B.C. fishermen land huge energy sourceScientists say methane hydrate deposits could meet Canada’s needs for 40 years, but agree with industry leaders that commercial development is distant prospect By Gary Park PNA Canadian Correspondent
Fishermen trawling the sea floor off Vancouver Island two years ago may have netted the biggest energy source in Canada.
Instead of an edible catch, they hauled up chunks of ice that fizzled the moment they broke the surface.
The discovery has since turned into what scientists believe is the largest quantity of methane hydrate ever discovered on the ocean bottom in Canada. Some methane hydrate blocks big as houses The frozen deposits of natural gas could equal the known reserves of onshore gas across Canada and have the potential to meet Canada’s energy needs for 40 years, a University of Victoria research team announced Sept. 9.
Alerted by the fishermen, the scientists returned to the discovery site with a submersible vehicle and found methane hydrate blocks, some as large as houses, at depths of 2,800 feet. Hydrates not high on industry list “It is likely an indication of where to look for oil and gas,” said team leader Ross Chapman, who said the so-called “flammable ice” has the potential to meet Canada’s energy needs for up to 40 years if it can be extracted.
But he was reluctant to delve into the commercial possibilities, saying” “We’re scientists, not oil prospectors.”
Word of the discovery stirred some interest in the industry, but all said it could be 15 to 30 years before the technology exists to make the resource an economic proposition.
Greg Stringham, vice president of markets and fiscal policy at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, put methane hydrates well down the list of potential industry developments.
He gave higher priority to the emerging coalbed methane fields in Western Canada, which are expected to make their commercial debut this fall.
Frank Sayer, president of Calgary-based research firm Sayer Securities, said methane hydrates could be a crucial part of the world’s energy future based on projections that they could double the energy fond in all other known sources of fossil fuels — oil, natural gas, coal and oil sands.
Chapman, a geophysicist, acknowledged what many industry leaders have said — it will take years to evaluate the formations, some of which occur in large chunks on the sea floor while others are buried in hundreds of feet of mud, and even longer to develop a method of extraction. Testing in Arctic Canada has also been part of an international program to test hydrate deposits in the Arctic.
In April, an international partnership reported “very encouraging” results from production testing at the Mallik field on the Mackenzie Delta, although detailed results will not be made public for two years.
Natural Resources Canada, which led the 79-day, C$14 million experiment, said that the scientists involved believe the results “were a first step towards evaluating gas hydrates as an energy source.”
Partners in that project included the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Department of Energy, the German government’s GeoForschungsZentrumPotsdam, the Gas Authority of India, the Oil and Natural Gas Corp. of India and Japan National Oil Corp., which has spent $50 million over five years on hydrate research off the coast of Japan.
The German scientists joined the project partly to study hydrates for answers to the mysteries of climate change.
Because methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent that carbon dioxide, scientists suspect hydrates influence the climate.
Some believe the methane that is absorbed or released from undersea hydrate beds has influenced extreme temperature shifts in the past, prompting environmentalists to argue against spending any money on this new source of fossil fuels.
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