Scientists discover frozen methane gas deposit off California

ap on Bakersfield Californian ^ | 1/28/06 | Alicia Chang - ap

[labette]

Shhh! Shhh!
{You'll awaken "them"!}

[Paul C. Jesup]

Scientists have discovered an undersea deposit of frozen methane just off the Southern California coast, but whether it can be harnessed as a potential energy source is unknown.

It's also highly explosive and the airbubbles it creates when it explodes can sink large ships and down airplanes.

[Dog Gone]

No, it doesn't. Volcanoes have long been known to produce methane. Nobody disputes that methane can come from inside the core of the earth.

Gold's theory is that OIL does also. Quite different, and not considered serious science by nearly everyone in the field.

[Dog Gone]

Volcanos produce methane. In fact, LOTS of things produce methane.

There's methane on the moons of Saturn.

Oil is created almost exclusively in a marine environment. All of the inland oil fields were once under sea water. It's millions of years of dead algae, fishpoop, plankton, etc., settling to the sea floor.

When there is an upthrust or the sea level drops, this muck gets covered with sand as the seashore changes its position. A whole layer of sandstone on top of the muck is the result.

Repeat dozens of times. Add some reefs and bony deposits to make some limestone layers.

Compress and heat for eons.

That's how you get oil.

[telstar1]

..left coast enviro-wackos will find some kind of problem with mining this stuff...



count on it

[Mike Darancette]

HOW can tons of frozen methane be found AT THE TOP of a "new" volcano off of CA with NO overlaying rock (to create pressure!) and NO massive millions of millions of pounds of plant matter deposited to create the source carbons?

The terrain on that location of the Pacific Plate may be quite old since that area is not headed for subduction any time. The Pacific Plate is sliding along the NA Plate in a NNE direction and the terrain in question came from somewhere else.

The Mud Volcano may have coughed stuff that was buried deeper under the sea floor. As to why the Methane Hydrate did not fall apart that is a function of water temperature and pressure.

They did admit that this was unusual and I don't think that there is a neat Biogenic answer that comes to mind.

OBTW: Most coal and much of our oil comes from plant decomposition during the Paleozoic Era specifically the Coniferous Period (345-290 mya). During the Late Carboniferous collision of Laurussia (present-day Europe and North America) into Godwanaland (present-day Africa and South America) produced the Appalachian mountain belt.

[Myrddin]

Methane hydrate is a geological hazard. No one has yet developed technology to mine it safely.

It wouldn't take much warming to belch a large volume of methane gas to the surface. You don't want to be nearby when that happens.

[Paleo Conservative]

It wouldn't take much warming to belch a large volume of methane gas to the surface. You don't want to be nearby when that happens.

You especially wouldn't want to be in a ship or platform floating on the surface. The methane hydrate bubbles would change the density of sea water below and cause the loss of bouyancy.

[Mike Darancette]

NNE should be NNW

[razorback-bert]

If we find oil on Io, it is a whole new game.

[hosepipe]

[ Why not genetically engineer crops to capture fusion energy from the Sun? ]

Been done.. their called Habanero Peppers..

[balch3]

Umm the oldest rock anywhere is only 6000 years old, give or take a few years.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Concur with coal. Absolutely.

I know the conventional theory of oil formation - you can't grow up an engineer in South TX without knowing it (and smelling it!), but am curious: Why is not more likely that methane (the fundamental structure building block of a long-chained liquid "oil") could not be the more direct source of "oil" than the very highly organized "plant" biomass getting broken down by heat and pressure.

After all, if plant biomass were the source of oil at 10,000 - 15,000 feet down, then there you'd find coal in places that deep. And coal beds are typically shallow, but oil is found all over the world, in places where the rock traps the rising pools of oil/methane.

Biological source from original carbon and hydrogen in rocks, or trapped cosmic sources from the original comet residue?

Look at the ages and depth of the rocks above the oil. It takes a long time to get that many thousand feet of movement.

Placing 10,000 feet of rock above a mass of oil-prodcuing plant matter is greater than the (average) height of the Alps and Norwegian mountains, the Urals, and Appalachians and the Gobi Desert plateau. That's a LOT of movement if you assume that sediment and earth crust movement buried surface plant matter.

[airborne]

You especially wouldn't want to be in a ship or platform floating on the surface. The methane hydrate bubbles would change the density of sea water below and cause the loss of bouyancy.

Could be the reason for the Bermuda Triangle?

[JasonC]

Compared to trying to get squirrely magnetic bottles to contain a fusion plasma, it still sounds like child's play. So we should be doing everything possible to create technologies to use it as an energy source.

Green nazis will try to stop it out of fear of CO2. As though we can't simultaneously look for the thermostat controls. Green nazis have already killed more than 500 million people with their luddite junk science (see DDT), we shouldn't listen to them now on this, either.

[Mike Darancette]

You've pretty much described the Abiogenic thoery of petroleum formation as described in Wikipedia below:

---

The idea of abiogenic petroleum origin was championed in the Western world by Thomas Gold based on thoughts from Russia, mainly on studies of Nikolai Kudryavtsev. The idea proposes that large amounts of carbon exist naturally in the planet, some in the form of hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are less dense than aqueous pore fluids, and migrate upward through deep fracture networks. Thermophilic, rock-dwelling microbial life-forms are in part responsible for the biomarkers found in petroleum. However, their role in the formation, alteration, or contamination of the various hydrocarbon deposits is not yet understood[1]. Thermodynamic calculations[2] and experimental studies confirm that n-alkanes (common petroleum components) do not spontaneously evolve from methane at pressures typically found in sedimentary basins, and so the theory of an abiogenic origin of hydrocarbons suggests deep generation (below 200 km) (see results [3]).

As with any petroleum, the idea goes, these hydrocarbons would migrate upwards with methane, sometimes bearing helium and nitrogen and heavy metals. Diamondoids are common in oil and gas and its nature probably is related to natural diamonds that come from earth's mantle. The proponents of abiogenic petroleum claim that reserves are never exhausted because they are filled from below. This idea was verified in 1999, when an oil basin named "Eugene Island 330" off the coast of Lousiana went from being a relatively depleted reserve to suddenly refilling with pure oil, causing production to quickly raise back up to levels competing with when drilling began. Further evidence, such as the 2004 creation of methane in a laboratory by Henry Scott of the University of Indiana of South Bend and associates using inorganic elements and compounds, and the well-known astronomical fact that hydrocarbons exist on planetary bodies that have never had life, evidence this theory.

As well, the implications of this theory are what have been used to find most of the recent reserves world-wide. Traditional biotic theory only predicts oil in certain rock at a certain depth, but the abiotic theory allows for much more. Reserves in much of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kazakhstan, the coast of Vietnam, and virtually all the oil in Russia were found either at depths or in source rock that are incompatible with traditional techniques. Recently, in Switzerland, Thomas Gold led an experimental drill for oil straight into pure granite, where he did indeed find enough to quickly produce one million barrels for testing.

---

As I said the Methane find off Los Angeles did not seem to be of Biotic origin.

[LibFreeOrDie]

Photo of worms living on methane hydrate:

http://www.science.psu.edu/iceworms/viewxclose.html

[Robert A Cook PE]

Interesting.

I had not heard of either Thomas Gold or (Russia's) Nikolai Kudryavtsev before, so I'll look them up. Thanks for the tip!

[Dustbunny]

Hope they discover a way to collect the methane gas.

[dalereed]

"You don't want to be nearby when that happens"

Until they drilled the wells on the Long Beach and Seal Beach platforms their was large volumes of oil and gas boiling to the surface on the horseshoe kelp 7 miles off Long Beach harbor.

Same thing in the Santa Barbara Channel.

Before the platforms and drilling there was a giant oil slick from the Channel Islands to Mexico and all the beaches were covered with oil and tar.