Source could double U.S. natgas Supplies
BY CHRIS BALTIMORE
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There could be a backyard solution to the Bush administration's energy woes in the form of frozen natural gas deposits with the potential to double U.S. natural gas supplies, if consumers can just wait 50 years.
The good news about the supplies, called methane hydrates or flammable ice, is that they are plentiful.
The U.S. Geological Survey, the arm of the Interior Department charged with sizing up the country's oil and gas deposits, says hydrate supplies could be 300 times bigger than all other conventional U.S. natural gas supplies.
The bad news? The bounty is frozen deep beneath the ocean or Arctic ice, and could take more than a generation to excavate.
``We don't believe that significant production of hydrates could displace other gas for 30 to 50 years,'' said Timothy Collett, a USGS geologist.
``There's not much of a chance of it helping us out tomorrow,'' said Marlan Downey, president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
And if they can, methane is 20 times more damaging as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide -- a fact that could open a Pandora's box of global warming problems.
Methane is formed by the decomposition of vegetable matter and takes a solid form under extreme cold and pressure. ``It looks exactly like dirty ice,'' Downey said.
AMPLE BUT COSTLY SUPPLIES
Amid the Bush administration's quest for new energy sources in the nation's wildlife refuges, offshore areas and national parks, pie-in-the-sky schemes get more feasible by the day.
The USGS says there could be 320,000 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of hydrates beneath U.S. soil, several hundred times the amount of existing conventional reserves, Collett said.
Reaching the deposits would be a technological feat. But tapping just 1 percent of those reserves could more than double U.S. natural gas supplies in one fell swoop, he said.
And that's just in the United States. Total global hydrate supplies could be up to 400 million trillion cubic feet -- versus known gas reserves of 5,000 trillion cubic feet, according to a USGS report.
Technology to pull off hydrate extraction is largely untested, leaving many industry officials skeptical.
``There's a lot of uncertainty about the volumes, and they're not really tested,'' said Dick Bishop, a geologist with Exxon Mobil Exploration Corp (XOM.N). ``You really don't know for sure that they're there.''
NEXT TECHNOLOGICAL MOON SHOT
Rising energy costs can convert impossibilities to realities.
Twenty years ago, deepwater drilling was dismissed as the equivalent of a moon shot. Now, most major oil and gas firms operate offshore platforms in ocean waters a mile deep.
Energy-starved Japan and its state-owned Japan National Oil Corp. (JNOC) have poured $50 million a year into hydrate research over the past five years, Collett said. JNOC is also pursuing a deepwater hydrate project, he said.
In the United States, hydrates are plentiful on Alaska's North Slope, along the Carolina coast of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and off the Pacific Coast. Overseas, large deposits have been found around Russia's Lake Baikal.
Hydrates are a blip on DOE's radar screen. The U.S. Congress passed the Methane Hydrate Research and Development Act of 2000, which authorized DOE to spend $5 million on hydrate research in 2001, ramping to $12 million in 2005. DOE funded an exploration well in Northern Canada's Mackenzie River Delta, along with Canadian and Japanese companies.
``Methane hydrates are a significant part of our oil and gas R&D program,'' said Guido DeHoraiis, acting DOE deputy assistant secretary for natural gas and petroleum technology.
But a decision on the viability of commercial hydrate production is unlikely before 2015, he said. ``We're probably very early on to say what the most probable ways are to produce hydrates,'' he said.
HYDRATES ON EDGE OF BUSH RADAR
The White House energy plan makes a nod toward alternative energy sources like wind plants, geothermal generation and solar cells. Hydrates get a single mention in the plan, appearing in a list of ``unconventional resources.''
But natural gas supplies are high on the administration's priority list.
According to Vice President Dick Cheney's national energy policy report, natural gas demand is projected to rise by 50 percent from 2000 to 2020 from 22.8 Tcf to 34.7 Tcf. Supplies, however, will creep up from 19.3 Tcf in 2000 to 29 Tcf in 2020.
Alaska's North Slope is a natural gas hot spot for companies like BP Plc (BP.L), and hydrates could be icing on the cake, Collett said. ``Some companies are looking at hydrates as an addition to their Alaska reserves,'' he said.
Throw into the mix plans to build a huge Alaska natural gas pipeline, and there could be hints of feasibility to hydrate production plans. BP is studying two pipeline routes that could bring natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to consumers in 2007 at a cost of $8 billion to $10 billion.
Conventional natural gas production would take up most of the space in the pipeline. But the new Alaska pipeline could open up future possibilities.
``There may be a relationship, but right now they're probably independent decisions,'' DOE's DeHoraiis said. |
