Methane hydrate is a form of natural gas trapped below the ocean’s seabed that may trigger our next bout of rapid global warming. But it also may be a viable solution to our energy problems, or at least thats what scientists in the US, Japan and India are hoping. Wired reports:
The Gulf of Mexico is estimated to hold more than 6,500 trillion cubic feet of hydrate in sandstone reservoirs, currently the best candidates for commercial exploitation, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service. If only 5 percent of that hydrate could be tapped, it would yield more than 300 trillion cubic feet of gas. By comparison, the United States’ reserve of conventional natural gas is currently estimated at 211 trillion cubic feet.
…While methane hydrates have previously been too expensive to extract on a commercial scale, the increasing price of oil — now more than $130 per barrel — means the hydrates might soon become a profitable energy source. Chevron has been involved in the gulf research, and BP is exploring for hydrates in Alaska. Japanese engineers reportedly pumped hydrates from a test well in Canada’s Northwest Territories this last winter.
“Everybody knows there’s a lot of it,” Ray Boswell [researcher with the U.S. Department of Energy] says. “Now, our goal is to understand the ramifications: Does it have potential as an energy resource, and if so, how would you go about getting it? And how does it fit into climate issues?”
It’s that last question that opens up the can of worms. Even as some researchers wonder whether methane hydrate could play an important role in powering the 21st century, others ask whether it has played a critical part in catastrophic climate shifts in the past — and if it could do so again.
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