Across the United States the exploitation of gas and oil from shale rocks using Halliburton's hydraulic fracturing technology continues amid rising disasters. Unregulated drilling practices, rendered legal by the "Halliburton Loophole" engineered in 2005 by Vice President Dick Cheney, have had staggering health and environmental effects. Lured by the prospect of reducing oil dependence, President Obama has adopted an ambivalent approach, which ultimately yields ground to industry. With the same expectancy, countries all around the world have joined the shale-gas craze, arguing that if the U.S. has been "fracking" it must be safe. Energy independence would undoubtedly represent a game changing opportunity for many countries, but at what cost?

There is a global rush to embrace a new source of extracting hydrocarbons from the Earth. From Germany to Poland and France, from China and above all in the USA where the technique of hydraulic fracturing of shale rocks is most developed, governments and major oil companies are producing huge volumes of gas.

A number of energy importing countries around the world are planning a major investment in extracting natural gas from their shale rock formations. The most ambitious plans are coming from China and from Poland in the EU.

The US Government's Department of Energy together with a Washington energy consultancy has just released a mammoth global report estimating resources of shale gas. Significantly, the report estimates that the largest untapped shale gas reserves worldwide lie in China. The study puts Poland and France at the top of the shale gas list in the EU. The rest of Europe they estimate simply lacks the geology where substantial shale rock is present.¹

Even in Germany some cash-strapped states are seriously looking at Shale gas. ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company is planning major projects in the densely-populated North-Rhein Westphalia region. The company's head for Central Europe, Gernot Kalkoffen in a recent interview stated, "Germany is most definitely an interesting market. We cannot achieve the energy strategy shift without gas." ExxonMobil estimates shale gas is potentially available in six of Germany's 16 states.² The US Energy Department estimates that Germany could have some 8 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale gas, three years' total consumption. Citizen protest groups and Parliamentary skepticism about health and safety of shale gas so far is braking a German shale gas bonanza.³ Not only ExxonMobil but also BASF's Wintershall, Gaz de France, BNK Petroleum from the US and a daughter of Britain's Royal Dutch Shell are salivating over German shale gas prospects.

A strong and unusually shallow earthquake struck northern Italy over the weekend, fracturing pavement, sending torrents of brick and rubble raining down from buildings, and killing seven people. The powerful shaking was a first for the region in centuries - and fairly surprising to seismologists.

Data indicate the magnitude-6.0 quake, which struck just after 4 a.m. local time on Sunday (May 20), just north of Bologna, was a thrust quake - the type of earthquake caused when two tectonic plates smash together - yet it occurred at a depth of just 3 miles (5 kilometers).

"It is kind of surprising that it's that shallow, because it's pretty far from the plate boundary," said Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Normally we expect things to get deeper as they move northward," he told OurAmazingPlanet.

Shallow shaking

The quake hit about 470 miles (750 km) north of the plate boundary - the place where the two colliding plates meet - which runs along the sole of Italy's "boot."

It is here that the African plate is plowing slowly northward, crashing into the Eurasian plate.

Caruso explained that the shallower a quake, the more damage it can cause. "If a quake is 500 kilometers deep, and you're right on top of it, you're going to feel it a lot less strongly than if it's 5 kilometers deep," he said. "As the seismic energy moves through the ground some of it is dissipated."

The strong quake rocked an area with a long history of earthquakes, yet one that has kept relatively quiet for hundreds of years.

"There has not been a whole lot of action in that area," Caruso said. "The fact that they do have records of earthquakes going back a couple thousand years shows this area hasn't been seismically active for a long time," he said.

Thousands of people were displaced by the quake, and many people spent the night in tents hurriedly erected on soccer fields.

Akio Matsumura is a former UN diplomat who is very worried about the damaged Fukushima-Daiichi power plants in Japan.

He believes the highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies at the plants present a clear threat to the people of Japan and the world, noting that Reactor 4 and the nearby common spent fuel pool contain over 11,000 highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies, many of which are exposed to the open air.

"The cesium-137, the radioactive component contained in these assemblies, present at the site is 85 times larger than the amount released during the Chernobyl accident. Another magnitude 7.0 earthquake would jar them from their pool or stop the cooling water, which would lead to a nuclear fire and meltdown. The nuclear disaster that would result is beyond anything science has ever seen. Calling it a global catastrophe is no exaggeration," writes Matsumura in a new article sounding the alarm on what he says is a very bad moon rising.

Matsumura is puzzled. He says if political leaders really understand the situation and the potential catastrophe, "I find it difficult to understand why they remain silent."

Costa Rica's National Seismological Network has upgraded the color threat level to yellow of Turrialba Volcano, in the province of Cartago east of the capital.

A statement issued by Raúl Mora-Amador, coordinator of Seismology, Volcanology and Geophysical Exploration at the University of Costa Rica, indicates a threat level of yellow means that the National Seismological Network believes an eruption is "probable" in a matter of days, weeks or a few months.

The upgrade in the threat level is due to "important changes in seismic activity of Volcano Turrialba associated with the movement of fluids, gas and magma beneath the surface, different from that observed in past years," Mora-Amador's statement says.

Earthquake Information
Japan Meteorological Agency

17:50 JST 20 May 2012 17:42 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M5.1 2
17:27 JST 20 May 2012 17:21 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M5.4 2
16:54 JST 20 May 2012 16:49 JST 20 May 2012 Ibaraki-ken Hokubu M3.3 1
16:38 JST 20 May 2012 16:28 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M5.7 2
16:32 JST 20 May 2012 16:20 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M6.2 3
14:57 JST 20 May 2012 14:52 JST 20 May 2012 Fukushima-ken Oki M3.6 1
12:56 JST 20 May 2012 12:49 JST 20 May 2012 Niigata-ken Chuetsu-chiho M1.8 1
04:24 JST 20 May 2012 04:17 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M4.8 1
04:20 JST 20 May 2012 04:14 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M5.4 1
04:11 JST 20 May 2012 04:05 JST 20 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M5.8 3
03:36 JST 20 May 2012 03:31 JST 20 May 2012 Akita-ken Nairiku-hokubu M2.8 1
01:23 JST 20 May 2012 01:18 JST 20 May 2012 Aki-nada M3.3 1
23:27 JST 19 May 2012 23:22 JST 19 May 2012 Ibaraki-ken Hokubu M3.3 1
23:25 JST 19 May 2012 23:20 JST 19 May 2012 Miyagi-ken Oki M3.9 1
09:14 JST 19 May 2012 09:09 JST 19 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M4.8 1
07:41 JST 19 May 2012 07:36 JST 19 May 2012 Miyagi-ken Oki M3.4 1
07:02 JST 19 May 2012 06:57 JST 19 May 2012 Ibaraki-ken Nambu M3.1 1
06:37 JST 19 May 2012 06:32 JST 19 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M4.7 1
06:28 JST 19 May 2012 06:23 JST 19 May 2012 Sanriku Oki M5.1 2

Date-Time:
Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 07:19:55 UTC

Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 05:19:55 PM at epicenterTime of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
39.597°N, 143.242°E

Depth:
10 km (6.2 miles)

Region:
OFF THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

Distances:
179 km (111 miles) E of Morioka, Honshu, Japan

181 km (112 miles) SE of Hachinohe, Honshu, Japan

251 km (155 miles) ESE of Aomori, Honshu, Japan

532 km (330 miles) NE of TOKYO, Japan

Rome - One of the strongest earthquakes to shake northern Italy rattled the region around Bologna early Sunday, a magnitude-6.0 temblor that killed at least three people, toppled some buildings and sent residents running into the streets, emergency services and news reports said.

The quake struck at 4:04 a.m. Sunday between Modena and Mantova, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) north-northwest of Bologna at a relatively shallow depth of 5 kilometers (3.2 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said.

It was one of the strongest quakes to shake the region, seismologists said, and initial television footage indicated that older buildings had suffered damage: roofs collapsed, church towers showed cracks and the bricks of some stone walls tumbled into the street. As dawn broke over the region, residents milled about the streets inspecting the damage.

Date-Time:
Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 02:03:52 UTC

Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 04:03:52 AM at epicenterTime of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
44.800°N, 11.192°E

Depth:
5.1 km (3.2 miles)

Region:
NORTHERN ITALY

Distances:
36 km (22 miles) NNW of Bologna, Italy

69 km (42 miles) E of Parma, Italy

72 km (44 miles) SSE of Verona, Italy

339 km (210 miles) NNW of ROME, Italy

Guatemala's Fuego volcano belched burning lava and black ash into the sky early Saturday, leading the government to issue an airplane advisory and close sections of highway.

The volcano, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of the capital, erupted about 2:45 a.m. (0745 GMT), spewing a column of ash up to 16,400 feet (5,000 meters) above the crater and launching burning red lava nearly 1,300 feet (400 meters) high.

The national emergency commission issued an advisory, warning planes not to fly within a 25-mile (40 kilometer) radius of the volcano. The La Aurora international airport in Guatemala City remained open.

The commission also closed two stretches of highway threatened by lava flows that reached the base of the mountain.

Guatemala's four active volcanoes have a history of causing shut downs. In 2010, an explosion at the Pacaya volcano about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Guatemala City coated the city in a thick layer of black ash and rock, forcing hundreds of families to evacuate and closing the international airport.