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Page added on August 25, 2016
Can Fire Ice Replace Both Oil And Renewables?
Do you remember the peak oil hysteria from the early 2000s? Oil didn’t just not end, the world started pumping even more thanks to the shale revolution. Now the reign of fossil fuels is being undermined by renewable energy and batteries, spurred on by the growing environmental awareness of humankind. But it’s precisely this growing awareness – along with a few other things like the drive to energy independence – that could usher in a new era of fossil fuels: the era of methane hydrates.
Methane hydrates are, simply put, molecules of natural gas trapped in the crystal structure of frozen water molecules far below the seabed. Back in 2013, the Scientific American wrote that the world’s reserves of this compound, poetically called fire ice, could be as much as 15 times greater than total shale gas reserves.
This is a truly staggering amount, but realistically, not all of it is accessible or recoverable. In fact, at this point, despite long-running methane hydrates research programs in the U.S. and Japan, success has only been achieved in the last few years, in the form of successful test production of natural gas from hydrate formations in Japan.
Large-scale production of gas from methane hydrates remains a distant prospect, but should it turn into reality, it would have major implications for the world that reach far beyond energy.
As Atlantic’s Charles C. Mann notes in an exhaustive piece on methane hydrates, the compound could turn energy-dependent countries into independent ones, which in turn would transform geopolitical dynamics since so much in geopolitics comes down to energy security and the defense of energy interests across the world.
At the same time, if methane hydrates becomes the new oil, countries dependent on their oil industry for survival will have a much bigger problem than the current oil rout. They will be faced with a scenario of diversify-or-die, and it’s questionable how many of them can make the transition and survive.
Other countries will get the windfall of newly discovered methane hydrates and become the new oil kingdoms with all usual consequences from such developments, such as a dominant energy industry stifling the rest of the economy, eventual stagnation and accompanying corruption, as detailed by political scientist Michael Ross in his book The Oil Curse, and quoted by Mann as the most likely scenario for the majority of new (or even existing) players on the energy market. It’s hard to rein in the energy industry—this is the overwhelming conclusion of researchers into the effects of oil and gas on national and international politics.
On the other hand, if methane hydrates replace oil as the new dominant fossil fuel – a possible scenario given that natural gas is a cleaner fuel than both coal and crude oil – this will undermine the renewables industry, and could wreak havoc on global ambitions for zero carbon footprints.
Of course, this would only happen if methane hydrates become cheap enough to produce, which is not at all a given. The thing about technology, however, is that it is constantly improving, especially with the right encouragement. For Japan, this encouragement is the prospect of it becoming more energy independent. With this in mind, Japanese (and very likely other) scientists will continue to refine their drilling and gas extraction tech, bringing methane hydrates closer to the market. They could fail spectacularly, or they could turn the global energy industry as we know it on its head, just like fracking did.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
27 Comments on "Can Fire Ice Replace Both Oil And Renewables?"
penury on Thu, 25th Aug 2016 3:32 pm
I forget which is the greatest threat to the planet CO2 or Methane?
ghung on Thu, 25th Aug 2016 4:46 pm
“…poetically called fire ice, could be as much as 15 times greater than total shale gas reserves…. and cost 15 times as much to bring to market. How poetic is that?
Go Speed Racer on Thu, 25th Aug 2016 5:05 pm
There are knowledgeable people on this website. I ain’t one of them. But the experts clearly said you can’t drill out methane solids.
There is no way to dissolve out the material and pump the gas to your house. If there was, don’t you think we would be doing it?
SuperGullibleGuy on Thu, 25th Aug 2016 6:13 pm
This sounds like an exciting discovery and with our modern technological system it shouldn’t take long to utilize this new and seemingly endless source of energy.
I always wondered where ‘Peak Oilers’ were coming from and now that fracking and shale oil have proved them wrong once and for all, it’ll be nice to not hear their doom and gloom all day long.
I’m hoping the the Hummer4 has a V10 or 12 and a 100gallon gas tank. V8’s are so last century.
rockman on Thu, 25th Aug 2016 6:33 pm
“…and cost 15 times as much to bring to market.”. No insult intended buddy, but given not $1 of commercial hydrate has ever been produced where did you come up with that F*CKING INSANE 15X NUMBER? LOL.
After all even the Japanese who have spent over $100 million on research aren’t saying they’ve developed a recovery process at any cost.
rockman on Thu, 25th Aug 2016 6:37 pm
Guy – Just curious: are you being facicious? If not I’ll let our local pitbulls enlighten you. I don’t have time to waste. LOL.
SuperGullibleGuy on Thu, 25th Aug 2016 6:42 pm
Yeah, a little sarcasm to lighten the mood.
Some days the absurdity of it all gets to be a bit much.
Sort of like an MDB over at ZH if you catch my drift.
ghung on Thu, 25th Aug 2016 7:03 pm
“No insult intended buddy, but given not $1 of commercial hydrate has ever been produced where did you come up with that F*CKING INSANE 15X NUMBER? LOL.”
Yes, Rock, I was being hyperbolic; keeping in the spirit of the article. I know none has been produced commercially. I wonder how they plan to do it without releasing vast amounts of methane into the environment.
Maybe they don’t.
peakyeast on Thu, 25th Aug 2016 7:49 pm
I wonder how much sealife habitat this is going to destroy. Trawling is bad… This could be disaster?
rockman on Thu, 25th Aug 2016 8:06 pm
ghung – I should have guessed that but Guy knocked me off balance for a moment.
Why I use a lot of “LOL’s” so folks km w I’m joking a bit.
Sissyfuss on Thu, 25th Aug 2016 10:01 pm
Rock, didn,’t we have this discussion several weeks ago where you articulated the unfeasible nature of harvesting this resource? Or I just having Deja Vue? Personally, I would prefer a wet dream but boogers can’t be cheesers.
JuanP on Thu, 25th Aug 2016 10:56 pm
This shit is melting and evaporating anyway so we might as well burn it if we can, but I don’t think we will ever manage to extract and use it productively.
Davy on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 6:50 am
Fire/Ice, what an idea in futility and bargaining. This is substitution gone haywire. It is going to be released and likely dangerously but do we want to accelerate this process without a return? If we can’t even manage to get oil out of the Arctic I doubt we can manage this undertaking.
This energy source does not exhibit the right qualities for industrial production. It represents another awful strip mine proposition that will surely be very damaging to the sea floor. I don’t see where we will ever get a benefit. It will likely be just another subsidized activity on the back of the remaining high value fossil fuels we are using up quickly.
What is most important now in the end game of collapse is to avoid bad decisions like this. We need to be devolving with technology towards those that are less complex and more robust in stability. These might not delivery the energy we need to manage to grow the status quo but they will allow us to mitigate and adapt to the descent better. We need to be thinking “less” with the humility that acknowledges a failing civilization. We can still have dignity in less. There are many aspects of less that offer more dignity. We can have more spirituality which is the appreciation of meaning, beauty, and value. The paradox of modern life has been more stuff less meaning. We need to turn this backwardation around with less stuff and more meaning. Pain and death will do that. Crisis will motivate us.
Very soon the ideas about space travel, artificial intelligence, and exotic energy sources will be tossed in the dustbin of failed human fantasy. We have a very short time to do herculean tasks and the last thing we need to be messing with is unrealistic and physically impossible undertaking in the pursuit of continuation of the end game of the status quo.
Cloggie on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 7:21 am
JuanP is right, methane is more dangerous than CO2:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-gas-is-methane/
So you might as well burn it and turn it into CO2 and water and turn every location of the planet into a tropical jungle, with the tropical climate coming as an extra “bonus”.
Greening of the planet as an unexpected side effect of CO2 increase:
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-co2-fertilization-greening-earth.html
shortonoil on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 8:45 am
There is a slim possibility that other processes may be able to mitigate the depletion effects of petroleum. Calthrate is not one of them. Since its discovery there has been continued speculation about using the 4,000 trillion tons of it that are buried along the Continental coasts. Ongoing research has demonstrated that it is far more unstable, and would be much more difficult to extract than previously believed. The probability of using methane hydrate as an energy source is going down every year; not up. The best place to put this is under “pipe dream”.
Bob on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 10:35 am
We could, of course, reduce our energy use by 50% with no real impact on our lives. But that would be too easy. We would rather have thousands of floating platforms trying to pump fire ice to the surface to be burned by us (and destroy what is left of the planet).
ghung on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 10:54 am
“We could, of course, reduce our energy use by 50% with no real impact on our lives.”
Could we? Who’s “we”, anyway? A large percentage of our population makes its living off of the giant surplus of energy use we see today – intermediaries who produce absolutely nothing tangible or critical, but use a big chunk of our energy production. This is the nature of the deeply systemic trap humans find themselves in. For every mega-joule humans stop consuming, many people will find themselves unemployed, or worse. There can be no managed contraction.
Boat on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 11:21 am
ghung,
“There can be no managed contraction”
As fear of climate change grows humans will become more and more proactive. An obvious sign will religions denounce large families, immigration ends and politions will be running on how they will save the planet.
Sports for example may be tv only. Tourism cut to 200 miles. Every buillding having an energy limit. Once the majority of humans friek, change will happen fast.
Davy on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 11:39 am
If we reduce our consumption globally 50% most of us will die. If a village here or a nation there does it that may work but for the most part there are no changes that can be made without collapse. A nation such as China or the US cannot change much or the global system collapses. This is how tightly wound up we are. If discretionary reductions were positive and beneficial then they would have made them long ago. We don’t just not make them because we don’t want to we also don’t make them because we can’t anymore. It is one of those fantasies of the greenies or the sheeple that cannot fathom why we can’t have less. As individuals most of us could live a lower standard of living this is true. This is not true at the global level. There will be real consequences for a reduction in energy intensity and economic activity. The die off is ahead because of it.
JuanP on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 11:44 am
Boat, You have such a high opinion of people’s potential for positive change. I completely disagree with your assessment. Things are getting worse, not better. Things have been getting worse for decades if not centuries. I can’t understand why you think things will get better. You seem to be guided by some type of completely irrational optimism that contradicts all the evidence around us.
energyskeptic on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 11:45 am
In some ways energyskeptic.com is meant to be the wiki of energy resources
Anyone writing that methane hydrages will ever happen should read my article
Why we aren’t mining methane hydrates now — or perhaps ever
http://energyskeptic.com/2014/methane-hydrates/
And then explain why they still think it is possible. Even if there were a technological breakthrough, there is just a teeny-tiny fraction that are obtainable
rockman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 11:52 am
Sissy – Yes. Simply put about 85% of the calthrate is water in the form of ice. And the methane is actually a single molecule within a single ice molecule. So to release the methane every cubic foot of ice has to be broken down. In the oil patch the NG that be produced from a reservoir is classified as “free gas” because it is free to flow out of the rock. There are trillions of cubic feet. of methane molecularly bound in US onshore shales. But very little is “free gas”. For example the New Albany Shale was the first NG production in the country. Was used for street lighting in St. Louis in the late 1800’s. Lowering the reservoir pressure destabilizes the organic molecule release the methane. Releases it VERY SLOWLY: at current prices about $100/day per well. So slowly some wells have produced for more the 80 years. There are trillions of cubic feet of PROVEN methane reserves stranded in the NAS.
It’s going to take someone really smart to figure a different approach recovering the methane from the calthates as I envision the situation it would essentially be a mining effort: pull ever cubic foot of the calthrate from the sea floor, melt it and recover methane that comprises only 15% of that huge volume. LOL
I lack the imagination to even fantasize such a process.
JuanP on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 11:53 am
Bob “We could, of course, reduce our energy use by 50% with no real impact on our lives.”
There are so many things we could, in theory, do, but we don’t do. Humans are just not made that way, Bob. We evolved to want more, breed more, and consume more; that is human nature. Next year there will be 80 million idiots more on this planet than this year. And the year after that another 80 million more. We could stop breeding unsustainably but we don’t. We could have done it centuries ago but we didn’t. We could do it in the future but we won’t.
What will happen is that humans will keep breeding unsustainably like we always have for as long as we exist as a species because that is our nature. The last fertile woman of our species will probably give birth once a year from puberty until she dies even if all her children keep dying. She could do otherwise but she won’t because her humanity will prevent her from making the smart choice.
Boat on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 2:23 pm
Jaun,
“You seem to be guided by some type of completely irrational optimism that contradicts all the evidence around us.”
Every generation of my family has had it much better than the last. I am 4th generation. It’s very possible the 6th generation will have it rough but that’s down the road. When I was young I used bale hay for $2.50 per hr. I see those huge round bales now and chuckle. My dad walked next to a wagon and threw that hay with a pitchfork. I mowed 4 acres around 100 plus trees. Then came the zero turn radius mower. Cut the time in half. Get the drift?
JuanP on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 2:44 pm
Yes, Boat. I have always thought that most people generalize based on their past personal experiences and miss the big picture. My personal experience is quite the opposite from yours so my generalizations are the opposite, too. Every man in my family has been worse off than his father for more than four generations and I have no doubt that my nephews will be worse off than I am, so I see a darker big picture than you do and a quite hopeless future. I envy your positive perspective, but I don’t think that the past and the future will have much in common.
Humanity has been growing and consuming more and more resources since we first came around but I don’t think that this planet has enough resources to keep this up much longer at the rate we are consuming them today. This, combined with a growing population, makes me believe in a future of increasing scarcity, suffering, and pain.
Sissyfuss on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:37 pm
Alright Rock, you piqued my curiosity. Are you saying that that trillions of cf of methane in the NAS is permanently stranded or can it be harvested with a combination of fracking and horizontal drilling or some other exotic method?
Cloggie on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 6:42 am
Here an article from 2012, refering to a large Australian study, concluding that windturbines have an EROEI of 20-25:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/29/turbines-energy
The study looked at 119 turbines on 50 sites for a period of 30 years time.
You can expect that newer and larger turbines will have an ever higher EROEI.