8,956 BILLION CUIC FEET OF GAS etimated to be in Mississippi Canyon Block 252!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe the plan is is to leak out as much oil as possible. This oil might be so vast as to fill the entire Gulf. BP then can easily harvest the oil off the top as it floats over the water and make huge prifits. A great business plan.

Watch out for a hurricane though and lightining strikes creating fireballs to rain down all over the Eastern portion of the US in a few weeks as the airborn particles of water and gas vapor destroy us.

so thats what was discussed in the bilderburge meetings god bless henry kissenger what a dorable little old man he is

Does anyone know the answer to this offhand? When methyl hydrates are released from the sea floor, because it's so cold a mile down, do they stay frozen under the ocean, or do they float to the surface, expanding/thawing as they surface?

Thread: ***UPDATE*** OIL SPILL IS EQUAL PARTS METHANE AND OIL *** OIL SPILL METHANE WILL TURN THE OCEANS TO ACID and could make the ATMOSPHERE IGNITE???? DOO

[link to www.cbc.ca]

Methane hydrates: Energy's most dangerous game
Last Updated: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 | 9:17 AM ET Comments34Recommend67
By William Pentland Forbes

Read more: [link to www.cbc.ca]


All the energy America needs for the next 100 years lies under the sea off the coast of South Carolina. One problem: Digging it out could cause a global climate disaster.

Welcome to the final frontier in fossil fuels, the wild card in climate change theories and the dark horse in the scramble to secure access to clean energy. Meet methane hydrates, the world's most promising and perilous energy resource.

Methane is the principal component of natural gas, and massive amounts of it are trapped in reservoirs beneath the sea floor and under a layer of the ice-like substance. The scale of the resource is spectacular. By some estimates, methane hydrates contain more energy content than all other known fossil fuels combined.

Two small areas located roughly 200 miles off the coast of Charleston, S.C., contain enough methane to meet the country's gas needs for more than a century. And this is only one of at least two dozen similar reservoirs discovered in U.S. coastal waters since the early 1970s.
Disaster waiting to happen?

The paradox is that while gas can be extracted from methane hydrates, doing so poses potentially catastrophic risks. Methane hydrates are frozen water molecules that trap methane gas molecules in a crystalline, lattice-like structure known as a hydrate. Unlike normal ice, hydrate ice literally burns — light a match and it goes up in flames. As temperatures rise or pressure rates fall, the hydrate disintegrates and the water releases the gas.

A substantial amount of evidence suggests that weakening the lattice-like structure of gas hydrates has triggered underwater landslides on the continental margin. In other words, the extraction process, if done improperly, could cause sudden disruptions on the ocean floor, reducing ocean pressure rates and releasing methane gas from hydrates.

A mass release of methane into the sea and atmosphere could have catastrophic consequences on the pace of climate change. More than 50 million years ago, undersea landslides resulted in the release of methane gas from methane hydrate, which contributed to global warming that lasted tens of thousands of years.

"Methane hydrate was a key cause of the global warming that led to one of the largest extinctions in the earth's history," Ryo Matsumoto, a professor at the University of Tokyo who has spent 20 years researching the subject, told Bloomberg in December.
Major resource

But given its potential, the race is on to figure out how to safely exploit this resource. Timothy Collett, a research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, has estimated that there could be as much as 317 quadrillion cubic feet of methane gas stored in hydrates in the U.S.

To put this in perspective, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the country has 187 trillion cubic ft of natural gas reserves. Needless to say, the potential value of gas hydrates as a less-polluting and more secure supply of energy is immense.

Major government research initiatives have been launched in China, India, Germany, Norway, Russia, Taiwan and several other countries. The Japanese government has estimated that producing gas from methane hydrates is commercially viable when oil prices rise above $54 a barrel.

In 2003, an international consortium that included Japan, Canada, the U.S., India and Germany produced natural gas from methane hydrates in the Mackenzie Delta in Canada's Northwest Territories. To date, Japan has made the biggest bet on methane hydrates and appears to be the closest to commercial production.

Since 2000, Japan has drilled nearly three dozen exploratory well holes in the Nankai Trough. Roughly 30 miles off the coast of Honshu Island in the Pacific Ocean, the Nankai Trough holds an estimated 40 trillion cubic feet of gas hydrates and has received the largest investment and advanced field research of any project in the world.

"We're trying to find the lowest-hanging fruit," says Kelly Rose, a research geologist at the U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory. "Production is definitely possible if we can keep giving the support needed to figure out how these fields work. In the last six months, things have really started to pick up."

In the U.S., major federal industry partnerships have been formed in both the Gulf of Mexico and on the North Slope of Alaska. Chevron has led the JIP project in the Gulf of Mexico. BPAX(BP in Alaska is known as BP Alaska Exploration. Inc. or "BPAX" ) and the U.S. Department of Energy are currently exploring sites for a long-term production facility, which will likely begin in 2009.

Japan and Canada are well into long-term production tests in the Mackenzie Delta that began in 2007.

Meanwhile, Japan and Canada are well into long-term production tests in the Mackenzie Delta that began in 2007. In the past two months, the U.S. Department of Energy has completed bilateral agreements with Japan, Korea and India that will increase collaboration on methane hydrates research.

"We think that the future may be sooner than some of us are considering," Robert Hunter, president of ASRC Energy Services, which led the first major field study in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay with BP Alaska Exploration and the Department of Energy, told Petroleum News. "In parts of the world such as the North Slope, with unique motivation, hydrates may become a very stable source of natural gas within the next five to 10 years."

Ironically, rising sea levels and temperatures appear to be causing methane releases from hydrates with or without drilling.

Industry insiders describe the commercialization of gas hydrates as similar to the development of coal bed gas resources. Not very long ago, coal bed methane, which currently accounts for almost 10 per cent of all U.S. natural gas production, was considered too expensive for commercial production. Technological innovations made coal bed gas a viable fuel.

"In coal bed technology, they kept at it until they found the key that unlocked the door and things started happening, which is likely the way methane hydrates will develop," says Rose.

"The whole goal of our research is to figure out the recipe for how these methane hydrate fields work. It will take different technologies in the future, but getting the recipe is the first big step."

Last Edited by J_Vaz on 05/13/2010 07:23 PM

A Baylor University researcher has used a new search method that he adapted for use on the seafloor to find a potentially massive source of hydrocarbon energy called methane hydrate, a frozen form of natural gas, in a portion of the Gulf of Mexico.

Dr. John Dunbar, associate professor of geology at Baylor, and his team used an electrical resistivity method to acquire geophysical data at the site, located roughly 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. The Baylor researchers were able to provide a detailed map of where the methane hydrate is located and how deep it extends underneath the seafloor.

Located in an area called the Mississippi Canyon, the site is about 3,000-feet-wide, 3,000-feet under water, and has both active and dormant gas vents. Scientists have been researching the site since 2001, but have not been able to ascertain where the hydrate is located nor how much is there until now.

"The conventional search methods have been fairly effective in certain situations, but the resistivity method is a totally different approach," Dunbar said. "The benefit to the resistivity method is it shows the near-bottom in greater detail, and that is where the methane hydrate is located in this case. This research shows the resistivity method works and is effective."

Dunbar and his research team injected a direct electrical current into the seafloor to measure the resistivity of the sediment beneath the sea floor. The measurement of resistivity - the ability of a material to resist conduction of electricity - showed the researchers where the methane hydrate is located. To do this, Dunbar and his team dragged a "sled" - a device with a nearly one-kilometer-long towed array - back and forth over the site, injecting the electrical current. Sediment containing methane hydrate within its pores showed higher resistivity, compared to sediment containing salt water. While the measurement of resistivity has been used for some time, the method has seldom been used at deep depths.

The new method showed researchers that the methane hydrate was located only in limited spots, usually occurring along faults under the sea floor. Dunbar said the method also showed the methane hydrate is not as abundant as previously thought at the site.

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded Dunbar more than $115,000 to continue researching the site. Dunbar and his team will reconfigure the towed array and shorten the length of it to about 1,500 feet. They also will cluster sensors around certain areas on the array, which will give researchers a clearer picture of how deep the methane hydrate extends and will allow them to create a three-dimensional picture of the underwater site.

An ice-like solid, methane hydrate is found beneath the seafloor in many locations across the globe, usually at depths greater than 3,000 feet. The most common place to find gas hydrate mounds in the Gulf of Mexico are along the intersections of faults with the seafloor. According to the U.S Geological Survey, the nation's methane hydrate deposits are estimated to hold a vast 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. If just one percent of those deposits are commercially produced, it would more than double the country's natural gas reserves.

Thread: **BROKEN NEWS!**BP containment "Top Hat" Delayed, set back, failed, shit the bed...wtf eva (Page 9)

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Methane Gas Explosions.

Last Edited by J_Vaz on 05/13/2010 07:28 PM

Thank you. I have been trying to find estimates on the reserves. I was hoping to hear it contained more crude than gas. BP, it seems to me, is trying to keep the reserves hushed up. This may be a bigger field than was found in Russia. The balance of petro power is shifting again. Sorry Saudi Arabia, you're losing your grip.

FYI- The numbers you cited from the 2005 MMS report on Gulf Reserves are the Total Estimeated (8,956 bcf) before there were any wells in the Mississippi Canyon formation. As of 2005, column 9 of Table 1 page 16, 5,555 bcf have been produced leaving a remaining balance of 3,401 bcf in the formation to be extracted. You should notice the qualifer that states the estimated quantities are related to 60 degrees F and 15.025 psia - that's at the surface and not under the enormous deep sea pressure about 2,200 psi at 5,000 feet on the seafloor. Then add another 2,500 psi for the additional depth of the drilled well and you are looking at an external pressure over 5,000 psi at the top of the formation. At this pressure,the gas volume estimated at surface pressure would be compressed about 333 times. All said, the formation release would stop when its internal pressure (10,000 psi ?) equalizes with the pressure at the seafloor (well bore) somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 psi. It is doubtful that one well could drain all the remaining reserves in the Mississippi Canyon formation. Still, it is a huge disaster not to be down-played.