Methane hydrate-bearing sandstone from a test well dug in Alaska. (Courtesy of E. Rosenbaum / NETL / DOE)
The abundant fossil fuel you’ve never heard of
By Jeremy Kutner | Contributor of The Christian Science Monitor/ December 3, 2008 edition
Contributor Jeremy Kutner discusses the potential benefits and dangers of methane gas hydrates.
Contributor Jeremy Kutner
At the edges of the Alaskan permafrost, a consortium of government and oil industry scientists are preparing to drill. They aim to tap one of the largest potential energy sources ever discovered, and one that few people have ever heard of: flammable ice crystals packed with hydrocarbons, called methane gas hydrates.
The project, a joint effort between BP, the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the Department of Energy is set to begin in late 2009 or 2010 and marks the first large-scale production test of this unconventional substance. The group is nearing agreement on a drill site. [Editor’s note: The original version called BP by its old name.]
Hydrates have been hailed as a paradigm shift in how to achieve energy independence and as a massively abundant source of cleaner-burning natural gas. Others fear it represents an environmental disaster in the making. Until recently it was thought too dangerous and too costly to extract to be of use.
That view is beginning to change. In a recently released report, the USGS for the first time announced details of large hydrate reserves in the Alaskan permafrost that should be recoverable using existing technology. The vast field could hold as much as 85 trillion cubic feet of gas – an amount far less than the dream scenarios put forward in the past, but still massive. Even more important, such movement makes the possibility of getting at the mother lode of hydrate resources – those located offshore – increasingly realistic.
“I never thought this would happen so quickly,” says Carolyn Ruppel, a USGS research geophysicist who was heavily involved in prior hydrate research expeditions, referring to the planned production test. While the number of proposed drilling programs is small and significant obstacles remain, “there has been a real change these past four years,” Dr. Ruppel says. “It’s partially from market pressures.”
Underlying the interest in hydrates is their astonishing abundance – and the fact that they exist domestically in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. Their appeal is even greater for countries like Japan and India, which have strained oil or gas reserves but abundant hydrate deposits offshore.
A survey of hydrate estimates published in 2007 put US reserves at around 5,700 trillion cubic feet: “Even this later figure … is [about] 150 times the 95-percent-
confidence-level estimate of US conventional natural gas reserve,” survey author Ruppel wrote, “and [about] 900 times the current annual gas consumption in the US.”
Major hydrate research programs have cropped up in resource-constrained countries like South Korea, India, China, and – most notably – Japan, where Edie Allison of the Department of Energy estimates the government has sunk about $200 million into hydrate research. In 2007, Japan partnered with Canada to conduct a six-day production test in the permafrost to gain technical knowledge that could help fuel efforts to tap Japan’s vast undersea hydrate resources, perhaps the only major hydrocarbon reservoir that country has left.
The results were encouraging, but still an order of magnitude away from justifying large-scale commercial exploitation, says Gordon Pospisil, technology and resource manager for BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., which is leading the 2009 Alaskan production test. Production would need to be “about a thousand times higher for this to be clearly economical.”
Malcolm Lall, coordinator of the Indian National Hydrate Program, says hydrate resources off the Indian coast are too large to ignore. Hydrate potential there “is sufficient for the energy needs of India for the next 15 years,” he says. “We’re taking this very seriously.” More energy independence is a huge incentive, he says, and India hopes to do production tests as early as 2013. “The government has given this a lot of priority … [to] get hydrates commercially viable,” he says. “Let’s see who gets it first.”
International and industry researchers will watch the progress of the BP/USGS test. It may, if things go well, turn gas hydrates from curiosity to solid energy policy. Because of the hydrates’ out-of-the-way locations, attractive production rates are necessary for industry and government to consider the vast, costly infrastructure of pipelines and cooling stations needed to get the stuff to market. “The general consensus is that you can expect production problems similar to those of conventional resources,” says Tim Collett, USGS’s lead hydrate research geologist.
Safety concerns also remain. Drilling turns solid hydrates into gas, but this process actually cools the gas, threatening to turn newly liberated gas bubbles back into solid hydrates in the middle of the drill itself – a dangerous prospect. Many also worry that drilling into hydrates might release clouds of gas that could start an underwater landslide. But most experts say that as knowledge of methane hydrates improves, drilling sites are moving away from high-risk areas.
Whether hydrates represent a key to domestic energy independence or an unnecessary risk is unclear. Hydrates represent a dramatic addition to natural gas resources, but natural gas, despite being cleaner than coal or oil, is still a fossil fuel that produces greenhouse gases. And raw methane, should it escape into the air, is more than 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2.
“If you still want to produce CO2, natural gas is much better than coal, but as a geoscientist I just get angry that you ever have to burn methane or coal,” says Keith Kvenvolden, formerly of the USGS who has been studying hydrates for more than 30 years.
What are methane gas hydrates?
Trapped in ice crystals beneath the arctic permafrost and deep below the ocean is a volatile store of energy so vast that it could redefine world politics.
The mystery substance is methane gas hydrates, solid blocks of ice stuffed with methane gas molecules – natural gas. They are found all over the globe in such astoundingly large amounts that early estimates stated that there were more hydrates than all other fossil fuels combined. Better-informed estimates have tamped down those early figures, but hydrate reserves are still thought to be enormous.
Hydrates, which look like chunks of ice, were first brought to world attention in the mid-1960s by Russian scientists. Hydrates are compounds of water molecules that form under pressure and at low temperatures. They are like ice “cages” that trap gas molecules inside as they freeze. Hydrate water molecules are very accommodating: An ice cage consisting of a single molecule of frozen water can theoretically hold 160 gas molecules – meaning that finding just a small amount of hydrate can mean a lot of harvestable gas. And while hydrates can suck up a wide range of gases, the most common one is methane, clean-burning natural gas. Hydrates look like chunks of ice. You can even hold them in your hand – or light them on fire.
When the Soviets failed to find a way to exploit them, hydrates became little more than an academic curiosity for three decades. Barriers to exploration were large. The most abundant hydrates were thought to exist only in places forbidding to commercial exploration: in the arctic permafrost and scattered along continental margins under the sea.
No one knew how best to find them.
Rising oil prices, energy-security concerns, and better science has renewed interest in hydrates, which, it turns out, can be harvested much the way natural gas is, even though hydrates are solid.
( More stories )
Comments
2. D Trahan | 12.04.08
Technology exists to prevent hydrates from forming. The simplest and cheapest hydrate inhibitor is actually made from natural gas, thats methanol. Its a common practice in oil and gas to use methanol in gas flow that has a tendency to form hydrates. It acts as an antifreeze in effect. Newer polymer additives have also been developed that can be blended into the methanol and reduce the volume of methanol required to do the job. Why not build a drilling system that has an inhibitive quantity of methanol in it, or other hydrate inhibiting product, and then once tapped into produciton, use a continuous downhole treatment to prevent hydrate formation.
3. Leora | 12.04.08
I find this troubling. We seem to be headed into a vast expansion in the use of methane/CO2 producing fossil fuels under a guise of green energy. I am not scientist, but is much more effective at trapping greenhouse gasses. It seems that we are moving backwards, not forwards, and unfortunately misguided environmental groups may be leading the way. I hope I am wrong.
4. Russell Ravenwood | 12.04.08
I have yet to see any reference to my personal “hot button” related to the wanton use of fossil fuels.
Consider that all fossil fuels are actually fossilized sunlight. The orignal capture of that sunlight occured many millions of years ago. When we burn those fossil fuels, we release CO2 that was formed, um, millions of years ago.
But to me the worst thing released is the most damaging: heat. The formation of those fossil fuels is in reality fossilizing captured solar energy. And when we burn those fuels, we are releasing heat that was captured millions of years ago.
So what? you may wonder. Well, it comes down to a problem of thermal stability of the entire earth. Earth continually receives solar energy, the result being that the entire earth heats up. The earth in turn radiates most of that trapped heat back into space.
Yes, CO2 and CH4 (methane) and a host of other things in the atmosphere pick up some of that heat (every substance has thermal capacity). However, consider that in the past 150 years of so we have released the heat of solar energy from many millions of years in the past. In effect this is equivalent to an explosion when considered over geologic time.
In other words, useing fossil fuels releases more energy into the earth than what it normally receives on a daily basis from the sun. If you look into the physics involved, you will find that if an object (earth) receives more heat energy that it is radiating, then its temperature rises. It will rise to the point where it radiates as much heat as it receives FROM ALL SOURCES, which means to a very high teperature. (Because the amount of energy radiated depends on the object’s temperature.)
Hence, global warming.
5. Michael | 12.04.08
“I find this troubling”…
What?
Our clothes, fertilizer for food, building materials, and countless other societal enablers are carbon based (as are we by the way), and when it looks like there may be new sources of that, (that apparently will be liberated into the atmosphere as the planet warms anyway), you think we are taking a step backwards by looking at new alternatives?
Is a move back to a hunter gatherer lifestyle being suggested? Should we just remove ourselves from the ecosystem?
“…not scientist, but is much more effective at trapping greenhouse gasses”… what is much more effective at trapping greenhouse gasses?
While we’re trapping… what about trapping water vapor, not just atmospheric carbon?
Environmentalists seem to be so in love with electricity… how much methane is spewed forth from the drowned biomass from hydro electric reservoirs?
Hydrates… Very encouraging!
Might just be a valid use for all this ridiculous ethanol production that good farmland is being hijacked for.
Michael
6. Mark | 12.04.08
Great, I mean how long will it take to realize that fossil fuels as looked at sometime a hundred years from now, or less, are going to be an extremely archaic method of energy. Sure we need to diversify but it is all we need is another distraction from pulling our heads from our uniquely fat rear ends and look to renewable resources for the future of mankind.
8. David | 12.05.08
“…still an order of magnitude away from justifying large-scale commercial exploitation,….. Production would need to be “about a thousand times higher for this to be clearly economical.”
Ten is one order of magnitude. 1000 is *three* orders of magnitude.
“Whether hydrates represent a key to domestic energy independence or an unnecessary risk is unclear.”
TEMPORARY energy independence, perhaps at best. Until we get away from finite-quantity fuel sources, we will always be facing an end to the energy supply, and dependence upon energy providers.
9. B. Ludwig | 12.05.08
I don’t want to be too much of a worry wart, but wasn’t it the release of the methane into the oceans from these hydrates that caused the Permian extinction?
10. 123andy | 12.05.08
While this is very exciting prospect, fortunately it is far away from reality. If a methane hydrate field destabilzes there is likely to be a massive explosion and a huge release of CH4 which is 1000 times more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Experimenting with hydrates should be done with a great deal of care. The risk is huge.
11. Peter Belmont | 12.05.08
This story about methane hydrate while interesting, fails to mention the
most important aspect of methane hydrates, namely, the threat they pose
to humanity and creation as we know it.
In its schizophrenic fashion, the world is simultaneously trying to do
two absolutely contradictory things. On the one hand, it is trying to
slow down and reverse global warming, which is brought about by the
freeing of greenhouse gases, mostly generated by burning fossil fuels,
into the atmosphere. This is the “we are custodians of the earth and
care about future generations” school of thought and action.
On the other hand, much of the world is industriously trying to find,
extract, and use (burn) more and more fossil fuels (recall Sarah Palin’s
“drill, baby, drill”?). This is the “apres moi, le deluge” school of
thought and action. Kutner reports on the second branch of our
collective schizophrenia, but has little to say about the first.
The project to make use of frozen methane hydrate flies in the face of
concerns about global warming. Apparently this is of little concern to
BP, the USGS, the Department of Energy, and many others, including
author Kutner.
Scientists who think about global warming fear that even the relative
slight rise in global temperatures we’ve got today, which are
nevertheless melting Arctic ice at a furious rate, will prove enough to
melt the permafrost, melt the methane hydrate which is covered by — or
part of — that permafrost, and release the methane to the atmosphere.
(Methane happens to be a more dangerous greenhouse gas than CO2.)
Whether it is released by unfreezing or by burn, the methane hydrate
will end up as a greenhouse gas (methane or CO2) in the atmosphere,
speeding the progress of global warming and accelerating the further
melting of any permafrost which is left.
The accelerated global warming described in article 1 could lead
to a runaway methane global warming effect due to the release of
methane currently trapped in unstable methane hydrate deposits
in the arctic that could be destabilised by accelerated global
warming effects.
http://www.hydrogen.co.uk/h2_now/journal/articles/3_Methane.htm
(See also “With Speed and Violence” by Fred Pearce, Beacon Press, 2007,
at p. 74.)
Whenever we hear about something too good to be true, we should be
careful, because it probably is not true. The methane hydrate deposits
are important not because they will magically benefit mankind by solving
an energy problem but because, whether we use them or not, they will act
as an accelerator, a magnifier, to make global warming worse in
magnitude and make its effects felt earlier in time.
13. Raminagrobis | 12.06.08
That’s stupid, because we already have FAR TOO MUCH fossil fuelds reserves.
To avoid exceeding 450 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, the absolue maximum tolerable threshold, we can barely used the remaining, KNOWN, CONVENTIONNAL, oil and natural gas reserves.
So we should be phasing out coal, oil sands, shale gas and exploration for new oil&gas fields.
And instead of that, they are looking for new kinds of reserves !
14. DesBJay | 12.06.08
Expect the unexpected. The expected is the continued emission of greehouse gasses, especially when China and India really get going. The projected include inundation, a flood of eco-refugees, and shortages of potable water. The unexpected, sometimes called, from the narrow self-interested point of view, “natural disasters,” may confound the predictions and produce their own culling of human populations and animal species, while lowering global average temperatures (cf The small Ice Age).
Behold the lilies of the field… Yes, do what we can for today, and help those hardest hit. But at 6.5 billion now, and projected to reach 9.0 billion, the human population bruises the world and insults creation. To paraphrase comedian George Carlin, the world can shrug mankind off and take care of itself.
15. Jan | 12.08.08
the greenhouse myth is making me sick.
carbon dioxide is great. It makes plants grow more and thus we have more yield of crops per square meter.
Without carbon dioxide there is no life, you would not be able to breathe without carbon dioxide.
In the netherlands greenhouses get CO2 for free from industry and their yiels of crops increases like never before.
Al Gore says the world is a greenhouse, however i fail to see those glass windows.
In the real world there is convection, so wind and that kind of things.
Would be nice if the world warms up because it will lead to more areas in the world for comfartable living and growing more plants and such (food!). The crop season would be much longer.
The best ages for mankind where the ones with higher temperatures (golden age, less wars) and the dark times for human history were the coldest ones (small ice age, lots of wars).
Unfortunately, the world will cool down the next years, and maybe a new small ice age. The temperature has been the same for 10 years already.
Al Gore and friends saw this coming and the whole world is facing Carbon taxes that will ruin for most part of the normal workers on the world their wealth and future. Thank you very much “peace noble price winner” Gore. He should be arrested for driving the future generations to poverty and invoking future wars.
16. truth seeker | 12.10.08
Jan, it’s hard to tell if your post is satire/sarcasm or not. I could not help but mention the EXTREME irony in your comment about Holland. At the current rate (most estimate that rate will INCREASE) of warming and polar ice melt, in a very short time, there will be NO Netherlands … it will return to the ocean. (along with Bangladesh, most of Florida, GB, New York City, etc.)
17. Wongstein | 12.11.08
Russell Ravenwood: “Thermal capacitance” insulates by stopping thermal conduction or convection, not radiation. Co2 and methane block infrared light, which slows the RADIATION of energy into space, not CONVECTION OR CONDUCTION. The problem is that greenhouse gasses are like a layer of tinfoil that acts as a heatshield, not just an insulator. We could create far less heat on earth (or even absorb less of it from the sun), but still all die a hot death if we block the heat’s escape from the earth!
Certainly, we should not combatting the rising costs of extracting fossil fuel from the earth by looking to extend our reach of them. Why reach into the planet’s energy cache and risk disrupting our atmospheric equilibrium when there is flowing energy everywhere?
Why does this article not mention global warming or the utter irresponsibility of this greed-driven research?
18. J. Bridy | 12.16.08
Leave the fossil carbon in the ground. It is not safe to extract (mountain top removal for coal, toxic ‘tailings’ for coal and uranium mining and oil, gas and tar sand drilling, political corruption), it is not safe transport (truck and auto pollution, oil tanker and pipeline spills), it is not safe to burn (air, land and water pollution) and it is not safe re-release (green house effect/active global warming/near future irreversible sea level rise/present weather extremes) in todays atmosphere and biosphere. Humans are not stupid, but we do tend to act like we are. This generation was not disabled by the last few hundred generations like we will surely disable our own children and their children. Unless we stop putting fossil pollution into our small, beautiful world, we will bring about the brutal and quick end of a self sustaining nature on Earth.
19. Robert Bostick | 02.09.09
Water, Water Everywhere, Is Energy In There
When will policy makers, corporate moguls, elected officials and the public at-large begin to accept the well proven fact that more CO2 in our atmosphere is not good. Period. If it’s bad for our atmosphere it is bad for us. Simple, right? Yes, you admit. But if the alternative is not commercially viable it will not be exploited, you say. Ok, perhaps we need to redifine the issue. We are in a crises and we need to figure out how to resolve the crises as soon as possible, anyway possible which preserves the environment to sustain life as we now expierence it. Otherwise, there is no need for commercially viable alternatives. Since further degredation of the environment is likely to produce a lose/lose end game.
So let’s not get hung up on profits. Let’s use instead, efficiency. That is, develop, immediately, systems that produce energy with the least amount of CO2 emissions for every dollar CO2/$ of public/private investment.
This standard promotes development of tidal, wave and ocean currents as the dominant source of energy for this planet. True, there is a very low profit margin in capturing what nature has already generated in terms of kinetics. But we never needed fossil fuels nor nuclear power. We just never had a powerful lobby to support ocean sourced hydro kinetics that required no massive dam like those in some of the worlds rivers.
We don’t need to drill through the earths crust, strip our hills and mountains, raise potential security and waste disposal concerns with nuclear generators, lay millions of miles of vulnerable pipelines, or even modernize the grid.
Hydro kinetics, a clean, accessible, uninteruptable source of energy is the solution that will not be chosen by Obama, because it is not a profit center for globilization. It flies in the face of the fossil fuel folks (FFF) who would have us believe that dispoiling Mother Earth is the best way to provide for its inhabitants and purchase the political system/decisions of their choice.
We could develop distributive systems which receive power from the more than 55,000 sluice ways in the U.S. and the millions of sluiceways throughout the world.
There is no other natural resource that has the versatility of petroleum, therefore, the FFF argue, there is no natural resource, capable of replacing the thousands of by-products produced by petroleum? Well not exactly, we can start with removing the FFFs brainstorm to legally constrain the production and industrial processing of hemp, and then look to the vast Strategic Petroleum Reserve. (Not only in the U.S. but, other nations have recently stockpiled crude for rainy days.) These two sources are more than adequate substitutes for oil imports for any nation save those where climate inhibits cultivation of hemp. But by then, smaller nations will have found that savings from the adaptation to hydro kinetics saves foreign exchange and creates greater fiscal leeway in import preferences.
A number of countries are allocating large amounts of public money to hydro kinetics, Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, S. Korea, India, Brazil, Australia, and the embryonic stage for the various technologies has proven to be attractive to private sector investors.
What needs to happen now is that governments around the world need to create a level playing field and provide hydro kinetics the same level of support that they have and continue to give to solar, wind, oil, gas, coal and geothermal.
In the long run there will only be water.
Robbrian
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1. James Stepp | 12.04.08
Interesting. There is no doubt that we need to diversify our energy sources and if these can be brought in commercially viable quantities they could be very valuable. I Think clean coal has a place as long as they capture the carbon dioxide and use it as a feed stock for algae produced biofuels but the extraction of coal from the ground has some serious environmental concerns. By all means, throw everything at our energy problem including the kitchen sink. Throw enough things against the wall and eventually something will stick.