion untapped barrels of crude oil in sub-Saharan Africa, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated two years ago. During the downturn, oil companies bought licenses there and waited for the price environment to improve to advance their drilling plans. Independents such as Tullow Oil and Kosmos Oil expanded on the continent alongside supermajors such as BP. Now, these drilling plans are gathering pace.
Uganda is one of the hot spots. A newcomer on the oil scene, the landlocked country has welcomed Tullow Oil, CNOOC, and Total in its oil-rich regions. The country’s government sees investments of US$15-20 billion made into its oil industry during the next three to four years and plans to build a pipeline to the Tanzanian coast and a refinery to jumpstart an oil industry, even though no oil is being produced in Uganda yet.
Senegal is another focus of attention. The SNE project, comprising three offshore blocks, might contain up to 1.5 billion barrels of crude, Australian explorer FAR, one of the partners developing the SNE, said. The partnership also includes ConocoPhillips, Cairn Energy—the operator—and Senegal’s oil company Petrosen. The final investment decision on the project is expected next year. The first phase of the project would tap an estimated 240 million barrels.
Senegal is also a potential major gas producer. Kosmos and BP—partners in the offshore gas discovery Tortue that extends into Mauritania waters—expect a final investment decision (FID) for the Greater Tortue project around the end of 2018 and are aiming for first gas in 2021.
Kenya is another African oil hopeful. First oil in Kenya was found in 2012 by Tullow Oil and in June this year the east African country even started exporting crude under a pilot scheme that would see 2,000 bpd trucked to the port city of Mombasa and stored until there is enough to be loaded on tankers and shipped abroad.
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Scientists are now saying that the “Big One” in California may not be caused by the San Andreas fault line, but by the Hayward Bay fault line. It is now thought to be the “ticking time bomb” fault line and more dangerous than the San Andres.
The scariest scenario for the next major earthquake may not be from the San Andreas Fault (though that one still threatens), but from the Hayward Fault that runs along the east side of the San Francisco Bay. In fact, many say that the next earthquake on the Hayward Bay fault line would be “disastrous.” According toKTUV, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake along the Hayward Fault could kill as many as 800 people and injure 18,000, according to results of a new research released Wednesday.
The U.S. Geological Survey, citing findings from a simulated tremor with an epicenter in Oakland, said the disaster would cause 400 fires that could destroy 50,000 homes. Nearly half a million people would be displaced, authorities said.
The simulated quake in the video above, known as the “HayWired scenario,” was modeled to occur at 4:18 p.m. on April 18 (yesterday). It replicates a rupture along the fault’s entire 52-mile length, from San Pablo Bay in the north to just east of San Jose in the south. According to this model, the violent shaking from the earthquake could cause the two sides of the fault to split six feet apart in some places. Some of the aftershocks would continue for several months as well. Cities in the East Bay would be hit hard, including Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro, and Hayward.
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The rumblings beneath the formerly dormant supervolcano known as the Yellowstone caldera just won’t quit. And The ongoing earthquake swarm at the Yellowstone National Park supervolcano is now one of the longest ever recorded, having started on June 12. The ongoing earthquake swarm at the Yellowstone National Park supervolcano is now one of the longest ever recorded, having started on June 12.
Over the past three and a half months, almost 2,500 earthquakes have been recorded in the western part of the national park. This is on par with the biggest swarm ever recorded, where more than 3,000 earthquakes took place over three months, Newsweek reports.
In its latest monthly update about activity at Yellowstone, the US Geological Survey said 115 earthquakes had been reported in the park during September. Of these, 78 were part of the ongoing swarm 6 miles north of West Yellowstone. The biggest event in the swarm last month was magnitude 2.3.
“This is the sort of work that will happen in the months to come, as we gather up all of the available data and start crunching numbers,” Poland says. “What we can say now is that through the of September, the University of Utah has located 2,475 earthquakes in the swarm. This puts the 2017 swarm on par with that of 1985, which lasted three months and had over 3,000 located events. end
“[This is] certainly a fascinating event and one that we hope to learn more about through some post-swarm analysis,”he adds. “There’s a lot to work on this winter, for sure.”
While scientists at the USGS have brushed off the threat of a supervolcano eruption, scientists at NASA have said it represents a potentially devastating threat to the US population. These same scientists have suggested several risky strategies to prevent an eruption if one appears imminent.
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Earthquakes as big as 5.0 were recorded on USGS censors placed throughout the Yellowstone region
YELLOWSTONE REGION (INTELLIHUB) — U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) seismology reports conclude that a massive swarm of earthquakes swept through the park triggering more than 60 separate events in which seismographs spiked to magnitudes of up to 5.0. Friday.
Experts fear that the supervolcano is long overdue for an eruption capable of wiping out a vast amount of human, animal, and plant life in the Continental United States.
Scientists currently believe that there’s a 10% chance that a “supervolcanic Category 7 eruption” could take place this century, as pointed out by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku who appeared on a segment for Fox News.
The grey haired physicist told Shepard Smith that the “danger” we are now facing with the caldera is that it’s long overdue for an eruption which Kaku said could “rip the guts out of the USA.”
Kaku said that a “pocket of lava” located under the park has turned out to be twice as big as scientists originally thought.
Scientist concur that the last eruption of the caldera took place some 640,000 years ago.
The U.S. is currently under contract with at least 4 countries all of which have agreed to house displaced U.S. citizens in the unfortunate event the Yellowstone supervolcano were to erupt. Hundreds of billions of dollars were paid to foreign governments to facilitate the agreement which spans a ten year period from its signing, ending in 2024.
An excerpt from an article I authored in April of 2014 titled: “Report: Brazil, Argentina and Australia sign contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars to house displaced U.S. populace when Yellowstone supervolcano erupts” reads:
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Apparently things are moving and shaking in Oklahoma, literally. In the past 8 years earthquakes in the “Sooner State” have increased from 2 a year to 2 a day. Is the expansion of gas and oil exploration during that same period of time a mere coincidence? This week on Sea Change Radio, we hear from Ole Kaven, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey. Kaven’s area of expertise is human-induced seismicity, in other words, how human activity contributes to earthquakes. He talks about the work he has been doing studying the effects of carbon sequestration on seismic events, the sharp increase in Oklahoma’s seismicity, and what the government and the public should know about how oil and gas industry practices could be making the earth move under our feet.
A new report, released Thursday from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), identified eight states in the eastern and central U.S. where fracking operations have led to dramatic increases in earthquakes, primarily from the injection of the wastewater byproduct of drilling operations into underground wells. This process can activate faults that in some cases were previously unknown.
“Earthquake activity has sharply increased since 2009 in the central and eastern United States. The increase has been linked to industrial operations that dispose of wastewater by injecting it into deep wells,” the report says bluntly, in a rebuke to the earthquake deniers in the oil and gas industry, such as fracking founder Harold Hamm, who pressured Oklahoma officials to stay silent about the connection.
While Oklahoma, Texas and Ohio have gotten much of the attention for increases in seismicity in areas where earthquakes were once rare, they aren’t the only states in danger of more and larger earthquakes. The USGS report also pointed to Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico and identified 17 zones within the eight states in particular danger from an increased number of what it calls “induced” quakes.
The report, Incorporating Induced Seismicity in the 2014 United States National Seismic Hazard Model, analyzed these seismic activity increases and developed the models to project how hazardous earthquakes could be in these in these zones, taking into account their rates, locations, maximum magnitude and ground motions.
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With a warmer atmosphere expected to spur an increase in major storms, floods, and other wild weather events, scientists and meteorologists worldwide are harnessing advanced computing power to devise more accurate, medium-range forecasts that could save lives and property.
Like a pipeline in the sky, the plume of sodden tropical air advanced mile-high above the Pacific Ocean, heading toward the California coast. This “atmospheric river” — a long, narrow band of concentrated water vapor — carried the moisture equivalent of about 15 Mississippi Rivers. When it made landfall, it dumped a massive amount of rain on the densely populated stretch of California from San Francisco to Los Angeles, unleashing floodwaters, causing landslides, and cutting off power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.
Atmospheric rivers fuel some of western North America’s most intense and destructive winter storms, and this one, slamming California last December, was a big one. But despite nearly a foot of rain in some places, damage was considerably less than it could have been, thanks to forecasts that pinpointed the storm’s course a week before it struck, giving communities time to prepare.
“I think that [forecast] was a home run,” said Mike Dettinger — a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California — who studies atmospheric rivers. “That is how we feel the forecasts ought to work for us now.”
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