Don't Worry About Methane Hydrates, Government Scientist Says: You Have Enough CO2 To Worry About

Worrying about methane hydrates warming the atmosphere is like worrying about your house burning down after it's been leveled by a hurricane, according to an expert scientist with the Department of Energy.
Methane hydrates—natural gas molecules trapped in a lattice of ice—occur in mud, sand, permafrost and on the sea floor throughout the world in volumes believed greater than all other fossil fuels combined.
As the atmosphere warms, scientists and environmentalists have fretted about those lattices of ice melting and freeing the methane, a greenhouse gas more than 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. That could not only accelerate warming but change the chemistry of the world's oceans, increasing acidity and depleting oxygen.
Those "feedback" effects may already be happening as warming releases some hydrates, said Ray Boswell, the technology manager for natural gas technologies at DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory—scientists just don't know. But the warming required to release most hydrates would itself create enough of a problem for humanity.
"Enough climate change to create something noticeable here is enough climate change to have already created a big problem. That's kind of a consensus view," Boswell said.
"Most of the people who work on this say don't get worried about the methane; the problem is the CO2. Don't take your eye off the ball."
In an appearance sponsored by the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago, Boswell briefed about 50 public policy scholars, economists, physicists, climate scientists and students at the University of Chicago Wednesday on nascent research into methane hydrates, both as an energy resource and as a potential cause of disaster.
There is evidence that methane hydrates are abundant—"the more you look, the more you find," Boswell said—but scientists don't know how much occurs in climate sensitive zones where warming temperatures could melt the hydrates. Much of the material is locked up 2000 feet below permafrost, he said, and the heat required to melt that would pose more immediate risks.
How Afraid?
Yet some scientists see the signature of a methane hydrate disaster in the fossil record. They believe a rapid spike in average global temperature at the start of the Eocene Epoch—about 55 million years ago—resulted from a methane hydrate response. The earth was warming gradually at the time, and then global average temperatures jumped 4° to 5° C.
"That's a really really big event," Boswell said.
"Hydrate can respond in a meaningful way and exacerbate ongoing climate change. And that's been successfully proposed for one event in the past. We are conducting an experiment that seems more extreme than what happened 55 million years ago, in terms of the time and pace, so there is reason to wonder whether maybe we're looking at something that could create a hydrate response."
Steve Cicala, an economist who works on the economics of regulation, asked Boswell, "Should we be afraid, very afraid, or terrified?"
"I think we should work on your renewables," Boswell replied. "Or you need to work on carbon capture. Or you need to work on something, because nothing's going to stop this other than a better option. I think that's the message."
"CO2's going to be your big problem. If it causes a methane problem, that's like someone burning the rubble of your house after a hurricane already hit."
Production Potential?
DOE's methane hydrates program was launched in 2000 to investigate hydrates as a potential fuel. Shell, Anadarko, ConocoPhillips, BP, Chevron and other oil companies have investigated the feasibility of tapping methane hydrates. Japan, sensing the potential for more energy independence, has been at the forefront of studies.
"Nobody in the program I work for is advocating this as an optimal solution" said Boswell, who has served as the co-chief scientist for field investigations of methane hydrates in the Indian Ocean, on the Alaska North Slope and in the Gulf of Mexico.
"We're all really seriously hoping someone comes up with an energy source that is a more carbon neutral thing. But the government has a responsibility to stockpile options in case of certain future contingencies. So, that's a role for gas hydrates. There are also near-term energy security issues. And the main issue is to support the full evaluation of the emerging science issues before this becomes a commercial venture."
That may take a while, because although hydrates are easy to find through seismic studies, oil companies have lost interest in exploiting them since gas prices plummeted and since BP's Macondo Disaster, Boswell said.
Based on a few preliminary experiments, scientists have a promising idea that a combination of low pressure and heat could free the hydrates.
"The problem in Alaska is getting access to the site. We know where there's hydrates in Alaska. Unfortunately it sits on land that's already leased to BP, ExxonMobil, and/or Conoco. None of them are interested in providing access to a site for a year and half to a bunch of scientists to address this question. Right now they're not," he said. "Four years ago they were."
Burn Before Melting?
In one promising field experiment four years ago in Alaska, scientists from NETL and ConocoPhillips used carbon dioxide to liberate the methane, leaving the CO2 underground while collecting the methane for fuel use. Methane extraction coincided with carbon sequestration.
But Boswell expressed little hope the fossil fuel industry could be of assistance in preventing the release of methane hydrates through warming.
"The hydrates that are most closely coupled to the environment are the ones that nobody has a resource interest in," he said. The hydrates most vulnerable to warming are in environments—like shallow mud—that render them most difficult to exploit.
So the best way to prevent methane hydrate release in the future, he said, is by preventing carbon emissions now.
"There's enough uncertainty here that it's still a valid research question," Boswell said. "I'm just saying that most people think: don't put any more CO2 out there, and you don't have to worry about this natural feedback."
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