In this case, the oil companies would benefit, since they would naturally be the ones that one would think would do the mining or drilling or collection, however it needs to be done. They already have tremendous experience in mining, and drilling, and they have the money.
You're certainly right about this.
I note from one link on gas hydrates - marine.usgs.gov - that:
Recent mapping conducted by the USGS off North Carolina and South Carolina shows large accumulations of methane hydrates.
A pair of relatively small areas, each about the size of the State of Rhode Island, shows intense concentrations of gas hydrates. USGS scientists estimate that these areas contain more than 1,300 trillion cubic feet of methane gas, an amount representing more than 70 times the 1989 gas consumption of the United States. Some of the gas was formed by bacteria in the sediments, but some may be derived from deep strata of the Carolina Trough. The Carolina Trough is a significant offshore oil and gas frontier area where no wells have been drilled. It is a very large basin, about the size of the State of South Carolina, that has accumulated a great thickness of sediment, perhaps more than 13 kilometers. Salt diapirs, reefs, and faults, in addition to hydrate gas, may provide greater potential for conventional oil and gas traps than is present in other east coast basins.
The oil industry can't even drill for conventional oil and gas, which it knows a lot about handling, there. Also I read:
Methane, a "greenhouse" gas, is 10 times more effective than carbon dioxide in causing climate warming.
Yikes! That's not good. The environmental obstacles to hydrates will be even greater than for conventional oil and gas. It will happen some day, I suspect. But we're not ready yet, I think. |
