Story : China-Combustible Ice/Update
File ID : 142526
Dateline : Recent/FILE
Duration : 2’01
Locations : South China Sea, China
Type : Chinese/Nats
Source : China Central Television (CCTV)
Restrictions : Not access Chinese mainland
Pageview : 12
Summary : China begins first combustible-ice exploration in South China Sea
Feeds :
Languages : EN
Methane Hydrates. A company I know has been doing similar surveys (resistivity method) since the 1990’s. Always new tweaks though to how you can explore for them.
They are a huge resource for energy, and technology is getting there to make the deeper deposits worthwhile to mine.
Unless of course Obama (and the Senate) signs it all away with that Sea Treaty thing.
“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.
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.”
from:
U.S. Geological Survey
Marine and Coastal Geology Program
Gas (Methane) Hydrates — A New Frontier
http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html