" 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. "
CO2 Sequestration:
http://www.geotimes.org/mar03/feature_demonstrating.html
" Estimates are that human activity emits 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year (see the feature on page 16 in this issue). One proposed method for reducing how much of the greenhouse gas ends up in the atmosphere is to store the carbon dioxide underground. Natural reservoirs of the gas exist, suggesting that geologic carbon sequestration is feasible.
" For the past few years, two projects have, combined, been burying 2 million metric tons per year of man-made carbon dioxide instead of sending it into the atmosphere. And researchers in several countries are investigating other options for geologic storage of the greenhouse gas. One of the main goals of these studies is to verify that the gas can in fact remain buried for at least hundreds of years. "
I don't take a rocket scientist to figure out why the Gigatons
per year Methanol industry is looking into this.
Frederick
