Japan Plans to Drill for Plentiful Underwater Methane

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Japan doesn’t have much oil, leaving the island nation heavily depended upon imports. What it does have, though, is natural gas—far under the sea in methane hydrate formations. The country said this week that it is going after those deposits, drilling test wells next year with the intention of beginning extraction before the decade is out.

What makes methane hydrate unique is that it is a seemingly frozen and yet flammable material. Formed in cold, high-pressure environments, it is found throughout the world’s oceans as well as under the frozen ground of countries with high latitudes. While global estimates vary considerably, the U.S. Department of Energy says, the energy content of methane occurring in hydrate form is “immense, possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels.” [UPI]

No one has yet pursued hydrates in a major commercial way, so their enormous potential sits untapped. Japan succeeded with a test well in Canada two years ago, and now aims to test near its home shores.

A consortium led by the Japanese government and the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (Jogmec) will be sinking several wells off the south-eastern coast of Japan to assess the commercial viability of extracting gas from frozen methane deep beneath local waters. Surveys suggest Japan has enough methane hydrate for 100 years at the current rate of usage. [The Guardian]

But with high reward comes high risk. We’ve covered numerous times in the last couple years scientists worried that a warming ocean could unexpectedly release some of that methane, which would not be good news. When we burn methane for energy and call it natural gas, it produces fewer carbon dioxide emissions than coal. But methane itself, should it escape, is a far worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. And some environmentalists are concerned that drilling could

inadvertently [set] off undersea landslides, which could wipe out nearby seafloor life, and uncontrollable methane leaks from destabilized gas and hydrate formations. Massive eruptions of methane gas from melting or collapsing undersea hydrates have occurred naturally in the distant past as a result of rapid climate warming, studies have shown. [The New York Times]

 

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