Antarctica - "This is the last time we frack for bloody Gazprom!" was the gist of an emergency frequency communiqué picked up by astronauts aboard the ISS this morning.
It has broken a seven day radio blackout of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute drilling ops into Lake Vostok where a vast prehistoric body of water is being probed.
Official briefings have tended to focus on the subterranean lake having been 'frozen' in time for over 20 million years some 13,000ft below the surface of the glacial continent.
That cover story was in tatters this weekend amid reports that the Anonymous team responsible for hacking into a top secret FBI/Metropolitan Police terror briefing had snooped on, decrypted and leaked the ISS fracking signal report.
"It's probably a massive ocean of pure marker crude," someone at the International Petroleum Exchange tweeted at lunchtime.
"Better get in there quick, boys, before Ecuador's Justice (sic) Ministry claims it's part of Chevron pollution of the Amazonian rainforest."
The price of crude is nudging $120 a barrel as tension rises in the frozen wastelands of the oil-rich Antacrtic continent.
