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Geology News
China Current Events

Thirty-three miners were rescued from a flooded mine in Jiaxian County, Henan Province, China. The miners are said to have been working in an unauthorized area of the mine.

China National Petroleum Corporation has reached an agreement with North Oil, an Iraqi-owned company, to develop the Adhab Oil Field, located southeast of Baghdad.

Heavy rains have caused flooding and landslides in parts of China and Vietnam. Nearly 200 people have been reported dead or missing.

China and Russia have discussed a pipeline between Siberia and northeastern China for years. Now they have an agreement.

Fossils of an eight-limbed sea creature have been found in both shale in China and quartz in Australia. Research indicates that the creature, called Eoandromeda octobrachiata, could have lived over 300 million years prior to the first dinosaurs.

Zhai Zhigang made China’s first spacewalk on Saturday. It was a thirteen minute venture in space, broadcast live on Chinese television. The spacecraft and crew of three landed in Inner Mongolia later that day.

The current recession has lowered the demand for zinc and lead. That, combined with increased zinc and lead production in China has resulted in large price drops for both of these metals. The new lower prices are eliminating lots of mining jobs in other parts of the world.

Several hundred people are thought to have died in China when a dam holding mining waste and sludge collapsed, sending a landslide of debris into a nearby village.

Tropical storm Kammuri has caused flash flooding and landslides in the Yunnan province of southwestern China. 28 fatalities have been reported, and over 10,000 people have evacuated their homes.

China’s Sichuan province has experienced several more earthquakes in the past week. A magnitude 6.2 quake on August 5th has caused at least two fatalities and 22 injuries. It occurred just hours after the Olympic torch relay passed through Sichuan.

USGS reports: Magnitude 5.7 on August 1, 6.2 on August 5, and 4.8 on August 6.

China National Petroleum Corporation is considering to take minority ownership stakes in some of the Marcellus Shale and Fayetteville Shale properties that will be offered by Chesapeake Energy.

More information on Marcellus Shale.

Indian Oil is losing about $76 million dollars per day because the government there sets a cap on the prices it can charge. As a result it is now selling below cost and loses money on every sale.

This parallels the problems experienced by PETROCHINA.

You don’t hear much about oil companies cutting jobs these days but PetroChina is going to lay off 5% of their workforce because of lower profits.

Typhoon Fung Wong is approaching China and is expected to make landfall in the Fujian Province. Over 250,000 people have been evacuated from coastline areas in anticipation of the storm.

Sailing events of the 2008 Summer Olympics begin on August 9th near China’s coastal town of Qungdao. The area has recently been swamped with huge floating mats of algae. About 20,000 people and 1000 boats have been mustered to clean up the algae in time for the sailing events.

This GEOTIMES article features the karst topography in the Guilin area of China. The author recommends combining a trip to the Olympic Games with some geological sightseeing.

China is moving to limit the number of people who visit Mount Everest. Garbage and corpses left on the mountain do not decompose in the cold environment, and can contaminate runoff waters.

A steep slope in loess collapsed in China’s Shanxi Province and killed 19 workers at a brick factory.

Engineers in China have successfully drained the landslide-dammed Tangjiashan Lake which formed during the May 12 earthquake. They were able to dig a drainage channel through the landslide debris and route the water through it. Earth Observatory has satellite images of the draining lake and a flood wave that went through the area a couple of days after the lake was drained.

Earth Observatory has a short article and satellite image pair related to draining water from Tangjiashan Lake which formed during the May 12 earthquake. Engineers face a tricky situation in that they must drain enormous amounts of water through landslide debris without triggering rapid erosion. To drain a significant amount of water from the lakes the channel must also downcut through the debris.

More on the China Earthquake of May 12, 2008

Water supplies for about 200,000 people in the Guangxi Province of southwestern China were threatened when a truck hauling 33.6 tons of crude phenol overturned and spilled the chemical into the Zhesang River.

The May 12th earthquake in China triggered many large landslides that dammed rivers and streams. These produced many lakes behind unstable earthen dams that might be easily eroded when overtopped. Tangjiashan Lake is considered to be one of the most dangerous.

China Earthquake Updates

Supply and demand is part of what drives oil prices. Representatives from the main oil consuming nations (United States, China, Japan, India and South Korea) urged oil producers to increase their rate of output.

Low quality construction in residences, schools and other buildings contributed significantly to the number of deaths in China’s May 12th earthquake.

Eastern Sichuan, China Earthquake Updates

With economic uncertainties almost everywhere else, Australia is looking forward to a strong growth in new jobs. Situated as a relatively close source of minerals for developing markets in India and China, the Australian mineral industries are going strong.

Geologist Career Page

Jim Jubak thinks that oil prices are being held at their current high levels in part by subsidized energy prices in India and China. Consumers there are not seeing the price increases because the government and regulated oil companies are absorbing the cost.

News articles, videos, satellite images and maps related to the eastern Sichuan, China earthquake of May 12, 2008.

Authorities in China gave evacuation orders to 200,000 people living downstream from Tangjiashan Lake which formed after earthquake-triggered landslides blocked a river. Waters threaten to breach the natural earth dam. Dozens of landslide lakes were formed during the earthquake.

Thousands of small earthquakes occur every day, but only a few cause mass destruction. Learn about nine of the world’s most damaging earthquakes, such as the quake in Shensi, China, 1556; California, U.S.A., 1906; Alaska, U.S.A., 1964; Peru, 1970; Tangshan, China, 1976; Mexico City, 1985; Bam, Iran, 2003; Sumatra, Indonesia, 2004; and Kashmir, Pakistan, 2005.

This magnitude 5.8 aftershock occurred at about 4:00 PM Sunday. USGS reports that it is amoung the most powerful aftershocks of the May 12 earthquake.

In a July 2007 edition of the journal Tectonics, scientists reported that Sichuan was due for a major earthquake.

Links to six more news stories and one new video. Stories include:

• Landslides form 21 unstable dams.
• Distribution of aftershock epicenters.
• Schools at risk.
• Survivors still being found in the rubble.
• ABC News Earthquake Photo Gallery

Charities have a name for it… “Disaster Fatigue”…. When one disaster after another hits, the ability and willingness of some people to donate are significantly reduced. Charities believe that the problem is happening from the close proximity of Cyclone Nargis and the China Earthquake.

This image is a USGS plot of epicenters of the main shock and the after shocks for the Sichuan, China earthquake. The spread of epicenters along the fault is an indication of the tremendous strain accumulated prior to rupture.

Dangerous cracks have been discovered in he Zipingku Dam, located about five kilometers upstream from the earthquake damaged community of Dujiangyan.

Map of China

Information on the Eastern Sichuan, China magnitude 7.9 earthquake from USGS, newspapers and online news sources.

Aftershocks continued to occur in western China through Tuesday, May 13, when a magnitude 5.9 tremor shook Sichuan’s capital of Chengdu at 3:10 PM local time. Almost 2,000 aftershocks have occurred in the earthquake-prone area since Monday, and are hindering rescue efforts.

The 7.9 magnitude earthquake early today in China is thought to have killed an estimated 10,000 people. It destroyed small towns north of Sichuan’s provincial capital of Chengdu. It was felt as far away as Vietnam.

Map of China

A major earthquake struck western China today, at 2:28 PM local time. There are early reports of damage and casualties…

School Collapse
Three Gorges Dam Not Damaged

Beijing, China has a long-standing reputation for air that is thick with pollution and haze. In the past few years they claim to have spent about $17 billion trying to clean it up. A GEOTIMES article takes a look at the problem and the progress.

China is investing a lot more in South America. Aluminum Corporation of China is spending $2.15 billion on the Toromocho Copper Project. This site has an estimated 1.526 millon tons in copper reserves and will host a new smelter to yield 250,000 tons per year.

In a new NASA study, researchers taking advantage of improvements in satellite sensor capabilities, offer the first measurement-based estimate of the amount of pollution from East Asian forest fires, urban exhaust, and industrial production that makes its way to western North America. (NASA Image)

Cold weather in China caused one of the heaviest ice accumulations in decades to form on the Yellow River. An ice dam broke last week and an enormous flood of water and ice swept down the channel. About 13,000 people were evacuated.

An article in Scientific American: For the past thirty years environmental experts have warned that China’s Three Gorges Dam was going to do environmental damage in many different ways. Chinese officials denied it but now a new generation of leaders are starting to realize that many of the warnings were correctly given.

Earth Observatory has a new satellite image that shows a plume of dust and haze blowing eastward from China and Korea. March is a time of dust storms in the Gobi Desert which may contribute to this plume.

China uses coal for about 70 percent of their energy. Even though they are the world’s leading coal producer, they have begun to import it from other countries to meet the rising demand. While using a greater percentage of renewable resources is an attainable goal, industry will probably continue to grow and expand exponentially, and reliance upon coal will not be reduced.

Chinese and Brazilian scientists have discovered one of the smallest pterosaurs known. Nemicolopterus crypticus is a toothless reptile with a 10-inch wingspan that lived in China about 120 million years ago.

Twin satellites are used to make precise measurements of gravity-field changes on Earth. The data has been used to establish the rapid loss of ice mass from Greenland and Antarctica, and major changes in water storage in China’s Yengtze River.

China might use one if it’s environmental resources satellites to monitor natural disasters, both in China and in other parts of the world. A number of other countries are very interested in obtaining this information from the Chinese satellites.

A massive iron ore deposit has been discovered in the Liaoning Province of northeastern China. Unfortunately it is over 1200 meters below the surface.