Japan drills for methane hydrate

[marchesarosa]

ENERGY REVOLUTION: JAPAN TO BEGIN TEST PRODUCTION FOR METHANE HYDRATE LOCKED IN SEABED

Date: 11/03/13Bloomberg
Japan, which has almost no natural energy resources of its own, will begin the world’s first offshore drilling operation this week to extract frozen natural gas locked under the seabed.

Japan Oil, Gas & Metals National Corp., known as JOGMEC, and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology will begin test production for methane hydrate as soon as today in the Nankai Trough about 50 kilometers (31 miles) off the coast of the country’s main island of Honshu, the trade and industry ministry said in a statement.



Deposits of methane hydrate, known as “burnable ice,” could provide Japan with a “next-generation source of clean energy” and may be large enough to supply the country’s natural gas needs for about 100 years, according to JOGMEC. The government plans to develop technology to enable commercial use of methane hydrate by fiscal 2018, according to the agency.

The two-week trial will use a depressurization method in which icy gas crystals are returned to gaseous form inside a drilled hole, the trade and industry ministry said in the statement. Japan and Canada used the same technology to successfully extract gas from methane hydrate stored in permafrost found in northern Canada in a joint project running from 2007 to 2008, according to the statement.

Bloomberg, 11 March 2013
www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-11/japan-to-begin-test-production-for-frozen-gas-locked-in-seabed.html

[alancalverd]

Oh dear. Just a few years ago the fashionable scare was that gobal warming would release methane from submarine clathrates, and now they are going to use submarine clathrates to generate more CO2!

[marchesarosa]

Bring it on! Let's green the planet even more and keep warm at the same time!

[marchesarosa]

INDIA PONDERS TAPPING MASSIVE DEPOSITS OF METHANE HYDRATE

Date: 17/03/13Times of india

Tapping massive deposits of ‘fire ice’ methane hydrate can change India’s energy landscape
Massive imports of oil and natural gas have exacerbated India’s big trade deficit, which is a hurdle to the acceleration of economic growth. Light at the end of the tunnel comes from a technological breakthrough last week by JOGMEC (Japan Oil Gas and Metals National Corporation ). It succeeded in extracting natural gas from sea-bed deposits of methane hydrate, popularly called ” fire ice” because it is a white crystalline solid that burns. India has some of the biggest methane hydrate reserves in the world. It will reap a bonanza if technological progress allows gas to be extracted from hydrates economically and safely.

JOGMEC says it is contemplating commercial gas production maybe as early as 2016. Meanwhile China and the US have major programmes for exploration and experimental extraction. India, alas, is nowhere in the picture.

Estimates of global reserves are sketchy, but range from 2,800 trillion to 8 billion trillion cu.metres of natural gas. This is several times higher than global reserves of 440 trillion cu. metres of conventional gas. However, only a small fraction of hydrate reserves will be exploitable.

Methane hydrate is a mixture of natural gas and water that becomes a solid in cold, high-pressure conditions in deep sea-beds (where the temperature falls to 2 degrees centigrade). It is also found in onshore deposits in the permafrost of northern Canada and Russia. Heating the deposits or lowering the pressure (the technique used by JOGMEC) will release gas from the solid. One litre of solid hydrate releases around 165 litres of gas.

India has long been known to have massive deposits of methane hydrate. These are tentatively estimated at 1,890 trillion cu. meters. An Indo-US scientific joint venture in 2006 explored four areas: the Kerala-Konkan basin, the Krishna-Godavari basin, the Mahanadi basin and the seas off the Andaman Islands. The deposits in the Krishna Godavari basin turned out to be among the richest and biggest in the world. The Andamans yielded the thickest-ever deposits 600 metres below the seabed in volcanic ash sediments. Hydrates were also found in the Mahanadi basin.

Formidable economic and environmental challenges lie ahead. Nobody has yet found an economic way of extracting gas from hydrates. Industry guesstimates suggest the initial cost may be about $30/ mmBTU, double the spot rate in Asia and nine times higher than the US domestic price. JOGMEC is optimistic that the cost can be cut with new technology and scale economies.

Full story
economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/swaminathan-s-a-aiyar/tapping-massive-deposits-of-fire-ice-methane-hydrate-can-change-indias-energy-landscape/articleshow/19014438.cms

[marchesarosa]

FT: METHANE HYDRATES COULD BE THE ENERGY OF THE FUTURE

Date: 18/01/14 Sylvia Pfeifer, Financial Times

Forget the shale gas revolution. The energy of the future could lie buried deep underneath the world’s oceans and the Arctic permafrost: giant reservoirs of gas trapped in ice crystals. Estimates suggest they are enough to power the world 300 to 1,500 years at current rates of production.




Flare from methane hydrate gas produced from drilling in the Nankai Trough 30 miles off the coast of Japan



Sometimes called flammable ice, these methane hydrates also hold out the potential to alter trade flows and the geopolitics of energy. Countries such as Japan and India, which have no indigenous sources of conventional oil and gas, could suddenly find themselves important energy suppliers. Late last year, China announced it had identified a big gas hydrate reserve in the northern part of the South China Sea.

It is very early days. Test drillings have so far taken place only in Canada and Japan, but the International Energy Agency, the western world’s energy watchdog, does not rule out the possibility of another energy revolution to rival that of the shale boom in North America.

Maria van der Hoeven, the IEA’s executive director, said in an interview last year: “There may be other surprises in store. For example, the methane hydrates off the coasts of Japan and Canada … This is still at a very early stage. But shale gas was in the same position 10 year ago. So we cannot rule out that new revolutions may take place through technological developments.”

Methane hydrates are deposits of natural gas trapped with water in a crystalline structure that forms at low temperatures and moderate pressures. Although estimates of the resources vary widely, experts agree they are extremely large. According to the IEA’s most recent World Energy Outlook published last autumn, even the lower estimates give resources larger “than all other natural gas resources combined”.

Many estimates fall between 1,000tn and 5,000tn cubic metres, or between 300 and 1,500 years of production at current rates. The US Geological Survey estimates that gas hydrates worldwide are between 10 to 100 times as plentiful as US shale gas reserves. [...]