Pursuing methane hydrates in the South China Sea [Gas in Transition]
Pursuing methane hydrates in the South China Sea [Gas in Transition]
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Natural Gas News
Pursuing methane hydrates in the South China Sea [Gas in Transition]
Summary
China is actively exploring offshore methane hydrate deposits in the South China Sea. Technical and geopolitical problems abound, but the prize is complete gas autonomy. [Gas in Transition, Volume 3, Issue 4] by: Gavin Don
China’s perennial worries about the sources and security of its gas imports have been a significant driver of its foreign policy for at least a decade, possibly two. But for much of that time it has been known that an enormous gas reserve lies on its littoral doorstep, if it could only be produced. That resource is frozen into a water/gas crystal lattice (or clathrate) on the continental slopes around the South China Sea. To put that potential methane hydrate resource into perspective, exploration completed so far suggests (without complete certainty) that one deposit on China’s own continental slope extends for around 1,000 km along China’s coast, 100 km laterally and to some 200 m in depth. Those dimensions total 20,000 km3, or 20 trillion m3. That calculation leaves out deposits in more contested waters on the slopes of the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. Physics limit the reserve thickness to a few hundred metr...
Related Knowledge Center: Methane
As the production of natural gas from shale fields has expanded, so have methane emissions. U.S. methane emissions grew 27 percent from 1990 to 2009, according to the Energy Information Administration. Methane contributes about 10 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.