Crystals May Be Sunken Energy Treasure
Apr 18 - San Antonio Express-News
Far beneath the shifting waves of the earth's oceans lie frozen crystals containing enough natural gas to meet the nation's growing energy needs for decades -- maybe even centuries.
Unfortunately, no one is sure how to accurately find large accumulations of
crystals, or safely and economically withdraw the gas from the depths.
And some scientists are warning that a misstep in the pursuit of methane
hydrate could lead to catastrophic consequences -- ruining the ocean environment
and speeding up global warming.
Those are unknowns that the crew of the research vessel Uncle John hope to
help answer this month as they drill into crystal formations in the Gulf of
Mexico, off the Texas and Louisiana coasts.
The 35-day scientific expedition is part of a four-year, $13.6-million
project the U.S. Department of Energy and private energy companies are
conducting in the gulf.
Roger Sassen, a gas hydrate geochemist at Texas A&M University, sees
methane hydrates as the country's best shot at meeting its ravenous thirst for
energy, particularly in the face of an ever-diminishing supply of oil and
natural gas.
"It's the last chance," he said. "There is an awful lot of it
out there, and unless it works there is going to be a problem. People are
complaining about gas prices at $2 a gallon, but we may have to live with prices
10 times that high all of a sudden."
Methane hydrate -- in some quarters it's known as "the ice that
burns" -- is an odd combination of gas and water, molded into icy chunks by
pressure and cold temperatures underneath the ocean floor and in frozen northern
climes.
The methane gas, which is naturally produced by decomposing matter, is
released as the crystal is heated or depressurized.
A cubic foot of the substance releases the equivalent of about 160 cubic feet
of methane, making it an attractive and volatile energy source. At that rate, it
would take about 500 cubic feet of methane hydrate to fuel the average home in
the U.S. for a year.
No one knows for sure how many of the frozen energy crystals are hidden under
the oceans' depths or beneath the northern tundra.
Relatively large accumulations have been found off of the coasts of Oregon,
Washington and the Carolinas, as well as in Alaska. They also have been found in
the gulf, where some outcroppings have been located on the seafloor. But the
jury still is out on how much methane hydrate exists there.
What makes exploration in the gulf attractive to many is the abundance of oil
and gas infrastructure that could be put to different use harvesting the
crystals.
The most likely methods of extracting methane from its icy cage involves
heating or depressurizing the gas where it lies, then simply siphoning or
pumping it out.
"Hydrates are certainly one of those things that have too much potential
to ignore," said Ray Boswell, who heads the hydrate program at the
Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory. "There are
others, but hydrates is certainly the biggest prize."
How big?
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates there is 200,000 trillion cubic feet
of methane hydrate in the United States and its territorial waters. By
comparison, the estimated reserve of recoverable natural gas nationwide is a
paltry 1,400 trillion cubic feet.
This means that even if only 1 percent of methane hydrate ends up being
recoverable, it would more than double the amount of natural gas within the
country's reach.
"The numbers, even at the low end, are huge," said Arthur Johnson,
a former ChevronTexaco geologist who chaired the Department of Energy's Methane
Hydrate Advisory Committee.
Many nations have come to the same conclusion. Most notably, Japan, India and
Canada have developed aggressive research programs. But some scientists are
urging them to slow down because of possible disastrous environmental
consequences.
Richard Charter, a Marine Conservation Advocate with Environmental Defense
who describes himself as the "token environmentalist" on the Methane
Hydrate Advisory Committee, is among that group.
"This is a technology that has the capacity to generate truly staggering
environmental impacts, and most are not good," he said. "We ought to
do the science first so they don't have any big mistakes."
Methane is a potent global warming gas many times more powerful than carbon
dioxide. Geologists already have linked large releases of the gas from
destabilized methane hydrate with dramatic warming events that have brought the
planet out of past ice ages.
Given the potential, he cautions against a high-speed attempt to develop
methane hydrate technology that could trigger a massive release of the gas into
the atmosphere.
"This is not wild, made-up stuff," Charter said. "This is in
our report to Congress."
Johnson doesn't see the global warming scenario as a problem. He doesn't
believe human activity could trigger a methane release that would register as
anything more than a fraction of the gas being naturally released into the
atmosphere.
Sassen agrees.
"That's really ridiculous," he said of the massive global warming
theory. "This gas is leaking out of the sea floor all the time."
One thing most scientists can agree on is, with all the unanswered questions,
research is the key -- particularly given the alien nature of the subject.
"Humans and gas hydrates are incompatible," said Charlie Paull, a
marine geologist with the Monterey Bay Research Institute in California.
"We die under the conditions in which they are formed, and they decompose
under the conditions where we are comfortable observing them."
The Uncle John has been specially equipped to deal with the latter of the two
problems.
The ship is a roughly square, semi-submersible drilling vessel that resembles
a rig and measures about 160 feet on each side. It has been outfitted to take
borings of the methane hydrate under the gulf floor and return them to the
surface for study without destabilizing the material.
The tests will seek to determine, among other things, how well existing
technology can pinpoint large quantities of methane hydrate. Scientists have
picked two areas in the gulf where they believe large deposits exist, but
they're not sure.
Despite its potential, oil companies' immediate concern with methane hydrates
is how to deal safely with a substance that has become a dangerous nuisance
during conventional drilling expeditions.
As gas companies have waded into deeper and deeper water in search of oil,
drilling through gas hydrates to get to the petroleum has become more common.
This opens up a whole range of safety issues dealing with the potential of
drilling rigs to destabilize the hydrate, which could in turn cause slides or
softening of the ocean floor. Paull said the problems could develop slowly over
decades.
"Gas hydrates respond to very subtle change in pressure and
temperature," he said. "Some of these platforms we are talking about
are the most expensive things man has ever built. Couple that with the loss of
life and can we afford to lose even one of these facilities?"
Some experts, like Paull, think the safety issues for large drilling rigs are
the most important linked to methane hydrate. Paull thinks ultimately the
substance will prove too dispersed to ever be harvested as a major energy
source.
Others, like Johnson, disagree and believe the country's future will be tied
directly to the mysterious crystals. The former oilman doesn't believe any of
the obstacles will be too difficult to overcome, particularly as energy prices
keep rising.
"It looks like we may be just a few years away from some kind of
development on a limited basis," he said. "If we can prove you can
make money on this, hydrates will take off."
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