The race is on: Get methane before it gets us

The race is on to get one vast, untapped source of energy before it gets us: methane hydrates.

An ice-like compound of methane trapped within the crystalline structure of frozen water, methane hydrates are found in sediments on the ocean floor, deep under Antarctic ice and below the Arctic permafrost. Globally, methane hydrates could hold twice as much carbon as all the other known fossil fuels on the planet, according to the US Geological Survey.

So they’re abundant, which — to researchers with the US Department of Energy (DOE) and elsewhere — sounds great, from an energy perspective. But all that carbon makes it potentially not so great from a climate perspective … especially since, while methane has a much shorter lifespan in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, it is also more than 60 times as powerful a greenhouse gas.

Researchers with the DOE, ConocoPhillips and the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation  recently completed a successful test in which new technology was able to “safely extract a steady flow of natural gas from methane hydrates” in the North Slope region of Alaska. The test paves the way for further research aimed at locating and extracting methane hydrates on a larger scale along the US Gulf Coast.

“While this is just the beginning, this research could potentially yield significant new supplies of natural gas,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

The question is, can our efforts to tap into the energy held in methane hydrate deposits pay off before those deposits start “extracting” themselves on a large-scale basis?

Last year, researchers in the Arctic found “widespread” plumes of methane emanating up from the seafloor and into the atmosphere. More recently, scientists reported methane is also apparently being produced by the ocean itself, being detected at higher-than-background-levels where Arctic sea ice is cracked or only partially covering the ocean.

Methane also leaks into the atmosphere in considerable quantities from existing natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations.

All these newly emerging sources of methane pose a concern because of something called the “clathrate gun hypothesis.” That theory suggests that rising ocean temperatures can trigger massive releases of methane from deposits of hydrates (also called clathrates). In fact, evidence points to a runaway release of methane as the cause of one of the greatest mass extinction events in the Earth’s history: the Permian-Triassic extinction — or “Great Dying” — 252 million years ago, which wiped out some 70 percent of land vertebrates and up to 96 of all marine species.

So can we get methane hydrates before they get us? The clock is ticking.