China Threatens to Wake the Sleeping Dragon of Fire Ice in the Ocean’s Depths

There is an odd material that forms in the oceans between 200 and 500 meters of depth. Temperature, pressure, and the presence of organic methane combine to form a clathrate , an icebound gas. In its most basic form, it is a molecule of methane encaged in water molecules. This particular clathrate is called methane hydrate. Some call it “fire ice.” If you had a chunk laying on the patio, it would look like cloudy ice. Take your Bic charcoal lighter and light it up. It burns with a reddish tinged blue flame until evaporated.

My warnings about methane hydrate are coming true. The Chinese have begun industrial scale extraction of methane hydrate in the South China Sea. At 30 million cubic feet, it is a tiny fraction compared to what is required to satiate China’s energy needs, but it is a beginning. This could explain China’s real interest in the South China Sea.

China’s energy outlooks have been sunny lately, and I’m not talking about solar. The world is awash with cheap oil. China is buying all it can get its hands on because the prices have collapsed. This news about methane hydrate extraction from the South China Sea foretells a future in which China does not need to import oil or gas. China has tapped into the mother load of CO2-producing combustion energy.

How much? There is much speculation but on a global basis, it could be 23,000 times the current estimated conventional natural gas reserves — up to 700 million trillion cubic feet. At about $2 per 1000 cubic feet, that’s 1,400,000 trillion dollars worth of natural gas. Give or take a few bucks. Enough to power China, possibly the world, for centuries.

And that is a problem. We don’t have centuries to spend burning natural gas, no matter how cheap or plentiful it is. We have a decade to reduce CO2 output 45% below 2010 levels to keep the average temperature from rising 2 degrees Centigrade instead of 1.5.

It looks like China is taking the lead on this, and there’s been no equivalent development by leading offshore countries or companies. Japan is developing methane hydrate but not to this extent. Perhaps it is because Japan and these other entities are afraid of the negative publicity surrounding the release of natural gas into the atmosphere by producers and drillers that has recently come to light. In West Texas and parts of New Mexico satellite sensors have determined that 3.7% of methane gas being extracted from the Permian Basin is being leaked into the atmosphere. That’s enough gas to power 7 million households for a year. And it’s been determined that anything over 2.7% leakage of methane upon extraction makes it worse than coal as a fossil fuel.

China may have no qualms about the negative publicity. Natural gas would be a much cleaner energy solution for them locally than building hundreds more coal-burning power plants. It would help clean China’s skies but perhaps at a significant cost to the world’s climate.

There is no report of how much methane escapes to the atmosphere in the extraction process China is using. As the recent pandemic shows, China is not the most forthcoming and transparent of nations. Methane is already a greenhouse gas 28 times more efficient than CO2 at trapping the Sun’s energy in the atmosphere. Although it lasts only a few years, it keeps increasing every year, and we are running out of time with regard to the climate.

Another thing about methane hydrate. Remember, I said it forms between 200 and 500 meters deep? That means giant shelves of this substance form against the slopes that drop from continental shelves and island chains into the depths of oceans. It is thought a tremendous shift of underwater mass called the Stroregga Slide off the shore of Norway 8000 years ago could have been one of these shelves that collapsed causing a 130 feet tall tsunami in Norway and only slightly smaller ones in the British Isles. Care has to be taken when extracting from precarious formations with structural unknowns.

If China continues its development of this fossil fuel energy source, other countries and large corporations may follow up with their own developments, exacerbating this problem of vast, cheap reserves of fossil fuels tempting unscrupulous developers to ignore environmental issues. History teaches us it can and will happen unless sufficient political pressure is brought to bear upon the problem.