China ice gas. "Combustible Ice"

Illustration copyright Alamy Image caption Methane hydrate or "flammable gas": an important source of energy in the future

China has for the first time extracted gas from methane hydrate deposits at the bottom of the South China Sea - an event that could be a turning point for the future of energy around the world.

Chinese authorities immediately proclaimed this to be a major achievement.

Methane hydrates, also known as combustible ice, contain vast reserves of natural gas.

Many countries, including the United States and Japan, are working to solve the problem of exploiting gas hydrate deposits, but mining them and extracting gas from them is a difficult task.

What is "flammable ice"?

The catchy phrase describes what is in reality a crystalline compound of water and gas.

Siberian methane influences warming

"It resembles ice crystals, but if you look at it at the molecular level, it turns out that methane molecules are embedded in a lattice of water molecules," says Professor Praveen Linga from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore.

The official name of the substance is methane clathrates or methane hydrates; they are formed under high pressure and at low temperatures in layers of permafrost or on the bottom of the seas.

Despite their low temperature, these hydrates are highly flammable. If you bring a lighter to the surface, the gas contained in the frozen water begins to burn. As a result, hydrates are called “flammable ice.”

As pressure decreases and temperature increases, hydrates break down into water and methane - a very large amount of methane. One cubic meter of the compound releases up to 160 cubic meters of methane, making it a highly concentrated fuel resource.

Illustration copyright USGS Image caption Methane hydrate crystals recovered by American geologists in the Gulf of Mexico

However, the catch is that the process of extracting flammable gas from gas hydrates is extremely complex and expensive.

Gas hydrates were first discovered in northern Russia in the 60s of the last century. However, research into the extraction of hydrates from bottom sediments began only 10-15 years ago.

Japan occupies a leading position in these studies as a country that does not have reserves of fossil energy sources. Similar research is being actively conducted in India and South Korea, which also do not have oil reserves.

Research in the USA and Canada has its own specifics: they mainly study the possibility of extracting hydrates in permafrost areas - in northern Canada and Alaska.

In Russia, research is underway into the possibility of extracting gas from huge deposits of methane hydrates in permafrost zones in Western Siberia. They are financed by the state corporation Gazprom.

Why is the Chinese achievement so important?

Gas hydrates could change the entire global energy sector and become a major source of energy in the coming years.

Enormous hydrate deposits exist on the floor of all oceans, especially at the edges of continental plates. Different countries are looking for ways to make the production of “combustible gas” safe and profitable.

China claims to have made a breakthrough in this area and Professor Linga agrees.

“Compared to the results of Japanese research, Chinese scientists have achieved impressive success, being able to extract much more methane from extraction,” he explains. “This is a truly significant achievement.”

Gas hydrate deposits are thought to contain 10 times more gas than shale deposits. “And this is only according to the most conservative estimates,” says the scientist.

China discovered "flammable ice" at the bottom of the South China Sea in 2007. Many areas in the waters of this sea are simultaneously claimed by China, Vietnam and the Philippines, and territorial disputes are aggravated by the presence of huge energy resources there.

What will happen now?

According to Professor Linga, China's success is only the first step on a long path to developing a new resource.

“For the first time, the prospects for hydrate mining look promising,” he says. “But I think it won’t be until 2025 (at the earliest) that we see real commercial use of hydrates.”

According to Chinese media, in the Shenhu area in the South China Sea, a production level of 16 thousand cubic meters per day of high-purity gas has been achieved.

However, Professor Linga warns that the exploitation of gas hydrate reserves must be accompanied by the strictest environmental safety measures.

The biggest risk in this area is the uncontrolled release of huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere, which could dramatically accelerate global warming. Methane is a much more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Therefore, the task is to extract the gas and prevent it from escaping.

The Japanese this week opened a new front in their desperate fight to lower global natural gas prices. Now they are the first in the world to extract it off their coast from an underwater deposit of an absolutely fantastic thing - the so-called. “combustible ice”, methane hydrates.

An obviously premature euphoria arose in the country about this: one of the parliament members even passionately called for thinking about developing a future strategy for Japan as a new major exporter of natural gas - second only to Russia in the Far East. Let us remind you for those who do not know - now our wealthy island neighbor in the Far East has practically no mineral resources at all except unprofitable coal. But, everything is in order.

Methane hydrate is a combination of methane gas and water that occurs at very low temperatures and under high pressure. Outwardly, this thing resembles melted loose snow or, if you like, sherbet. There is a lot of methhydrate on the planet - in the Arctic tundra, at the bottom or under the bottom of the world's oceans. By the way, there are rich deposits in Russia. Methane can be separated from a compound with water either by increasing the temperature or decreasing the pressure. But this is easy to say - as in the case of shale gas, effective technologies of this kind have not been available for a long time.

The first breakthrough was made in Canada: back in 2007 and 2008, gas was produced there from methane hydrate deposits in the tundra. But the idea was stopped there - the cost of production turned out to be prohibitively high.

The Japanese, without much fuss, have been actively working on the problem of methane hydrates since the 80s, of which, as it turns out, there are quite a few around their country. The prospect of, if not self-sufficiency in natural gas, then at least a significant reduction in the complete enslaving dependence on its purchases abroad was dizzying. To date, the deposits adjacent to Japan in the Sea of Okhotsk, in the Sea of Japan and off the country’s Pacific coast facing America have already been generally explored. It is estimated that there are so many methane reserves there that they can completely meet Japan's needs for 100 years at the current level of natural gas consumption. A hundred years! In short, the game was considered worth the candle, government funding was allocated, and the field 70 km from the Atsumi Peninsula in the central part of the Pacific coast of the main Japanese island of Honshu was recognized as the most promising.

Back in February last year, the unique research vessel Chikyu (Earth) drilled four test wells there. The depth of the ocean in the area of operation is 1000 meters. The wells confirmed the presence of methane hydrates suitable for production. The field is estimated to be able to fully meet Japan's natural gas needs for 10-11 years.

In the same area, Tikyu drilled and equipped a well for production 300 meters deep. Last Tuesday, equipment was lowered there and a historic event occurred - after four hours of waiting, an orange flame flared on the burner near the deck of the ship - this was methane, which was obtained from underwater “combustible ice” for the first time in history.

The experiment will continue for another two weeks, and then the Japanese, based on the data obtained, will begin to think further. The main goal is to reduce costs, since producing gas from methane hydrate is extremely expensive. With current technology, it costs more than three times as much as the liquefied natural gas Japan currently imports. However, shale gas was also considered unprofitable at one time. Until breakthrough technologies were found in the United States that caused a revolution in the market.

Tokyo also believes that it will be able to find new methods to dramatically reduce costs. The government has set a goal of developing commercially feasible technologies for exploiting methane hydrate deposits by fiscal year 2018. The money allocated for this from the budget is quite decent.

By the way, methhydrates have now begun to be actively studied in South Korea, which is also deprived of natural resources. China this week published a report in which it pointedly recalled that it ranks third in methane reserves and is second only to Russia and Canada in this indicator. During the current five-year plan (2011-15), it is planned to begin production of this gas in two fields in China. By 2015 they want to increase it to 30 billion cubic meters per year. Then production will begin at five more fields. The goal is not hidden - to reduce China’s dependence on foreign supplies of natural gas.

By the way, Beijing has been conducting protracted, painful negotiations with Russia for many years on the price of gas, which Moscow really wants to pipe to China. The PRC is not giving in and believes that time and the development of new technologies are on its side; tariffs will still have to be significantly reduced.

The Japanese, the world's largest buyer of liquefied natural gas, are also counting on this. Of course, talk about complete “gas independence” based on “burning ice” is still a utopia. However, quite possible successes in developing technologies for more or less cost-effective use of methane hydrate, combined with the start of purchasing cheap shale liquefied gas in the USA and Canada, will allow, as Tokyo believes, to confidently reduce prices for traditional gas. According to the Japanese, in the coming years they can reduce their costs for this resource by at least fifteen percent. For now - only due to the factor of American shale gas.

As for Gazprom, the Japanese are also ready to buy its products. But prices will be effectively brought down by all available means. Using the American shale factor now, and then, if possible, “combustible ice”. “As it turns out, there is a lot of natural gas in the world, the market is overcrowded. And this needs to be understood,” a diplomat who at one time headed the Russian department of the Japanese Foreign Ministry once told me.

Shale oil production. Beijing claims to be the first in the world to extract so-called “combustible ice” from the bottom of the sea, a new alternative fuel that is more abundant in the world than oil, gas and coal combined. Is everything really as the Chinese claim?

Samples of “combustible ice” were recovered from a depth of more than 1.2 kilometers; the 200-meter underwater well itself was located 285 kilometers southeast of Hong Kong. In just eight days of work, 120 cubic meters of “combustible ice”, which contains 99.5% methane, was extracted. One cubic meter of gas hydrate usually produces 164 cubic meters of natural gas.

“This will be the same major event as the shale revolution that occurred earlier in the United States. As a result, the way energy is used in the future will undergo a transformation,” said Li Jinfa, deputy director of the ministry's geological research department.

According to him, China has achieved “unprecedented success” in developing the theoretical basis and technologies in this direction, as a result of which the country has taken a leading position in the world in the production of “combustible ice.”

This success was officially confirmed on the website of the People's Government of the People's Republic of China: after 20 years of continuous research, geological exploration, development of relevant technologies, and the creation of special equipment, China was finally able to achieve this “historic breakthrough.”

“Natural gas hydrate is the richest and most efficient alternative energy source, and in the future it can play a strategic role in the development of energy throughout the world,” the statement also said.

It must be said that methane hydrate is the most common gas hydrate in nature. Essentially, it is a crystalline compound of gas and water, similar to loose ice or compressed snow. It burns no worse than coal. The volume of natural gas hydrate reserves in the planet's oceans is approximately twice the sum of the world's known reserves of coal, oil and natural gas. Features such as the huge reserves and relative purity of this type of energy carrier promise the possibility of natural gas hydrate replacing the use of coal and oil in the future.

It is interesting that the theory about the possibility of the existence of such a compound in nature was first put forward by a Russian scientist from the Gubkin Institute in 1965, Yuri Makagon. And soon his assumption was confirmed - the Messoyakha gas hydrate field was discovered in the Arctic. Since then, hundreds of deposits of such gas have been found around the world.

However, Russian industry experts are very cautious about the gas revolution announced by China.

Firstly, the Chinese say that they are the first. “Actually, this is not true. The first experiments in gas hydrate production were carried out in Japan ten years ago. The best Japanese minds have continued to struggle with the problem all these years, but the matter has not been brought to industrial production. Although last year they promised that they would begin operational tests in 2017,” says Ivan Kapitonov, associate professor at the RANEPA Higher School, senior researcher at the energy policy sector of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Indeed, as a result of Japanese research near the Pacific coast in 1995-2000. they managed to get some methane hydrate from the bottom. This inspired the country's authorities. In 2013, the Japanese company Jogmec reported “impressive” results from an experiment in the extraction of gas hydrates. However, production has not actually begun. Although for Japan, which does not have its own energy resources, this would be manna from heaven. Especially considering that geologists talk about 7 trillion cubic meters of methane hydrate on the seabed around the Japanese islands, which would be enough for the country to last 100 years.

The second important question concerns the cost of industrial production of such gas. “What are the prospects for the commercial implementation of the technology is still completely unclear. It is very likely that the cost of producing gas hydrates is an order of magnitude higher than the cost of producing traditional gas,” notes Agibalov.

“According to last year’s calculations by the Japanese, the cost of a thousand cubic meters of gas extracted from hot ice was in the range of $400-1,300 per thousand cubic meters,” says Kapitonov. This is much more expensive than the cost of LNG, and especially pipeline gas. If, of course, the Chinese really made some kind of technological breakthrough, then the price could drop, the expert does not rule out. However, the Chinese would hardly remain silent about such a breakthrough. There are still few specifics from China.

“Despite the potential technological breakthrough, I assume that we can only talk about actual industrial production in a few years. I think it will take three years to develop new technologies, and then estimate the cost of gas production using it,” says Kapitonov.

But what if we assume that the Chinese are not exaggerating? At one time, few people believed in the success of shale oil, but now the cost of its production is below $50.

The good news is that at least the Russian project to build the Power of Siberia gas pipeline has nothing to worry about. “For the Power of Siberia, all volumes have been contracted, so here Russia is in any case on the safe side of the street,” Kapitonov is sure. In addition, gas hydrate will initially compete directly in price with LNG, and not with pipeline gas. Therefore, China is unlikely to covet Gazprom’s position in Europe.

“In the long term, the emergence of new sources of raw materials will, of course, threaten all others. But now, significantly more uncertainty in the energy markets is brought not by the question of the future supply of energy resources, but by the future demand, which is actively modified by the environmental agenda,” Sergei Agibalov rightly notes.

Deputy Director General of the National Energy Security Fund Alexey Grivach is much more skeptical: “These statements by China do not mean anything. The question is, how many decades will it take them to get economically viable methane from this resource for industrial use on an industrial scale? After all, methane does not just need to be extracted. Today, no country has any serious success; no one has brought anything to the level of industrial technology.”

He does not exclude that Chinese companies may exaggerate their achievements, for example, in order to continue to receive funding from the state, or use this as an argument in negotiations with fuel suppliers. “But it is clear to specialists that industrial success is still very far away,” says Grivach.

“This is a really great resource. But there are still quite a lot of available traditional ones; according to some estimates, they will last for another 60 years, according to others - for 100 years. And it is easier to produce natural gas, even in Arctic conditions, than gas hydrate,” concludes Grivach.

The main technological difficulty in extracting hydrate is how to raise the “flammable ice” from the seabed so that it does not heat up and the pressure does not change. Otherwise, methane hydrate breaks down into water and natural gas. Many countries have made attempts to find the key to developing such deposits. And the USA, by the way, has been especially active; they even have a national program on this topic. But the shale revolution happened, but the gas hydrate revolution did not. Japan and China, apparently, are seriously ahead of the United States in this matter.

Finally, another serious drawback of this type of resource is the risk of causing enormous damage to nature. The seabed can become unstable due to hydrate mining, and its leak due to a technological error or simply a natural shock can lead to the formation of a huge gas bubble hundreds of times larger than the size of the original volume of hydrate, according to an article in the journal Atomic Expert.

The “combustible ice” produced by China for the first time will not withstand competition with Russian natural gas in the next decade. For the energy revolution, it is necessary to first develop the technology and significantly reduce the cost of its production, says a teacher at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation Igor Yushkov.

Chinese "flammable ice"

Chinese oil workers were the first in the world to extract natural gas hydrate from the bottom of the South China Sea. The Chinese themselves immediately called their success colossal. In their opinion, “combustible ice” is capable of making a revolution in the energy sector, comparable to the shale revolution. In total, they extracted about 120 cubic meters of energy, the methane content in it is 99.5%.

“We are talking about gas hydrates, and the Chinese are not pioneers here. Various countries have been engaged in development almost since the middle of the 20th century, and the Japanese are closer to the breakthrough. Last year they already announced that they had tested industrial gas production from gas hydrate. In principle, gas hydrate can be extracted anywhere. Methane is found in a small layer of silty sediment, and if you come to a swamp or flooded area near a pond, you can extract methane yourself using an ordinary ballpoint pen.

It is known that the largest reserves of gas hydrate are located on Lake Baikal. But at the moment there is no commercially viable gas hydrate extraction technology, although many countries are working on it. The cost of producing “combustible ice” will be significantly higher than purchasing gas from other suppliers from traditional fields. But if production technology suddenly became available, then everyone would start extracting gas from gas hydrates, and then a global energy revolution would begin,” comments FBA "Economy Today" expert.

Cost of production of "combustible gas"

Researcher at the Center for Industrial Economics, Financial Research Institute Andrey Gordeev in turn, he notes that it is not yet possible to compare the success of China with the shale revolution, since it has been preparing for a very long time.

“We will see developments and implementations first, but they require serious investments. Most likely, Chinese gas hydrate production technology will not become widespread in the coming years. In addition, the era of hydrocarbons will persist, even despite the development of alternative energy and electric vehicles.

The main stumbling block in this case is the lack of infrastructure, since its implementation remains a capital-intensive task. Of course, the discovery of China is innovative to some extent, but it will not be the end of the era of hydrocarbons, since oil will retain its position in the energy market in the next decade,” the interlocutor explains to us.

In 2013, for the first time, the Japanese announced the extraction of methane from “combustible ice”; however, they did not lift samples of hydrate from the bottom of the sea; natural gas, after pumping out the water, went up through a pipeline.

“The Chinese freeze silt deposits and then extract gas from it, that is, in fact, they use a different extraction method. The whole question is the cost of such production. If our cost of production per well is on average 10-15 dollars, and in large fields in Yamal it tends to zero, then in the case of “flammable ice” it will be extremely high.

The same shale production technology was tested for about 30 years until it gave acceptable results, while gas was more expensive on the market at that time. Now the price of gas varies from 200 to 300 dollars per 1000 cubic meters, and it is extremely difficult to develop alternative sources at such a price; they simply cannot withstand competition,” sums up Yushkov.

Chinese oil workers were the first in the world to extract “combustible ice” - natural gas hydrate - from the bottom of the South China Sea, China Central Television reported, citing the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources of the People's Republic of China. What is important here is “from the bottom”, since gas from “ice” has been extracted in the USSR since 1969. So the Chinese are exaggerating a little.

“This will be as big an event as the shale revolution that happened earlier in the United States. As a result, the way energy is used in the future will undergo a transformation,” said Li Jinfa, deputy director of the ministry's geological research department. He noted that China has achieved “unprecedented success” in developing a theoretical framework and technologies in this direction, as a result of which the country has taken a leading position in the world in the production of “combustible ice.”

The samples were recovered from a depth of more than 1.2 kilometers; the 200-meter underwater well itself was located 285 kilometers southeast of Hong Kong. In just eight days of work, 120 cubic meters of “combustible ice” were extracted; the methane content in it is 99.5 percent.

One cubic meter of hydrate is equivalent to 164 cubic meters of natural gas in a gaseous state (a car can travel 300 kilometers on 100 liters of gas, while 50 thousand kilometers on 100 liters of “combustible ice”).

"Flammable ice" is the colloquial name for natural gas hydrates. These are crystalline compounds formed from water and gas at certain pressure and temperature. These hydrates look like ice.

Chinese experts discovered a deposit of natural gas hydrates in the South China Sea in 2007. Soon after this, construction of the mining station began. It is located in the sea 320 kilometers from Zhuhai in Guangdong Province. The company started operating on March 28, 2017.

The first samples of “combustible ice” were recovered from a depth of 1266 meters on May 10. Since then, the South China Sea facility has produced an average of 16,000 cubic meters of natural gas from hydrates every day. As CCTV clarifies, the share of methane in natural gas extracted from hydrates is 99.5 percent.

Regular production of natural gas hydrates has been carried out since 1969 at the Messoyakha field in Siberia. It is believed that it was the first field where specialists were able to extract natural gas from “combustible ice” for the first time.

Since 2012, Japan has been making attempts to establish the production of natural gas hydrates. In early 2012, Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp carried out test drilling of wells 70 kilometers south of the Atsumi Peninsula. The first natural gas from the hydrate field was produced in March 2013. Full-scale development of the field is planned to begin in 2018. At the same time, the company did not lift hydrate samples from the seabed; natural gas, after pumping out the water, went up through the pipeline.