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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (135583)	6/4/2004 11:26:53 AM
From: Valley Girl	Respond to of 281500

Mea culpa - I was too quick to dismiss it yesterday. Thus chastened, I did some quick research, here is one of many links on the subject: engr.pitt.edu So, yes, there's an enormous amount of potential in methane hydrates, but every link I've looked at says that despite several years of study no one's figured out how to commercially extract it, pretty much what I thought yesterday. However - I foolishly fell into the same trap that many other energy analysts have, dismissing something on economic grounds without looking at the energy balance. The above link describes 2-3 techniques that might be technically feasible, if not economically. And so therein lies my error. I would like to find someone who's done at least a cursory energy yield analysis for methane hydrate. Most studies of commercial viability are flawed because they do a purely economic analysis, which of course is generally done assuming the current world of cheap fossil fuels. This blind spot can lead to incorrect conclusions in both directions. It could lead one to conclude that solar power isn't viable, even though on an energy output/input basis it's a win. And similarly, it can lead one to conclude that something like oil shales could be profitable if the price was right, even though it might take more energy to produce it than it contains. Where in this spectrum does methane hydrate lie? For comparison, the energy yield for oil in the early 20th century was 100:1, though that's dropped to something like 10:1 as we go to more challenging sources. Oil from bitumen and shales could be as low as 2:1 - Canada's using a lot of natural gas to produce their tar sands. Be suspicious of "sources" that are less than 1:1, like ethanol!