-Pete
>
> Keith
>
>
>
> (The Times 15 March 2013)
>
>
>
>
> ?Burnable Ice? Will Set The Energy World On Fire
>
> Matt Ridley
>
> Move over shale gas, here comes methane hydrate (perhaps). On Tuesday the
> Japanese Government?s drilling ship Chikyu started flaring off gas from
a hole
> drilled into a solid deposit of methane and ice, 300m beneath the
seabed under
> 1,000m of water, 30 miles off the Japanese coast.
>
> The real significance of this gas flare probably lies decades in the
future,
> though the Japanese are talking about commercial production by 2018. The
> technology for getting fuel out of hydrated methane, also known as
clathrate,
> is in its infancy. After many attempts to turn this ?fire ice? into gas by
> heating it proved uneconomic, the technology used this week ?
depressurising
> the stuff ? was first tested five years ago in northern Canada. It
looks much
> more promising.
>
> Methane hydrate is found all around the world beneath the seabed near
> continental margins as well as in the Arctic under land. Any combination of
> low temperature and high pressure causes methane and water to crystallise
> together in a sort of molecular lattice. Nobody knows exactly how much
there
> is, but probably more than all the coal and oil put together, let alone
other
> gas.
>
> The proof that this can be extracted should finally bury the stubborn myth
> that the world will run out of fossil fuels in any meaningful sense in the
> next few centuries, let alone decades. In 1866 William Stanley Jevons
> persuaded Gladstone that coal would soon run out. In 1922 a United States
> Presidential Commission said ?Already the output of gas has begun to wane.
> Production of oil cannot long maintain its present rate.? In 1956 M. King
> Hubbert of Shell forecast that American gas production would peak in
1970. In
> 1977 Jimmy Carter said that oil production would start to decline in
?six or
> eight years?. Whoops.
>
> The key will be cost. However, Japan currently pays more than five times as
> much for natural gas as America, so even high-cost gas will be welcome
there.
> The American economy, drunk on cheap shale gas, will not rush to develop
> hydrate. (Unlike oil, there is no world price of gas because of the
expense of
> liquefying it for transport by ship.) The shale gas revolution is
effectively
> already putting a ceiling on the price of energy. America has lost its
> appetite for gas imports, which now go to Europe and Asia instead, but is
> gaining an appetite for exporting it. Domestically, America?s cheap gas has
> caused electricity generators to switch from coal to gas, and buses and
trucks
> to start switching from oil to gas. Even if hydrate proves stubbornly
> expensive ? and it?s generally wise not to bet against Japanese
ingenuity ? it
> will put a roof over this price ceiling.
>
> Hydrate and shale are not the only new sources of gas. Thanks to newly
> perfected drilling technology, new deep-sea gas fields are coming
online off
> Brazil and Africa and in the eastern Mediterranean. The days when gas
> production was concentrated in a few charming places such as Iran, Russia,
> Venezuela and Qatar are gone.
>
> Indeed, one of the best ways to love the new gas-fired future is to
list those
> who detest it. As recounted in a new documentary, FrackNation, Vladimir
Putin,
> at a dinner with journalists in 2011, suddenly became agitated about the
> supposed devastation of Pennsylvania by the shale gas industry. His
new-found
> concern for the Appalachian countryside might just have something to do
with
> the threat that shale gas poses to Gazprom?s stranglehold on European
markets.
>
> For those still concerned about climate change, this is also good news. In
> atomic terms, methane is one fifth carbon and four fifths hydrogen. Not
even
> the most die-hard environmentalist can find anything bad to say about burnt
> hydrogen, or ?water?. Given that combined-cycle gas turbines run at higher
> energy- conversion efficiency than coal-fired steam turbines, the carbon
> dioxide output from gas-fired electricity is well below half that of
> coal-fired.
>
> Thanks to shale gas, America?s carbon dioxide emissions in energy
production
> have plummeted by nearly 20 per cent in five years without political
targets
> or policies, while Europe?s have hardly changed, despite expensive
schemes to
> subsidise the producers of renewable energy and penalise fossil fuels.
(Apart
> from hydro, which has little capacity for expansion, and biomass, which is
> environmentally worse than fossil fuels, renewable energy remains an
> irrelevance in the energy debate. Even now, Britain still gets less
than 1 per
> cent of its total energy from wind.) Moreover, there is a possibility that
> methane hydrate could be almost carbon neutral. The University of
Bergen, in
> Norway, has developed a process that pumps carbon dioxide into the hydrate
> deposits, where it replaces the methane, turning methane hydrate into
carbon
> dioxide hydrate. The results from a field trial in Alaska are expected any
> day. If this process can be scaled up, and if the carbon dioxide from
burning
> the methane could be captured economically (big ifs), in future Japan could
> run on fossil fuels but generate almost no carbon emissions.
>
> As it takes market share from oil and coal, gas will dominate the world?s
> energy supply for much of this century before perhaps giving way to
something
> cheaper ? perhaps nuclear energy based probably on thorium rather than
> uranium, or solar power.
>
> Not only has cheap gas given the United States falling carbon dioxide
> emissions, it has also delivered it a huge competitive advantage in
> manufacturing. Firms are ?re-shoring? their operations from Europe and even
> China, as the low cost of American gas outbids the low cost of Chinese
labour.
> To be competitive, countries must have either cheap labour or cheap energy.
> The European elite?s strange determination to have neither is the root
cause
> of its current stagnation
>
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