Collapse, part 3 of Turkmen trip

Photo courtesy of someone who owns a fire proof camera

Collapse, part 3 of Turkmen trip

I am here in the country of Turkmenistan.  It is mostly desert.  It would be a great place to visit if you enjoy a sandy Hawaiian beach vacation but do not like the water part.  Or girls in bikinis, or Mai-Tais, or having fun.  I am here to do some trouble shooting on my equipment used in a multi-million dollar project being built here in northeastern Turkmenistan.  This project is the construction of a facility to process natural gas, being produced here in the desert.  This area is much like West Texas, where eons ago, the area was covered by an inland sea.  (About the time when Willie Nelson first started in show business).  Bullions and Bullions of tiny sea creatures died and were buried.  This happened a lot of times.  (Probably bullions and bullions of time, unless some of those creatures were immortal).  Apparently proper diet and exercise was not part of their routine.  Their little crustacean bodies started piling up and magically fermented into flammable gas. 

The oceans went away, due to Global Drying and the area turned into a desert.  (Al Gore warned us about that too, back then, but he had not invented the internet yet, so we did not hear about it).  Now, the fermented crusty critter residue is ready to be used but is trapped under the sand.  Who the hell left all this sand, anyway?  So, rather than remove the sand, it is easier to drill a small hole in the ground and send a long tube down there to let the flammable gas out.  This is what the Communist Chinese are doing here now.

The Soviets were drilling this area back in the 70’s.  In one area, they hit a gas pocket and had a blowout.  A big hole opened up in the sand and the drilling rig sank into the hole.  (I mentioned this in a previous post). The flammable gas was bubbling up and could ignite.  So the Soviets removed the threat of the fumes in the hole being ignited by ….. (Wait for it)……. setting it on fire.  It is still burning nearly 50 years later and is a tourist destination for those who love to roast marshmallows.  Now that logic helps illustrate why the Soviet Union collapsed.  Perhaps their drilling rig was symbolic foreshadowing to what eventually happened to the Soviet Union.  They built a country (the drilling rig) on soft sand, (a communist economy).  It eventually collapsed, as all giant Centrally Managed economies eventually do. 

No one would have predicted, in the 1970s, the collapse of the Soviet Union.  But 20 years later it did.  And the aftermath is that there is still a dangerous hole in the ground that may never go away.  There are those today that think that China is the model for a giant centrally planned economy.  Really?  Tune back in for that outcome in 20 years.  I wonder if the Chinese are familiar with the phrase:     History does repeat itself.   Here is another prediction:  In 20 years, invest in Marshmallow futures.