Methane Hydrates - Fuel of the Future?

The new sources of energy that are being found continue to astound me. Right now we're in the midst of the Marcellus Shale gas boom, with  future production from the Utica Shale expected soon.  But there's even more unconventional gas out there, almost ready to be tapped. The latest gas source is methane hydrates, which have been known about  for years, but recovering them has always been prohibitively expensive. The US Geological Survey had this to say, 20 years ago:

Hydrates store immense amounts of methane, with major implications for energy resources and climate, but the natural controls on hydrates and their impacts on the environment are very poorly understood.

Gas hydrates occur abundantly in nature, both in Arctic regions and in marine sediments. Gas hydrate is a crystalline solid consisting of gas molecules, usually methane, each surrounded by a cage of water molecules. It looks very much like water ice. Methane hydrate is stable in ocean floor sediments at water depths greater than 300 meters, and where it occurs, it is known to cement loose sediments in a surface layer several hundred meters thick.

Evidently, they store huge amounts of energy:

The worldwide amounts of carbon bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth.

This estimate is made with minimal information from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other studies. Extraction of methane from hydrates could provide an enormous energy and petroleum feedstock resource. Additionally, conventional gas resources appear to be trapped beneath methane hydrate layers in ocean sediments.

The worldwide amounts of carbon bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth.


This estimate is made with minimal information from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other studies. Extraction of methane from hydrates could provide an enormous energy and petroleum feedstock resource. Additionally, conventional gas resources appear to be trapped beneath methane hydrate layers in ocean sediments.

Recently the Department of Energy, ConocoPhilips and Japan Oil have been been funding an evaluation of a way to produce methane hydrates using CO2.

The goal of this project is to define, plan, and conduct a field trial of a methane hydrate production methodology whereby carbon dioxide (CO₂) molecules are exchanged in situ for the methane (CH₄) molecules within a hydrate structure, releasing the methane for production. The objective is to evaluate the viability of this hydrate production technique and to understand the implications of the process at a field scale.

Exciting times.