Countries and industries are always in need of fuel for energy. Fuel can come from coal, oil, plant material, the Sun’s rays, wind, falling water, and more. But what about ice? Did you know that the world has huge reserves of a frozen fossil fuel known as “combustible ice”?
Japan and China have both successfully extracted combustible ice from the seafloor off their coastlines. Combustible ice is a frozen mixture of water and concentrated natural gas. Its technical name is methane hydrate. It can be lit on fire even in its frozen state, and it is believed to be one of the Earth’s most abundant fossil fuels. It’s found under Antarctic ice, buried inside Arctic permafrost, and beneath the seafloor around the globe.
China’s official news agency, Xinhua, reported that the fuel was mined by a drilling rig in the South China Sea in May. A drilling crew in Japan reported a similar successful operation off the Shima Peninsula just two weeks earlier. The extractions are considered a major breakthrough in the energy industry. Previously, attempts to access the fuel have been too costly, or even impossible. The process uses large amounts of water or carbon dioxide to flood methane hydrate reserves. This releases the fuel so it can be brought to the surface.
Japan first extracted some methane hydrate from the seafloor in 2013. But that project was abandoned because sand kept clogging the expensive machinery. The country persisted to find new methods to acquire the fuel.
For Japan, methane hydrate could offer the chance to reduce its heavy reliance on fuels imported from other countries. China relies heavily on pollution-causing coal in its power plants and steel factories. The ice could be a much cleaner-burning alternative. That country is choked in lung-damaging smog.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that combustible ice reserves worldwide equal up to 100,000 trillion cubic feet. That’s an impossible number to grasp, but let’s put it this way: Methane hydrate reserves could meet global gas demands for up to 800 years at current rates of use.
Experts warn against getting too excited just yet. They say that large-scale production remains years away. And it must be done with great care not to release methane gas into the atmosphere. But if it can be used without leaking, methane hydrate has potential to replace dirtier fuels for a long time to come.
