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China Successfully Mines Gas From Methane Hydrate In Production Run (oilprice.com)
hackingbear writes from a report via OilPrice.com: In a world's first, China has successfully extracted gas from gas hydrates in production run in the northern part of the South China Sea. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), global estimates vary, but the energy content of methane in hydrates, also known as "fire ice" or "flammable ice," is "immense, possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels." But no methane production other than small-scale field experiments has been documented so far. The China Geographical Survey said that it managed to collect samples from the Shenhu area in the South China Sea in a test that started last Wednesday. Every day some 16,000 cubic meters (565,000 cubic feet) of gas, almost all of which was methane, were extracted from the test field, exceeding goals for production mining. This is expected to help cut down China's coal-induced pollution greatly and reduce reliance on politically sensitive petroleum imports controlled by the US. "The production of gas hydrate will play a significant role in upgrading China's energy mixture and securing its energy security," Minister of Land and Resources Jiang Daming said on Thursday.
IIRC methane is a seriously nasty greenhouse gas. What are the effects of mining, treating and burning this gas? Negative because of extra nasty emissions, or positive because harvesting it this way means the methane as such never makes it into the atmosphere (which was / is a big worry for instance when this ice melts and the methane is released)
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
they're mining Manganese Nodules from the sea floor like we did (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSF_Explorer). There's more going on here folks.
There's such an enormous amount of methane that this won't allay those concerns. If it's going to happen it will still happen even if we're burning it 100% in place of coal.
There is such an enormous amount of methane (natural gas) being mined already, so much so that the price of natural gas makes flaring it off cheaper than piping it to market in many locations.
This will help nations like China and Japan who are without ample petroleum natural resources, but the value of liquid crude and condensates will be largely unaffected unless global population trends tail off.
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