A new source of natural gas

The name “natural gas” might be a puzzle. After all, how could there be such a thing as unnatural gas?

The reason we call it natural gas has to do with history. There was a day that people made burnable gas by heating coal. The gases that came off the coal were piped around cities where they did things like light street lamps and even power cook stoves in homes.

Coal gas had its down side. For one thing, it often contained carbon monoxide. And it took energy to make the gas, so it never could be truly cheap.

Happily, geologists figured out that a gas from within the Earth would burn well. Because it came from Mother Nature rather than being manufactured by people, folks called the new energy source “natural gas.” In time, natural gas replaced coal gas.

Natural gas is mostly made up of what a chemist would call methane. Methane is odorless. In order to help people detect leaks of natural gas, a scent is added to it. If you’ve even once sniffed treated natural gas, you remember the distinctive odor and you’ll know if a natural gas leak is occurring in your kitchen.

In recent years a lot more natural gas has come online in our country due to new mining methods including hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.” Fracking allows the extraction of natural gas and sometimes petroleum from rocks including shale. But now there is an even newer development that may add a lot more natural gas to what people can burn each year.

Some 50 miles out to sea, Japanese researchers and engineers have now liberated the main ingredient of natural gas from what’s called methane hydrates that are on the seafloor. At a depth of over 3,000 feet, the Japanese tapped a vast reservoir of natural gas bound up in frozen water under high pressure on the seafloor. The hydrates are made of methane molecules trapped in ice. Some call the hydrates “ice that burns” or “fire ice.”

The United States Geological Survey has put out a fact sheet on the subject of methane hydrates. Total natural gas reserves are often measured in trillion cubic feet (or TCF for short). Worldwide the USGS reports that estimates of resources of conventional natural gas are about 13,000 TCF. It’s not so easy to estimate what methane hydrates on the seafloor and in permafrost may contain, but the USGS fact sheet gives this resource the range of 100,000 to almost 300,000,000 TCF. Not all of the gas may be extractable, but clearly the total amount of methane hydrates is immense.

The Japanese are particularly interested in methane hydrates off their shores because they don’t have other fossil fuels to exploit. They are therefore likely to lead the rest of the world in looking for ways to mine underwater methane hydrates.

Like other energy resources, there are serious questions about environmental tradeoffs involved in using a lot of methane hydrates to meet our energy needs. But one thing, I think, is certain: We’ll be hearing more about the ice that burns in the future.

Dr. E. Kirsten Peters, a native of the rural Northwest, was trained as a geologist at Princeton and Harvard. This column is a service of the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University.

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6 Comments on "A new source of natural gas"

rollin on Sun, 9th Jun 2013 1:19 pm 



Only a relatively new source of methane, methane hydrates have been known for many years. Now that fossil energy is becoming expensive and less available, last ditch efforts such as methane hydrate mining will be attempted.
The race is on, who will release more methane, humans or nature? My bet is on nature.

Ed on Sun, 9th Jun 2013 2:25 pm 



Coal gas may be making a come back as some people are considering setting fire to the coal resources under the North sea to release coal gas that is them extracted to the surface. On the subject of methane hydrates; it is debatable if you could ever extract more energy from them than the energy you expend in the process. Desperate times call for desperate measures however. For example you could plant a thermo nuclear reactor/ slow exploding fission bomb inside a methane hydrate deposit and pipe the resulting methane out.

Norm on Sun, 9th Jun 2013 7:13 pm 



Methane bydrates looks like a joke. You run a big ship out there, send down cables, lift out one rock of hydrated. Negative ROEI and so much hopium. The real prize is the paychecks that go to the Researchers. Set fire to underground coal deposits? That might work. More than you can say for hydrates. Go figure how do you do underwater coal mining? That might be possible.

J-Gav on Sun, 9th Jun 2013 9:47 pm 



Farcical and tragic.

Others on Mon, 10th Jun 2013 12:28 am 



So there are 6 sources of Natgas (Methane)
Gas fields
Shale Gas
Coal Gas
Waste to Gas
Bio Gas
Methane Hydrates

we can convert our vehicles to run on CNG/LNG and reduce oil consumption.

BillT on Mon, 10th Jun 2013 2:47 am 



Others… you are dreaming again. The days of personal powered vehicles are about over. You may already own your last car.