Natural fracking feeds an eternal flame

(Image: Indiana University)

Eternal flames mark only our most important shrines ? but nature has them aplenty. This one, burning behind a waterfall veil in Erie county, New York, has now been studied in detail.

Team leader Giuseppe Etiope of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome, Italy, says he has studied many eternal flames, but never one so beautiful.

The flames can arise in places where natural gas seeps continually from underground rocks. When the flow concentrates into a strong "macroseep" and ignites, the resulting flame need never go out.

The one in Erie County is 20 centimetres tall and burns about a kilogram of gas a day ? mostly methane, although it also contains the highest proportions of ethane and propane ever recorded in a natural seep. The chemistry of the gas revealed that its source is a known shale formation about 400 metres down.

Local tectonic events have "naturally fracked" the underlying rocks. The researchers suggest that such sites might present good opportunities for hydrocarbon exploration without resorting to artificial fracking.

Seepage of natural gas has important implications for the atmosphere too. Almost a third of the methane in air comes from natural sources: natural gas seeps and wetlands are the biggest.

Not all eternal flames are what they seem, though. The team investigated a flame in Pennsylvania that proved not natural at all ? it is probably an abandoned gas or oil well.

Journal reference: Marine and Petroleum Geology, DOI: 10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2013.02.009

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