Methane Hydrate Could Power The World For Decades, Even Centuries

A few years back, I read a book called "The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, The Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy".

The idea behind the book is that the mind of man is boundless in it's creativity and capacity to find new ways to exploit the raw materials provided by the Earth in order to use them as fuels.

This is an obvious idea, and it is obviously true. All of human history proves it. None of human history disproves the idea. Humans have always found new and better ways to power their lives, and once again, we are proving this to be true.

From Al Fin:

Methane hydrate, as the substance is known, has long been regarded by oil and gas companies as a nuisance because it can block marine drilling rigs.

Now a study by Statoil, Norway's state oil firm and a leading global gas producer, suggests it should be reclassified as a major fuel resource, with enough buried in the oceans to power the world for decades or even centuries.

"The energy content of methane occurring in hydrate form is immense, possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels," said Espen Andersen, Statoil's exploration manager in unconventional hydrocarbons, who will present his study at an energy conference next week. _Australian_via_SundayTimes

Methane, trapped in an icy cage of water molecules, occurs in permafrost and, in even greater quantities, beneath the ocean floor. It forms only under specific pressure and temperature conditions. These conditions are especially prevalent in the ocean along the continental shelves, as well as in the deeper waters of semi-enclosed seas (see graphic).

World reserves of the frozen gas are enormous. Geologists estimate that significantly more hydrocarbons are bound in the form of methane hydrate than in all known reserves of coal, natural gas and oil combined. "There is simply so much of it that it cannot be ignored," says leading expert Gerhard Bohrman of the Research Center for Ocean Margins... _DerSpiegel

Go read the whole thing at Al Fin.